Help! My site is down!

November 29, 2010 By

Has this website downtime scenario happened to you?

You swing by your own website, and your browser seems to be taking forever to connect. With a growing sense of horror, you begin to contemplate the possibility that something is wrong. Moments later, you get a timeout error message saying that the site “timed out” or “took too long to respond.”

Timeout error? Let’s not panic…yet

There are several causes for a timeout error, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve been hit by website downtime. Plus, many of them are easily fixable. Try these basic tips before calling your web host in a panic:

  1. Try another site. Can you type in google.com or apple.com or any other site? If you can’t access any sites, the problem is likely your own internet connection, and not something specific to your site. If other sites work and yours doesn’t, keep reading.
  2. See if it really is just you. DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com lets you type in any URL and see if it’s “just you” or if the site is “really down.” This has saved me from several panic attacks, because if it’s just me, I know that others can still see my site. If it’s really down, it’s time to check with your web host. If not, try a few more tricks:
  3. Toss your cookies. I’m not speaking metaphorically of panic-induced fit of vomiting, but rather of removing the little bits of code that various sites leave in your browser. They are often helpful, but sometimes pesky. Here’s a complete list of how to clear cookies in any browser.
  4. Clear your cache. Your browser stores copies of recently accessed pages so they will load quicker. Again, usually a helpful thing, but occasionally causes problems. Here’s how to clear your cache in any browser.
  5. Restart your browser. Sometimes (depending on your settings) this will auto-clear your cache, history, and cookies.
  6. Have a backup browser. It would sure be nice if all browsers were equal…but they aren’t. Sometimes one displays things weirdly or gets buggy.
  7. Try a different device. If there’s another computer (or a smartphone or an iPad or whatever) handy, see if you can connect using it. You could call a friend and ask if they can connect, but that’s essentially just a one-data-point version of #2.
  8. Reboot and try again. Sometimes the simple things really do work. You might also restart your router (if you’re on a home network, say) and see if that has any effect.
  9. Check with your robot spy corps. Pingdom is a website downtime monitoring service based in Sweden. You can sign up for a free account that includes one “check” (that means testing one website in one specific way, like via HTTP). You’ll automatically get an email when your site is down longer than a time you specify (you can get SMS messages, too, but I don’t use this option — the free account only comes with 20 SMS notifications per month, but unlimited email notifications). I have Pingdom check my site every minute (yes, no kidding, and it’s still free). It doesn’t *fix* website downtime or timeout errors, but knowing what’s going on helps enormously (plus I can accurately report facts to DreamHost if I need to). I just ignore the gentle pressure to upgrade to a paid account.

Pingdom's website uptime percentage graph

Same data expressed as website downtime in minutes

Now, if you need to contact your web host, you’ll be armed with specific information about your timeout error, and you won’t have to waste time trying the basics because you’ve already tried them.

Also, note that if your site is showing something different from a timeout error, like “500 Internal Server Error,” that’s an indication that the problem isn’t on your end (your browser, your computer, or your internet connection). That’s a signal to check with your hosting company.

Here’s hoping that your website downtime is both rare and short!

Filed Under: General How-To's Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Why it’s OK to get naked on the internet

June 24, 2009 By

Here’s one from the mailbag:

What’s the deal with the “www” in a web address? Sometimes I see a link that looks like http://www.wendycholbi.com/ and other times I see links that look like http://wendycholbi.com/. What’s the difference? Are these always the same thing? Why do some sites include it and some leave it out? Can I leave out the w’s when I’m typing a web address?

OK, great topic! Let’s start by breaking this this nebulous area of confusion down into some specific questions:

What does the “www” mean?

The simple answer is that it stands for “world wide web.” In the Internet’s olden days, “Web” wasn’t synonymous with “Internet” (technically, it still isn’t, but these days the terms are used so interchangeably that it would be futile to protest). There were other ways of using the Internet: Email, file transfer (FTP), usenet, and more. So the “www” simply meant that the address pointed to a website and not some other type of Internet resource.

