An EdwardRingwald.com Special Report

12/25/07

Many of you are wondering where the recent Naples or Ft. Lauderdale trips were on my website.  Well, here's an explanation of why EdwardRingwald.com was offline for a week.

It all began on Friday, 5 August 2005, just right after I published my Ft. Lauderdale 4th of July trip pages onto my website.  While I was examining my newly published pages for errors, I found a minor publishing error on the 4th page of the Ft. Lauderdale trip.

How do I publish my web pages?

Until just after Memorial Day in May 2005, I traditionally published my pages using a method called File Transfer Protocol (FTP).  Since then I began publishing my pages (like the page you are seeing now) in a web authoring program published by Microsoft.  The program is called Microsoft FrontPage 2003.  As the software is a little pricey, I thought I would make the most use of my money by utilizing practically all features that FrontPage has to offer.

Earlier this year after I moved my nephew's web site, DaleSheltonRacing.com, to its new hosting home at Go Daddy, I purchased an upgrade to the FrontPage web publishing software for use on my trusty HP laptop.  Just after installing the software I revamped the site from a plain text look to a more robust professionally crafted web site.  Since it was so good, I went ahead and revamped Interstate275Florida.com and gave it an excellent makeover.  Then over the Memorial Day weekend on a trip to Naples I revamped the EdwardRingwald.com site, which is the site you are now viewing.

All the web pages are published over a high speed Internet connection at an available Wi-Fi Internet Access location, which includes places such as hotels (a better improvement than dial-up!) as well as the nearest Starbucks or FedEx Kinko's, dependent on availability.  Having these alliances wherever I go helps out in getting new or revised pages out there on the net.

Publishing the Ft. Lauderdale trip pages:  5 August 2005

Shortly after I published the Ft. Lauderdale 4th of July trip pages onto EdwardRingwald.com I checked the pages extensively to see that the elements I wanted published were indeed published.  Then, later that afternoon, I looked at my Ft. Lauderdale trip pages and I noticed a discrepancy with Page 4 of the trip:  Missing left and bottom link bars.

So, I contacted my web hosting provider, Half Price Hosting, and initiated a trouble ticket detailing what had happened.  Then I was told that my FrontPage server extensions (these are the parts of FrontPage that exist on a web server that enables you to publish a web site using FrontPage as opposed to FTP; if you wanted to take advantage of special features found in FrontPage you have to publish in FrontPage and not FTP) had to be reinstalled.  Right after this was done I republished the page in question to my web site.

Then, more problems were on the horizon:  After I published the problematic page I went to check to see if the problem was resolved after a reinstall of the FrontPage server extensions.  Not only was the Ft. Lauderdale trip page was bad, the whole EdwardRingwald.com website was bad.  So, another trouble ticket via the technical support system to Half Price Hosting explaining what was going on.  The response?  Republish the entire site.

So, off to republish the entire EdwardRingwald.com site using FrontPage.  After plenty of republishing sessions which consumed my entire Saturday afternoon on 6 August 2005, I was getting no results.  All of the EdwardRingwald.com web pages after each republish attempt in FrontPage looked bad, so bad that I ended up taking EdwardRingwald.com offline.  Bad news.

EdwardRingwald.com - offline!

Now that EdwardRingwald.com was offline, I was carefully pursuing my options.  I know that each republish attempt would prove futile, and that if I contacted Half Price Hosting all they would do is to reinstall the FrontPage server extensions.  By Sunday evening (7 August 2005) I made a decision after carefully weighing all the other alternatives, and it was decided that I move my hosting services for EdwardRingwald.com as well as Interstate275Florida.com to Go Daddy.

But everything had to be done as quick as possible as EdwardRingwald.com was offline.  That meant no Naples or Ft. Lauderdale trip photos, no Edward Ringwald Surplus Corner - practically no anything other than the website offline page.  First was getting the web hosting at Go Daddy set up, all without any hassle.  Next, the domain name of EdwardRingwald.com had to be transferred from Half Price Hosting (which was through Network Solutions) to Go Daddy and setting it up so that EdwardRingwald.com points to my newly purchased web space at Go Daddy.  While waiting for the transfer of EdwardRingwald.com to Go Daddy taking place I uploaded the Interstate275Florida.com content to Go Daddy as well, as I transferred the Interstate275Florida.com domain name earlier.

Back onto the World Wide Web

Finally, I was able to get EdwardRingwald.com transferred to Go Daddy and the domain name servers set up so that it points to (or resolves to, in Internet-speak) the new web space home at Go Daddy.  Then, the email accounts had to me re-created so that the online comment forms would work.  After some offline testing then EdwardRingwald.com was republished - this time, to Go Daddy rather than Half Price Hosting.  Once this happened EdwardRingwald.com was back online!  And, the home page along with the other pages and photos are back!

Epilogue

Since 2000 when I took an Introduction to the Internet class at Hillsborough Community College (which I unfortunately had to withdraw due to the passing of my mother in March 2000), I learned of the name Half Price Hosting as the prices were attractive.  EdwardRingwald.com went online with Half Price Hosting in August 2000 after a stint on the student servers at HCC.  Since then EdwardRingwald.com evolved into three different websites, such as EdwardRingwald.com (the site you are seeing now), Interstate275Florida.com and my nephew's racing site, DaleSheltonRacing.com.

Until recently I have had a professional business relationship with Half Price Hosting.  The events that transpired leading to EdwardRingwald.com being offline for over a week have seriously placed this business relationship in doubt.  Making a decision of this nature is hard especially when you have a website that you built and call your baby and decisions like this are not taken very lightly.

Go Daddy was chosen to replace my web hosting provider for many reasons:  1) Its easy to use website maintenance interface which allows me to manage not only EdwardRingwald.com but Interstate275Florida.com and DaleSheltonRacing.com from an easy to use console; 2) its easy to use email administration interface plus anti-Spam controls, 3) more affordable pricing which helps me budget my expenses for web services, 4) very responsive technical support staff which can respond to most inquiries via email in a few hours, and 5) an easy to use domain management tool of which I can make any needed updates more promptly than having to send a trouble ticket and wait for a response.  In other words, Go Daddy's user interfaces are more easier and versatile to use.

Interested in sharing your thoughts regarding the recent EdwardRingwald.com website outage?  Please feel free to share your thoughts in my online guestbook!