Website down coz Bluehost is moving Data Center

Oh, oh… Looks like all my websites hosted on Bluehost is down. Bluehost is moving their servers to a brand new data center complete with advanced temperature control, custom server racks and dozens of improvements that suppose to provide customers like me with better quality.

Unfortunately it also means they have to take down my web hosting account while moving the web servers physically from one location to another. Due to the time zone difference, I was not sure when my web sites will be down although they said they were shifting to the new data center between 9 PM, March 27th and 5 AM March 28th (MDT). I didn't have time zone checker so to convert the time to my local time.

Fortunately, my subdomains are latched on to various services like Blogger and Tumblr etc. So I can still blog somewhere. Other than that, my main site is down.

Anyway, all my web sites are down for now. So I can't do much tweaking or hacking on my main site for now. I was trying to test out the random text using either the PHP script or CGI Perl script for SSI.

I hope the IP for my website still remain the same, I think something might break along the way. Hopefully not too serious that I cannot fix.

Oh, well, take break and have a Kit-Kat I suppose… J

Streamyx kinda slow today

I wonder if Streamyx/TMnet is back to its old tricks again. I find the broadband speed today to be rather laggy and slow. I tried to reset the router modem. Also checked whether my colleague was surfing any YouTube sites, but there weren't any heavy downloading. So the main culprit is Streamyx is slow today!

The school holidays week is underway and as usual there would be a lot of kids surfing the internet downloading stuffs or watching movies online. But that should be no cause for TMnet/Streamyx to do their ungly thing and slow down everybody! I thought that period was passé when competitors like P1 Wimax with their "cut the line" slogan and recently the YTL YES Wimax broadband should shake up Streamyx into improving it services.

Perhaps Streamyx want to make more money by selling their more expensive UNIFI broadband service and give the slower bandwidth guys like us a hard time!

Bah! In terms of speed per payment, Malaysia is still lagging behind many other countries. We should be getting faster bandwidth speed for the amount we are paying! I guess the get rich quick mentality is still alive and kicking in Malaysia. So much for Malaysia Boleh…!

Facebook wants to start email?

This is intriguing. And apparently their target is Google Gmail coz they name their project Gmail killer. I might just give Facebook email a try once they launch it, but don't bet on anything just yet. Being long supporter of Gmail, I found Gmail has many feature not even Yahoo mail nor Microsoft Hotmail could offer. Will just to wait and when FB launches the email system on Monday.

[update 14/1/2013]
Just a quick update on this quick post which I happened to bump into. I've already got my facebook mail, but it was not all as hot as it should be. It just provided an alternate way to message your friends. Instead of having to log into Facebook, you could just email to your friends Facebook email account and it would pop up in their Facebook messenger inbox list.

So it was not really an email per se, but sort of an alternative communication method to your Facebook friends. If you don't know their email address, or they didn't switch on this feature, it won't work.

I think the biggest contender to the webmail against Google Gmail would come from Microsoft newly redesigned Hotmail Outlook Live MSN webmail. Now giving this new look a spin and so far I kinda like it. So Gmail would have to work harder to maintain their webmail market share (although they recently surpass Microsoft Hotmail users). The recent Gmail re-design on the composing function was rather not so user friendly compared to their old one. Since it was an on-going process, I hope they would improve it and make more user friendly rather than just trying to make it look nice but became less functional.

Google's WebP graphic format

Looks like Google is pushing for a new graphic format for website called WebP (pronounced "weppy". /(wĕpˈē)/). It is supposed to compress a picture further with a better average of 30% reduction in size in comparison with JPEG using a lossy compression format. Since many websites employ graphics to spice up the website content as well as illustration to explain a point, having a reduced size graphic would help speed up somewhat the loading time of a website and create a better user experience. Sort of reducing the World Wide Wait for a web page or website to load up.

Would it really matter? Granted I do have many graphic plastered around my website, but that little bit of extra loading time won't really make much difference because many a times I noticed the loading lag is not due from pictures but mostly from the JavaScript that trying to load up to show what's not like advertisement, analytics, flash, and various other website codes. That little extra won't mean much in terms of overall load time of your webpage, although if you take a grand view of the entire World Wide Web then of course the grand scale would be significant, just like saving a drop of clean water usage wouldn't matter much to you as an individual but would matter a lot if you look at the consumption of a community as whole.

