Yesterday, early in the afternoon, I had my last communication with the techs at ACE.NET. We had been going back and forth by email and phone for more than a day. In the last communication, they made it clear to me that they weren’t going to do anything to help. They claimed that although they knew that their server upgrade caused the problems, that there was really nothing they could do to help me. There was a never a “we’re sorry we’ve inadvertently cause you these problems”, or anything even remotely similar. I was on my own, and facing the prospect of trying to find and customize a new template – something that I really don’t have the time to do right now.

There was nothing for it but to simply try to not think about it until I had more time.

A bit earlier today, I got two comments from some very dear friends – PK and Shelly. Both of the comments seemed to indicate that my blog was “looking better.” Bemused, I came to take a peek – and there it was! The template was BACK! YES!

It must certainly be an act of the Powers that Be, right? Of course, it wasn’t me, since I didn’t have time to deal with it, and it couldn’t very well be those nice people at ACE.NET who left me out to dry, especially since they told me less than 24 hours before that there absolutely nothing they could do! Ayuh! I’ve done seen a miracle! My blog is HEALED!

*cough*

Ya never know what tomorrow will bring … ;o)

I’ve written to them and am asking them to finish cleaning things up, because it has something to do with their servers … and short of starting from scratch with an entirely new template, nothing that I can fix at my end. We’ll see if they make things right, or if they just intend to blithely make changes that mess up their client’s accounts, and leave them that way to flounder on their own.

We’re hoping that the promised 1/2 hour actually covers it. The last time these jokers went down for maintenance, I lost everything but my mySQL databases.

So … hang on tight! Hopefully we’ll be back online by 9:30 PM eastern time.

We’re not gone … just moving to a better server (I hope! ;o)

See you all on the other side …

I’ve been in touch with Acenet.net, which is where we have our domain hosted. It appears that they discovered that someone on the same physical server as Blogsplot.net was abusing it somehow. They told me that they thought that removing the abusive account from the server would clear the problem up.

… I hope so! It’s a HUGE pain in the (_|_) to move to a different server. ;o)

While we’re at it … if any of you have tried to be in touch with Dr. Engel and not received a reply – he’s OK, but his internet connection isn’t. He’s been offline for nearly two weeks now, and is one very frustrated gentleman. I believe he’s going to try to connect through a different company. I don’t envy him. That’s a royal pain in the aforementioned area too.

But anyway – we’re back. Hopefully. *crosses fingers* Maybe someday I’ll be rich and famous, and I’ll be able to have my own server … but until that happens, shared hosting is where it’s at. Hey! At least it’s not Blo … oops … I almost said that out loud! *cough*

When I found his web site, I blogrolled him, added him to my Bloglines RSS. I explored his blog a bit, and discovered the most amazing thing when you click on one of his photos … it expands beautifully! It took me a bit of exploring his Javascript files before I figured out which plugin was doing that … it’s called Lightbox.

It not only allows you to use thumbnails on a post and expand the thumbnail into a full sized photo, but it also allows you to add a title at the bottom of the photo, and link a series of photos together. What I’m hoping is that it will only load the thumbnail with each page access, and save the full photo (and the bandwidth it takes with each load) for when someone actually clicks on the picture.

To see how it works, make sure the blog has stopped trying to load things – (I’ve noticed that the page has to be fully loaded) – and click on the first picture. After it opens, you can read the title at the bottom of the photo. If the photo is attached to a series of other photos, you’ll see a little “Next” on the photo when you run your mouse over the picture. You can click on the “Next” to go through the entire set. When you’re done, click on “Close” at the bottom of the photo.

Let me know what you think of this plugin! I think it’s a really neat toy … but I’d like to know what my readers think …

NOTE – I’m at this time moment trying to trade over to the new, lighter version of this plugin … so if things don’t work right, please be patient with me until I work the bugs out! Thankee!

Cut and paste this instead …

If it still doesn’t work, substitute each and every ” with the regular ” symbol (shift ‘ on most keyboards,) and save it again.

If you know how to copy the buttons to your own server, and change the image address in the code accordingly, please do so. If you don’t – then don’t worry about it. It’s worth it! I promise to not substitute the graphic on you! >;o)

If your cut/paste doesn’t work, let me know and I’ll do my best to trouble shoot for you!