What do you call the “www” part of a web address?

A domain name comes in the form yourdomain.com (or yourdomain.org, or yourdomain.name, or many other variations). WendyCholbi.com and ebay.com are both domain names, for instance.

Anything before the domain name, separated with a dot, is called a subdomain. So the “www” in www.WendyCholbi.com is a subdomain. The “tickets” in tickets.ebay.com is a subdomain. If you have a blog on Blogger.com and you have an address like yourdomain.blogspot.com, the “yourdomain” part is a subdomain.

A domain name without any subdomains is called a naked domain (ooh, racy, am I right?)

Those of you using Blogger may be interested to know that the prudes folks who run Blogger won’t let you use a naked domain to host your blog. Yes, you can use your own domain name, but it has to be non-naked (it must have a subdomain, whether it’s “www” or something else). This leads to a complication when using your own domain name with Blogger: You have to figure out a way to point the naked domain to your “www” subdomain. The easiest way to do this is to forward the naked domain to the “www” subdomain (here are instructions for doing it with a GoDaddy account).

Why do some sites have a “www” and some leave it out?

Now that we’ve left the olden days behind, the vast majority of URLs do point to websites, whether or not they contain a “www.” That subdomain became ubiquitous and therefore nearly meaningless. Although “www” is still probably the most common subdomain, and many websites still use it, it’s becoming more and more common to just drop it entirely.

Yes, that’s right: More and more website owners are getting naked with their domain names. Rowr!

So it’s merely a choice made by the site owner, whether to use the “www” subdomain or get naked.

Are “www.yourdomain.com” and “yourdomain.com” always the same thing? Can I safely leave out the www when typing a web address?

I would love to give you a simple answer to this question, but because it’s up to the individual website owner whether to include “www” or not, different websites are going to act differently. Usually, the www-containing version and the naked version of a domain point to the same page, but sometimes they don’t.

The simplest rule of thumb I can give is that if a naked version of the domain doesn’t work, just try typing “www” before the naked domain and that should probably work.

Bonus question that wasn’t asked, but I’ll answer it anyway: If I’m a website owner, should I use “www” or not?

Definitely go naked!

Let me clarify:

  • As a site owner, you should always make sure that people can get to your site whether they type the “www” or not. This means pointing the “www” subdomain and your naked domain to the same place. Most web hosts have a setting that lets you do this with a few clicks.
  • But when you mention your site (in conversation, when linking to it, in your advertising, on your business cards, etc.) just drop the w’s. They’re cumbersome to pronounce, they take up space, and the “.com” (or “.org” or whatever) is enough to identify your web address as a web address.

Whew, that’s enough nakedness for today, thankyouverymuch! Stay tuned for more questions by subscribing to the blog, and feel free to send me your own question. You might get featured here!

–Wendy Cholbi, your friendly neighborhood swim-goggle-wearing technology-to-English translator

Filed Under: General How-To's Tagged With: , , , , ,

Get Firefox

December 2, 2008 By

If you are reading this blog using Internet Explorer, this tip is for you. I urge you to go download Firefox and give it a try.

Does the browser you use really matter? Short answer: Yes. Am I getting paid to write this post? Nope, and since Firefox is completely free, there are no affiliate commissions coming my way. I’m in this strictly to give you a better experience on the web.

I’ll admit to basing some of my Firefox preference on my experience with designing and building websites. Internet Explorer is notorious for displaying web code incorrectly, meaning we HTML-heads have to write clunky code to get our pages to display the same way on different browsers.

But you don’t have to be a web geek like me to appreciate Firefox’s advantages. Here are a few:

  • The smart location bar means I almost never have to type a full web address. Typing as few as two letters pops up a list of matching addresses (from my browsing history).
  • A built-in password manager asks me if I want to remember passwords you type. I’ll never forget another password!
  • One-click bookmarking lets me not only bookmark a site, but add it to a folder and tag it with keywords so I can search and sort my ever-expanding bookmark list.
  • Smart security features automatically warn me when I’m about to (accidentally) visit a website that will do nasty things like download viruses onto my hard drive. Then I can stay away!