If you really want a website to load up double quick or triple quick even, strip everything and just leave good ol' plain text! Now we will have a really super duper fast loading website without the overheads. Perhaps we should all revert to text browser like Lynx!

In the meantime, there is no need to rush headlong to convert your current crop of JPEG photos and pictures to WebP though you could experiment with this new format on your own PC. A wait and see would be good to see whether there will be a wider adoption of this new graphic format. You will need support from all the current browsers or your website would not be usable to everybody.

Personal Blogs with Posterous

With Vox closing down its service, it gave some suggestion where you could set up free personal blog and one mention was Posterous.com. Curious I gave it a spin and found intriguing feature.

The personal blog concept from Posterous is slightly different from other free blog sites like typepad, blogger, xanga, livejournal, wordpress, etc. Their idea was that many of us are not always behind the desktop PC and might be on the go, so they espouse the idea of posting your personal blog via email. It gives a common email address that user of posterous uses. The idea was so that you don't have a funny secret individual nonsensical email address to remember when you make a post. The catch however, your post must be from the email address that you signed up with.

Anyway one nice feature is that I could A record my subdomain to it (and yet again! Haha) and thus making my ever burgeoning website bigger! Of course you could just set up a domain solely for it too if you prefer.

And another nice feature from Posterous is the ability to repost to other sites like Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, Drupal, Blogger, Flickr, etc. However it can't pull post though.

Will be trying Posterous for personal blogs out for awhile and see how it goes. 

Verifying RSS Feed for Digg

Looks like Kevin Rose has added some new features to Digg.com. Digg is now able to pull in RSS feed but of course they want to make sure the RSS feed URL is yours and not anyone's else so this requires verification. In order to verify, I have to paste the verify code and make a post. So this will have to be it!

And once the feed is verified by Digg I should be able to see my post show in my Digg account.

To view some of my diggs, visit digg.com/janleow

I think this should do it!
bda00d0bab944b8093d05b44ff83c952

Bluehost down time again?

Now this is getting to be to frequent. I'm getting very sporadic website uptime. Something better be done about bluehost down time. Or they might just find I will be one of the many disgruntled user who may just consider migrating to another web hosting company.

Bluehost is down due to power outage

OMG! This is the worst case experience I have with the Bluehost webhosting service I had for years. It is probably unfortunate that Utah in USA had a power blackout. My main website domain has been down for several hours already. Fortunately my website setup is rather complicated as apart from my usual blogging on Wordpress I also setup blogging using Google's Blogger as well as other website like Yola, Bravenet, Google Site, Tumblr for experimentation. So some section of my website is still functioning. Strangely I don't know why the DNS was affected causing my other addon domain in IPserverone to go down as well. Which means all my forwarding email from that server would have ground to a halt!

It's been several hours already and my website on Bluehost is still down. Guess it is going to take longer before getting restored. I found out about Bluehost status from Twitter, so looks like Twitter is quite a good source of quick information. Much faster than news release to be search on Search Engines.

Finally Bluehost also made some announcement in their helpdesk website:

helpdesk.bluehost.com

The Bluehost Helpdesk is currently unavailable and will be back soon.

There is a complete power outage effecting one of the Bluehost data centers, expected ETA is roughly 1:00 AM Mountain Standard Time.

Provo Power has requested that we shut down power while the transformer is being replaced. They are allowing us to use UPS power for the phone system. The other data center is unaffected by this outage.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Bluehost should consider setting up some kind of UPS as backup plan. Likewise in Malaysia where we often experience power blackout every once in awhile especially on a hot day where all the air-conditioner would be powered on at full blast, that put quite a strain on the power producers and usually very likely result in a power outage.

For mission critical task and services, a UPS power backup is a must. Hopefully Bluehost should consider implementing such UPS power backup as part of their overall webhosting strategy rather than letting their users in a lurch when such power outages happen.

Looks like I can't do anything to my main blog as well as several of my other website hosted on Bluehost including access to my cpanel control panel till the power outage is resolved in Utah.