In the last month, I’ve become aware that I have a huge bandwidth drain on my blog … a few web sites in China have linked to my music files, offering music “on tap” for anyone who wants to listen … a search engine will bring up the requested song, and play it. Those of you who are renting a server know that bandwidth is at a real premium … you can sometimes get unlimited storage, but the bandwidth is more difficult to find, and more expensive to purchase in large quantities. These web sites are using very little in the way of their own bandwidth – or even HD space – since they’re linking to other sites and stealing theirs! That would be like me going into your garden, stealing your sweet corn, and selling it in my virtual shop! You’re paying for the land to grow the crop on, and you’re doing the work and taking the time to grow the crop, and I’m getting the benefit! My Chinese friends cost me more than 3 GIGS in bandwidth in September, up from 350 Megs in August.

And then are there those who have spots on MySpace who hard link to the graphics here. If they only get a few hits a day, then unless they’re linked to something really large, they’re not stealing much bandwidth … but when there are a couple dozen of these moochers, and some of them get a few hundred hits a day, it starts to add up!

I started by putting all of my photos and music inside of robots.txt protected directories, although I realized that the stuff already being cached on the search engines was going to continue to give me trouble. I renamed all of the songs and graphics that were being stolen, and used “IP Deny” to keep some of the Chinese blogsites from returning to my blog and just searching for the new song names and directories.

It was moderately effective, however, I still wasn’t having any fun …

That’s where TJ comes in … in a recent comment, TJ from Dogs Cats Kids Life said:

Concerning bandwidth, maybe this will help…

One of my blogging friends has had people steal bandwidth from him in the past.

The way he deals with it is that he replaces the image/content that they are stealing with something that is either embarassing or blatant. He says that sometimes he just has the words on the page: “This website is illegally using someone else’s bandwidth” or “This site is stealing bandwidth”. He says the more shocking it is (like a picture) the faster they take it down.

Oh yeah! Now that sounded like a bit more fun …

I created a graphic and renamed it for each of the hard linked graphics … so now, all of those people on MySpace – and in those forums – who hard linked to my graphics are seeing the following little picture instead of the one they linked to (and so are their readers!):

To see a sample of this lovely little study in red, white and blue, take a look at this MySpace blog which was linking to a picture on my blog and using it as a background! >;o)

The graphics were small potatoes, though. The music is another story. I’m tackling that one in a couple of stages, actually. I made a recording which accuses the web site of stealing, and then gives the dictionary definition of the verb “to steal.” Those who are still getting through are now hearing my recording instead of the song. Most people don’t bother playing it through … they hear the “This web site is stealing bandwidth” message, and click it off. I’m hoping that this will embarrass the sites into removing the links completely. If it doesn’t work, I’m going to make a shorter, less polite recording next month. *evil grin*

Here’s a sample of what my Chinese friends are getting instead of Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up” …

Do I forgive all of these numbies? Of course I do … but forgiveness does not equal stupidity! Forgiveness does not mean that I help them continue to steal from me!

It’s becoming apparent that the internet is bringing out the greed in a lot of people … it’s not just the little MySpace sillies who link to a graphic someplace, not thinking that they and the 100 other people doing the same thing are causing the owner some grief; rather it’s the big music web sites that are linking to songs, and the places like Bitacle which are using your blogs like cash cows, that really need to be stopped. If we don’t pull together and fight these guys, I predict a pandemic of this sort of thing – just like what we’re experiencing with email and comment spam …

Hey! It’s time to take the internet back!!!

If there’s a problem with the polls, please let me know. The ones you’ve voted on will remember you, and those that you’ve missed should allow you to vote.

Please let me know if it works right, since I won’t be able to tell without your input!

Thankee!

A few of the “bells and whistles” that I’m using are not plugins, however.

The music player (the little blue arrow next to my music file titles) is a Del.icio.us script. It works really well, and is browser/OS non-specific. Clicking on the arrow (instead of the song title) immediately begins to play the song. No one needs to download or have any music players for it to work. All I needed to do to use it is put the following piece of code in the header.php file:

< script type="text/javascript" src="http://del.icio.us/js/playtagger">< /script>

It has to be placed just before the < /header> closing tag. You would need to remove the spaces to make the script work.

The Archives dropdown box feature is also not a plugin. Here’s how I did that:

< li>< h2>< ?php _e('Archives'); ?>< /h2>

< form id="archiveform" action="">
< select name="archive_chrono" onchange="window.location =
(document.forms.archiveform.archive_chrono
[document.forms.archiveform.archive_chrono.selectedIndex].value);">
< option value=''>Select Month
< ?php get_archives('monthly','','option'); ?>
< /select>
< /form>
< /li>

Please note that I’ve added a space in front of each command so that it would not be interpreted by the parser instead of printed to the screen, and I added a new line between “chrono” and “[document.forms.” in order to fit it all onto the screen. You would paste that bit into your sidebar, wherever you’d like the box to appear. For more information on how to further customize your Archives, see the following Word Press help files: get_archives and wp_get_archives.