There are also thousands of Firefox add-ons that let you customize your toolbar, automate repetitive functions, and more — all free. Did I mention that Firefox invented the idea of tabs? If you don’t know how to use tabs, see my previous post on tabbed browsing. Your web experience just got easier.

There’s another reason I believe Firefox is a superior browser: It’s open source. To you, the user, that means it’s free software. No licensing fees, no upgrade fees, no download fees. It also means that new features (and bug fixes) will get introduced quickly, because of the vast community of volunteer software developers around the world that are testing and tweaking.

This Week’s Heart of the Matter: Be conscious about the tools you use, even your web browser. If you have your own reasons to prefer Internet Explorer, I respect that, and more power to you. But if you’ve never thought about it, or think your web experience could be improved, there’s no downside to giving Firefox a try.

Filed Under: Heart-Centered Tech Tips Tagged With: , ,

Keys to your computer’s heart

October 7, 2008 By

Do you ever get frustrated with how long it takes you to do simple tasks on your computer? Maybe you have trouble finding a tiny button to click with your mouse, or you accidentally click the wrong menu item because your cursor twitched at the last minute, or you find your laptop’s trackpad really hard to use because it’s so different from a mouse.

Incidentally, I had this latter problem for almost a year. I carried around a mouse with my laptop to support my habit, but got frustrated with finding a flat surface to mouse on. Now I’m reasonably trackpad-proficient, but I’m waiting for the day when Apple comes out with a touch-screen laptop.

Oh, sorry, was I just geeking out extremely? Back to our regularly scheduled post: Keyboard shortcuts, baby.

Learning a few simple shortcuts can ease your computing life. Last week’s tip talked about using tabs in your web browser, and the easiest way to do this is with a keyboard shortcut. And there are keyboard shortcuts for all kinds of stuff you do every day — the kind of stuff that you get annoyed at having to repeat.

Here’s an exhaustive list of keyboard shortcuts from Wikipedia. It covers both Windows and Mac (and some operating systems you’ve never heard of). Hint: Open the link in a new tab by pressing Ctrl (Windows) or ⌘(Mac) as you click, and you won’t lose your place on this page. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Are you back? Are you overwhelmed again because that list was a mile long? That’s OK, you certainly don’t have to learn all of those, and there’s no deadline. Heck, I probably know less than half of them myself. There’s always room for improvement. Take a breath. One step at a time.

I’ll share a quick list of five keyboard shortcuts I use daily:

  • ⌘-p (Ctrl-P on Windows): Print (instead of going to the File menu and choosing Print).
  • ⌘-o (Ctrl-O on Windows): Open (opens an existing document when you’ve already opened an application, like Word, Excel, or Adobe Reader).
  • ⌘-q (Ctrl-Q on Windows): Quit (quits the application instead of having to go to File and choose Quit).
  • ⌘-c (Ctrl-C on Windows): Copy. Use this shortcut to copy highlighted text and images. So you can copy a paragraph from a web page, for example. Where does the copied stuff go? Into a hidden file called the “clipboard.” It looks like nothing happened, but your stuff is there, invisible, waiting for you to use the next shortcut…
  • ⌘-v (Ctrl-v on Windows): Paste. If you’ve copied something into your clipboard, this shortcut pastes it. So after you’ve copied your paragraph from a web page, you can paste it into a Word doc. I just used this shortcut five times to paste the ⌘symbol.

This week’s heart of the matter: Grab the keys and go! If any of these look useful to you, try to use them a couple of times today (practice, practice, practice). Pick one or two shortcuts to learn, ones that you know will save you time. One or two new shortcuts each week will make a big difference. Not only in your productivity, but in your comfort level with your computer, and satisfaction with what you’re doing. And I’m all for that. How about you?

Filed Under: Heart-Centered Tech Tips Tagged With: ,
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