It’s great tool when writing e-mails. Basically I wrote it because I was fed up with typing “copmuter” again and again. If you find this (or other typos) in your own e-mails, check out my auto-correction software.

I’m talking about being a customer for a  change. I tried to check out AISIP’s member forums and one has to pay for that. Okay, I tried. I filled in the reg.net order form, hit the submit button only to see the same form again. I double-checked my data, I looked for marks that I forget something. Nothing. Same form again. I triple-checked my data, tried another browser, another computer. Even my iPhone. Nothing worked. I contacted AISIP (three times). No reply. I contacted reg.net and got a standard mail. My reply to that mail was left unanswered.

So I want to pay, but I can’t. It’s frustrating.

Hope you’re treating your customers better than that. I know that I do, but I wonder if I should test *my* payment processor…

You should of course correct this with an imaging application. And to make this easier I made a collection of the usual wizard buttons to copy/paste in

• English, German and Spanish
• Enabled, Disabled, Highlighted
• NT, XP, Win7 Style

Feel free to use them.

Download WizardButtons_Devblog.png (33k)

It was a lot easier than expected. Very many Hotels and B&Bs have WiFi nowadays – a lot more than in Ireland two years ago. So it was easy to go online with my laptop. Except for the B&B that had WEP2, which my (old) laptop doesn’t support.

Just for the heck of it, I also wanted to have internet access with my cell phone – that however was quite difficult.

The mobile company “Three” seemed to offer good rates for prepaid connections. I had researched that before. However, they don’t sell them at the store. The vendor guy send us to the O2 store next door.

Okay, O2 *does* sell them. But they are terribly complicated. I purchased a SIM card for 10 GBP here (without having to register it to my name, surprisingly). But the internet access didn’t work. I had to activate it with a scratch card. Then (as I found out with my laptop and WiFi next day) I had to book a “bolt-on” with a special SMS (“web” to 21300) and wait almost 48 hours as O2 took its sweet time processing it. Then (with another internet research) I had to correct the APN (payandgo.o2.co.uk / vertigo / password) which the SIM provides wrong by default. And then it finally worked. However, I’m only allowed to use it on my cell phone, now with the laptop…

Now I only have to remember to cancel the “bolt-on” (SMS “web off” to 21300) before I return home….

For a smooth transition two things are vital:

1. You *need* an second domain. One that points to the same data, but won’t hurt you if it’s down for a few days.
2. You *need* a web provider that allows you to configure things as soon as you initiated the transfer.

With the help of the second domain you can test the transfer without haste, because customers won’t notice. Set up the new server and take your time to test everything. Keep in mind that scripts may behave differently, because of:

• Different software versions (of Perl, PHP, MySql, etc.)
• Different settings for sending automated mails
• Different handling for protected directories
• Different handling of write-access for temporary local files for scripts

Don’t forget to test subdomains and invisible features (like automated updates for your customers). If everything’s working, make some preparations against problems

• Set up a hint on your contact page that there may be temporary problems
• Check the e-mail on your website. If possible change it to an address on some other server (or to the second to domain) to make sure it’s always accessible.
• Create a hidden page that only exists on the new server. This allows you to check if the transfer was done.

If you’re ready start the transfer. Immediately start configuring your new hosting account and set up the domain’s root folder and create the required e-mail addresses.
Okay, time to relax, wait and check the site every now and then. However, then transfer times for domains can very a lot, for example:

• Some TLDs transfer much faster than others (e.g. .de is faster than .com)
• If you start transferring multiple domains at the same time, they may arrive quite differently (many hours in fact)
• Different nameservers update at different times. Maybe the domain isn’t transferred for you – but for your customers it already is.

I hope this helps you a bit to get a smooth transition to your new server.

A deeper look however showed that the website placed the usual affiliate cookie not just on the pages displaying my software, but on all. Each and every page that I visited (it’s a big site), had the cookie-setting-code. And not just for me, but for a number of other software vendors, too. The cookies expire in half a year.

In other words: Every person that visits any page of that website, would bring the website owner a provision if the visitor should decide to buy any software from any of the listed vendors within the next 6 month.

Previously I had thought, because of the sales, that this was my best affiliate. Now however, I have my doubts how many sales he *really* generated and for how many he just got the money.

Is this okay?

I don’t think so. Is this a violation of the terms or even illegal behavior? Well, so far Share-it (who handles the affiliate system) says that this okay and that I’m free to terminate my cooperation with the affiliate.

I’m no expert (even though I’m probably involuntarily on the road to become one, sigh) on this topics but on this seems similar to Cookie-Stuffing, so I won’t give up so easily on this and post updates on this.

But untill then, if you have an affiliate program, you should check your affiliates’ websites, especially those that you think are your best ones.

A signed installer name “test_demo.exe” will generate a red warning. If you rename it to “test_trial.exe”, you’ll only get a yellow warning. Don’t ask me why, I got no idea (please contact me if YOU have). But I don’t call my demo “demo” any more…

If you’re lazy (just like me, I admit it), automate that with a tiny piece of PHP:

Copyright &copy; 2003-<?php print date("Y")?>

To make sure you’re always “alive and kicking”…

The nofollow attribute was introduced by Google to cope with the problem of spam links, for example comment spam in blogs. Links in comments should be marked as nofollow, thus won’t count for Google’s rating and thus would be worthless for the spammer.  That was the idea.

But it might backfire for Google. Nowadays you can find the nofollow attribute not only in blog comments, but also social networks, forum postings and in Wikipedia articles. (It’s ironic: With Web 2.0 finally everybody could have his say – Too bad that it doesn’t count any more.) And with the spammers focusing on the sites that don’t use nofollow yet, these sites are likely to use it, too, soon.

So what’s the consequence?

By effectively abolishing the opinions of the small users only the website owners and journalists remain. Most website owners have their very own ideas about links: Their own products & services. And considering the journalists an interesting trend has evolved: Whenever they want to spice up their text with a few links for credibility, they link to Wikipedia. That’s easy and safe because they don’t have to check their sources for spam, fraud, etc.

The result?

Less diversity and less competition probably. The big fishes in the pond are bound to be the winners under these conditions. And Google is going to loose, too, because they’re missing the small, upcoming sites and trends. And just linking to Wikipedia instead.