Saturday, January 26, 2008

Web site hitching to completion!

It's not that I've been obsessed with it, but I've been obsessed with it. If you know what I mean.

The kids are on holiday here, which makes it hard to get involved in projects which need large chunks of time. Tinkering with the website for an hour here and there has been perfect and now it's nearly done. The words are now written and I've got over my issues with images by downloading a free graphics program which does the things I was hoping to do. Now there are images in the top left corner and also across the top of the screen. They are different on each page, which adds a lot more visual interest.

The only thing I need to finish off is fixing up a link to e-mail, so that if you click it automatically brings up an e-mail screen with my address. I'm hoping this will be straightforward, but I can't actually do it just yet, because I'm not sure what my e-mail address linked to the site will be. I'd like to use my domain name, but I can't set up any addresses at the moment until my web site host gets back to me.

Pay attention now, here comes the technical bit. For me, sorting out my domain name and site location has been a two-part process. It turns out I could have done both things with one company, which would have been much more straightforward. What I did was register my domain name, let's call it www.cricketboysmum.com with a domain name registration company. All that did was reserve the name for me (dollars had to be provided). Now I have chosen a host - the company that will actually give me the space on their servers for my information - the web site - to appear (more dollars were provided).

The hitch in my case is that I now have to 'delegate' (move) my domain name from my registration company to my hosting company. It seemed straightforward, just a little electronic form to fill in with info from my hosting company. It's supposed to take 2-4 hours to work and then my host company would send me an e-mail letting me know everything was all set up and ready to go. However. I did this yesterday. 24 hours and no e-mail. And this, of course, is a holiday weekend here, so there's no point in harassing anybody, because there is nobody to harass.

Grrrr. I'm impatient now!

Coming up soon:
Will princess start school next week? At four and a half? Will the school take her? Is this wise or are we going to mess her up for life? On the other hand, will staying home for another year when she is clearly insanely ready for school mess her up even more? What about when she's 16 and her friends are 18? Why oh why can NSW not legislate more clearly on these matters so we don't screw up the life of our child?!!!
Will Cricket Boy's team ever win a match? Cricket starts again next weekend after a holiday hiatus so check in for more updates! (Caveat: soccer registration comes up in a few weeks and I suspect Cricket Boy will be more than happy to hang up his bat as soon as possible.)
Does Cricket Boy really have promise as a swimmer, as suggested by his teacher when he promoted him by two classes this week? Why, when he's actually good at something, does he hate it so much?
Why is Princess coming up the stairs and crying? Guess I'd better go and find out...

11 comments:

Chris Eldin said...

Congratulations on your web site!!! Don't let family issues derail you! Hahahahaha!

School entrance age is strictly regulated where I live. If you want your child to start earlier or later, you need to make a big case.

Tough decision...
I wanted to put Thing 1 a year ahead. He was academically ready, and also had a Jan birthday. But socially he was a chimpanzee. So I kept him with his age group, which has worked out well.

Robin S. said...

Hi,

Oh, Princess and Cricket Boy issues - these are always worrisome. The age group thing is a concern. I think it might work out better for girls than boys- but I'm not sure. The problem as they get older is the peer-pressure stuff and the concern about them being "led" by older kids whom of course, have no clue about what they're doing.

And I have such a cute pictire of Cricket Boy in my mind - maybe he just doens't like sports much? If not, no biggie, as long as he's outdoors and havig fun, in my opinion. My older daughter likes yoga, my younger one, dance. Neither of them are sporty.

And congrats on the slog-through for the website, girl. Good for you!

When it's going, can we take a look?

McKoala said...

Hi Church Lady and Robin! Oh, kids!

The frustrating thing for us is that Princess is technically of age to go to school. She would be the youngest, but that wouldn't necessarily be a problem - she's mature enough, she's ready to learn and has the social skills. Our problem is more of a derivative of other people's actions. So many people hold their children back here, and by so far, that she might find herself in a classroom with kids over 18 months older than her. This means that most people with kids with an end-of-school-year birthday, like Princess, are pretty much obliged to hold their kids back too. This gives us a problem personally with our more-than-ready child. We're going to talk to the school this week, in the hope that by chance the age-group may be slightly slanted in her favour, but I'm not all that optimistic and I'm not sending her if there is going to be a four or five-month age gap between her and the next youngest child.