[update]
Yes! My site is up and running again! Took a long while, the twitter updates from Bluehost says it is booting up their servers one by one and about 90% is onstream. Soon shall be 100%.

Pivot Blog

One thing about script list in the webhosting software section, they have a list of interesting software for content management, blogs, forums, online calendars, and other interesting software. Some of which you never think about searching online for it. So I happen to bump into this Pivot blogging software that don't even use SQL database management! Intriguing. Will install it and have a look see. Of course my ultimate blogging script is still Wordpress, but there are a lot of CMS cum blogging script software out there to experiment with.

In case you choose something not so well known, do note that some project actually died! So don't choose a less well known project for your main or major blog website. Because when it loses support, you won't get the needed updates especially to clog up any vulnerabilities against pesky hackers attempting to break into your website and deface your contents!

Making website

I guess for newbie when making website may be difficult to grasp certain concept. But if got soem guidance better than none. I may not be expert but having maintain one for 5 years and several others for many years there is indeed a lot of things to learn. Mind you, you can't just learn them overnight. It takes time to understand why some ways are better than others.

The most basic concept that I learned was from the SBI system. Using the long time tested C-P-T-M idea it has nevered failed and works just as well on a non-SBI hosted website. Although it may missed some amout of automation process I still get interesting results.

So learn the SBI system for making website. It sure works and gets good returns!

Make website to scout for business

Can't be denied. Make website for yourself is good in that it helps you to secure new inquiries. Then after that it is entirely up to you to follow through to secure the business. If your company is not keen to make a website, it is to their detriment. So what can you do? Of course company policy is to be followed but that's on their side. There is nothing saying that you can't make your own website for your own self promoting your personal services to sell company's product.

Make a website for your own personal career success. If the company you work for are run by timid managers who are afraid of this and that, better look for another dynamic company unless you find the work is relaxing or no other place to go. Or else think out of the box make your own website to promote your products and service indirectly selling your company products. I think it should work too.

Using blogger layout

Using blogger layout system is a little bit more difficult but it has added features the old template style do not have.

I finally came around to switch my CH website blog to the new layout system and it took me the better part of a day to get the look and feel similar to the previous template.

I could try making it 99% similar looking it would take too much work. I guess an 80% similarity is good enough. The color theme still matches as per the nav menu. I opt for a wider right side bar after all quick blogs tend to be short so a narrow body might be better suited. Besides it is using a fluid width template so it doesn't matter if my right takes up more space.

The Blogger new layout is a little tougher to get working but I was able to do it much faster than before by using this go blog layout template and modify from here. Just a matter of changing colours and alignment adjustment and there you have it!

Always updating stuffs

I'm always updating stuffs on my website. Sometimes it is just minor, like correcting a little typo here and there for those more important articles and pages. And other times to create meaningful links between related post so that visitors to your website might want to read further after landing onto one of your pages. Seems like a never ending job. But that's how it goes if you want to make website that is useful and the best perhaps even rival against your competitor for the coveted top spot in SERP.

Just like now I'm thinking how to use Google Blogger new layout, so how do I port over the old tabled web page design to the CSS tableless template? This might require some thinking about, and there may be some layout that may not fit. But as long as the general look and feel is there, I should be able to cobble up a web page template that should look similar to the previous one.

If I managed it, my SBI site would probably start using the tableless CSS template too. But I probably be unlikely to update my 250+ pages one by one like I did previously. Just way too much work!

And why should I port over? To take advantage of Blogger's new features not available in the older HTML template style. And ya, it may be a pain to code XML style, but it would certainly be worth it to gain the additional features!

Domain Expired

Oh, dear! Bluehost sent an email saying my domain would be renewed for free by giving me a free coupon. But I noticed they didn't renew my domain at all it is already 1 day pass expiration date. Bluehost support couldn't do anything and said I should check with the billing department. Since it was Sunday I will have to wait till Monday for a reply. No choice but to send in a ticket and hope they will set the correct expiry date. I think any moment now my website will be down. Let's hope they can do it on time!

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[update 21/6/2010]
Thank goodness! Bluehost managed to resolve this issue quickly! My domain was not down at all. Bluehost is not too bad when it comes to customer service.