And now, for my plugins:

Inserts a quicktag toolbar on the blog comment form. By Owen Winkler.

Active – The HTML buttons above the comment text entry field. Can’t do without them.

AJAX-ified tagboard. Derived from the “Jalenack’s Wordspew” plugin by Andrew Sutherland (http://blog.jalenack.com). This version has been modified to use the Wordpress comment systems to store the messages, in order to allow the normal spam prevention measures you use to automatically apply to your tagboard as well. By Jared Bangs.

Active – Nice shout box, but I need to get the Quick Tag Buttons off from it. Also available as a Widget.

This plugin will add a list of the most frequent comments posted to your blog. They are gathered in descending order (newest at the top), but then group them together by post title, so that comments from the same post are listed together. The list items will be links to the comments, and will contain the name of the commenter. Derived from the “Top/Recent Commenters” plugin by Scott Reilly (http://www.coffee2code.com/wp-plugins/) By Jared Bangs.

Active – most configurable of those I tried. Also available as a Widget.

Replacement function for getting fancy archives that use javascript for collapsable year links By Andrew Rader.

Not Active – I really liked this one, but some of the other plugins interfere with it, and I wasn’t able to make it work consistently.

View your website activity in real time. By Sean Hickey.

Active – This plugin rocks! ‘Nuf said!

Activate to supply users with a live comment preview. Use the function < ?php live_preview() ?> to display the live preview in a different location. By Jeff Minard & Iacovos Constantinou.

Active – This shows what your comment is going to look like in real time underneath the comment entry box. I always hate publishing a comment on someone else’s blog if I can’t see what it’s going to look like ahead of time – I make too darn many typos! ;o)

Adds A Poll Feature To WordPress By GaMerZ.

Active – Nice little poll program, simple to use … well integrated into Word Press. Also available as a Widget.

Simple script for choosing a random header image By Patrick David.

Not Active – This is not what I was using with my last theme. That one had a random header built into the theme itself, using a Kubrick Default Theme base. I may try this one out for changing my little moofs in the top right of the blog.

Ultimate Spam Killer for WordPress. Activate the plugin and go to Manage >> Spam Karma 2 to configure. See Spam Karma 2 >> About for details. By dr Dave.

Active – This is, hands down, the best comment spam plugin I’ve ever seen. If I could find something by this fellow for my emails, I’d get it in a heart beat. I haven’t had to think of my comment spam since I put this in. Somehow, it’s managed to sort the real comments from the spam consistently from day one. Once a day or so, it sends me an email with a link to the control page – letting me know how many spams it’s caught, and I log in and make sure they’re really spam before getting rid of them. Absolutely amazing.

Automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites. By Peter Harkins.

Active – This is the one that puts those cute little buttons in between the post and comments. I first saw them used on Light Along the Journey … Dr. Hollandsworth was kind enough to tell me which plugin he was using. Personally, I use Shadows and Del.icio.us for my social bookmarking, and this makes it quite handy.

Adds A Useronline Feature To WordPress By GaMerZ.

Not Active – Haven’t tried this one out yet. Not sure I want to, since the same feature is available through some of the external tracking sites I link to. We’ll see. Also available as a Widget.

On-demand backup of your WordPress database. By Scott Merrill.

Active – Default Word Press Plugin. Much nicer than the usual way of backing up your SQL database!

This plugin allows you to embed random quotes into your pages. It also has a spiffy management tool in the administrative console. By Dustin Barnes.

Active – But not in use … yet. Haven’t decided quite what to do with it. I had humorous comments in the sidebar of my last public blog, and rather more serious comments in the header of my Emanon’s Journey blog. I may or may not use these again. They are very intuitive, easy to use, configurable, and well integrated into Word Press.

Displays a dropdown list of links for every link category. By Corrado “Zelig”.

Not Active – Worked exactly as described, but I decided that I prefer to have my links openly available for perusal. If you want your blogroll tucked away, this is a great plugin.

Displays the categories in the sidebar as a simple dropdown list (select box) with the option to exclude some categories from the list. By Corrado “Zelig”.

Active – Excellent little plugin! Works as promised. Fairly configurable. I’m quite happy with it. My only wish would be to limit the width of the box.