Phew. Dilemmas.

Robin, Cricket Boy is, of course, a cutie. If you like scrawn and red hair. Heh heh. He's a complete soccer addict so the cricket was an attempt to get him to branch out. Not a 100% success, although the kids are nice and they have fun playing by the pitch, more fun than when they are actually playing. The swimming is another matter - he seems to be quite good, but we practically have to push him into the pool! Kids tend to keep going with swimming lessons here until they are quite old as we are surrounded by water (sea, swimming pools, rivers), so at the moment we're not doing anything different from anybody else. As he grows older and kids start to drop out it will become his choice and I suspect he will drop it, good or otherwise.

Princess, on the other hand, absolutely loves swimming and is a little fishy who can swim for hours - but not using any recognisable stroke. Still, she turns up for her lessons with a big smile and badgers the teachers to let her into the pool early and then refuses to get out at the end... So one has the ability and one has the passion, but it's not the same one!

I'll let you know when the website is up, but it may be by e-mail to keep my name off the blog.

Stuart Neville said...

Did your domain registrar offer you the option to just point the domain's nameserver settings to your host? Most will allow you to make this setting with some sort of control panel, so you'd just enter a couple of things into an online form. The nameservers would be something like:

ns1.yourfancyhostingco.com
ns2.yourfancyhostingco.com

Anything like that? That's usually pretty straightforward. Again, if you need any assistance, just give us a shout.

McKoala said...

That looks like it, Conduit, except with perplexing numbers. And it looks like it's worked now, but I'm unlikely to get the 'real' site up this week. There's a snazzy little pending page up from the host though.

Robin S. said...

McK and Conduit- you guys are making me very nervous. I have no idea what you all are talking about.

Do I have to know this stuff ot just use GoDaddy to build a website?

Stuart Neville said...

Robin S - on a serious note, don't use GoDaddy if you can possibly help it. They have some seriously dodgy practices, and at least one good friend has lost her domain to a squatter because of them.

Robin S. said...

Oh, crap. I already paid for the site. With GoDaddy.

What's that squatter bit about?
Help, please...

Ello - Ellen Oh said...

Hey did I congratulat you yet? Congratulations!!! I read this and my eyes crossed so whatever Conduit says sounds good to me!!

McKoala said...

Ello ello!

Maybe I should think about a series on putting together a website, although you might have to accept that I am fundamentally ignorant, so it would be the blind talking to the blind.

Stuart Neville said...

Robin S - Sorry for not replying to you sooner.

In the interests of not getting my arse sued off, I'll generalise a bit here.

Domain squatting is when a domain expires and a third party swoops in and registers it in hopes of either selling it back to the original owner for a vastly inflated price, or puts a generic site in its place which is full of ads to generate revenue from the previous owner's traffic.

Certain domain registrars, especially some that offer low-priced or even free domains and hosting, actively facilitate squatters by passing just-expired domains to them, often before the original owner realises it's expired. They may also offer the domain to auction (typically, the bid will start at $90 or so, but when the original owner offers that to get their own domain back, mysterious others will offer higher amounts to drive the price up). Through investigation of specific incidents that have affected my clients I have found that some registrars actually own the companies that do the squatting. In some cases they'll own many companies under different names who will pass your domain to one another like a game of pass-the-parcel until you cough up the dough.

The big problem of course is if your domain has been around a while and losing it can seriously damage your business. The worst scenario I came across was a domain squatter pointing a local business's domain to a gay porn site then demanding thousands to hand it back.

Unfortunately because of a lack of adequate regulation this is all perfectly legal.

My advice is:

1) Don't let your domain expire, even by one minute.

2) If you can, transfer your domain to a registrar you're confident in. This means a bit of kerfuffle and cost, and shouldn't matter if you remember point 1.