Bluehost prices has been increasing lately. Probably cost has increased. For example if you take a yearly web hosting service, it is now $8.95/mo, up from previous $7.95/mo. And if you want to take up their $6.95/mo offer, it used to be for a 2-years period, now it is 3-years. Well, since I'm going to be with them for a long while, I went for the 3-years webhosting and save some money.

And they use to give whois privacy for free, now it is chargeable, just like godaddy, exabytes, etc. Oh, well, this service is nice, but not necessary. Just use a stonger anti-spam for that public email.

209.126.254.214 hacking attempt

209.126.254.214 is trying to hack into my Wordpress website. Well whoever it is, ain't getting in! I seem to be getting lots of these hacks lately. What do they hope to get from hacking in? Besides my website is not a very high ranking, heavily trafficked website. This abuser seems to be hacking a lot of site based on a quick search on that IP address. Also noted in a blacklist site, this IP was sending spam, phishing emails and virus emails. There is no website hosted on this IP 209.126.254.214, so may as well blacklist this IP

Fixed my index page

Since I have done up the template for my wordpress and blogger it was time to fix my website index page. My website is not the usual pure CMS based design. When I first started out I was going at it page by page using a website building software and uploading the html file one by one. It was a slow tedious process till I found out about CMS software. I was still a newbie then and I experimented with several CMS software like Joomla, Drupal, Xoop, etc till I happen on to Wordpress.

But I still wasn't sure which CMS software to use thus I still had a stand alone index page. Initially all my various sections looked different but I wanted the same look and feel across board. Not easy to do and it was a learning experience. I have to learn new codes and such but I enjoyed it. Although I can't say I fully understand most of it but I do know enough to cobble the programming codes together.

So there you have it. My newly revised index page for my personal homepages website. It is simple and clean. Basic but nice and does its job.

Wordpress installation

I wonder what my friend did to his wordpress installation that left it ended up with just a blank display. Can't do anything now as I'm away from my PC. I wonder what he did. Could be a faulty wordpress plugin. Unlikely to be htaccess file misconfiguration. With so many wordpress plugin this could be the fault too.

---

Finally found out why his Wordpress page disappeared. Nope it wasn't my fault! My Wordpress installation was fine. I found out that one of the plugins was causing havoc to Wordpress. It was just a simple matter of trial and error by activating and deactivating each plugin to find out who was the culprit. Turn out to be one of the three the Photoshelter plugins. Switching it off and the Wordpress homepage reappeared. No problemo. Just don't use that plugin, darling.

Wordpress installation

Wordpress installation is one of the easiest to do. But it can a little tedious sometimes. So what I usually do is to use the provided installed scripts by th webhosting company. For Bluehost they have Fantastico and Simple Scripts of which the latter is far more superior. For Exabytes which uses the same cPanel interface only provides Fantastico. While IPServerOne which is quite a nice budget webhosting provides the Installaron auto installs.

Of course when choosing a web hosting do try to find one which has auto install scripts. Those scripts sometimes provide interesting software that you would otherwise not be aware of. Like say a forum software instead of using the overly popular phpBB which by the way has a lot of security issues and poor spam buster you might discover other little gems like BBpress and PunBB.

Anyway I needed to reinstall a Wordpress installation for a friend and using the Installaron software provided by IPserverOne makes for a speedy Wordpress installation. Configuration took a little longer but that's a different issue altogether.

Blogger layout finally working!

Finally managed to get the Blogger layout to work! This was really tough as it uses very strict XHTML convention. Any XML tags that were not closed will elicit a cryptic error message.

I had place in the XML code section by section to find out the errors and fix them. XHTML is very unforgiving unlike HTML.

My blogger template still have some minor layout issues which I can't figure out. But otherwise the overall look and feel is generally ok.

I will leave it alone for now and have a mini celebration for a working blogger layout template!

Google buzz and other social timelines

Ryan commented that my google buzz has multiples ofthe same post but slightly different form. My guess is that it is pulling the status post and blogs from various output and feeds from my other website apps and rss feeds. Since my contacts aren't into google buzz I guess I don't have to care much about sorting it. My main concern is more on my main social websites like facebook where I need to avoid double posting. As for twitter, well frankly with its short microblogs it shouldn't be too much of an issue for double post, but I try to keep it to a minimum.