donut.nu

I’ve been pondering a lot lately.

I’ve also been building a new site. Alas, that’s been going slowly since I’m pondering a new domain¹ and I just got a new job.

I’m sort of trying to build something that’s clean. Something I’m not worried about people I know finding.

I’ll be keeping the old blog posts, but making it more personal in addition to geeky stuff I post about instead of just posting personal stuff in my LiveJournal (with the exception of stuff that needs to be locked).

1. Something I can stick with forever or for at least a very long while. I have one idea. I want something short. ↩

I’ve been meaning to change my layout for ages, but I just can’t seem to come up with any good or even mediocre ideas!

Usually, a shiny colour scheme I’m dying to play with starts beating me around the head, but now? Nothing.

I’m thinking I should read some good Photoshop tutorials, look for some more design resources, and try out something new. Trouble is, these days, I’m not even sure where to find good, informative, or inspiring Photoshop tutorials. Sure, you can Google for them, but, as with most things, 95% of what Google pulls up is total crap.

This layout block has me so ensnared that I have two perfectly good posts written¹, but instead of editing/adding/rethinking bits or even just posting as-is, I’ve been stressing over layout ideas. It’s verging on the point of ridiculous.

How do you get past layout block? What are your favorite design resources?

1. One I wrote a week ago in which I rant about how I recently had an epiphany that I have to be a teacher, but I’ll probably get shot! ↩

So, I signed up with a Site5 reseller account a few weeks ago. Since then I’ve had to submit three help tickets and there’s another issue I need fixed, but the issue I’m currently battling them on has made me severely doubt tech support’s reading comprehension.

First issue was that in my welcome email they sent me the wrong nameservers and they took a fairly long time to give me the actual ones after I sent in a support ticket.

Second issue was that the FTP wasn’t working for any of the accounts I had set up so the faulty nameservers wouldn’t have made a bit of difference anyway since there was no way I could upload thousands of files via file manager.

Third issue: Someone I host needs domain.com/icons/ and icons.domain.com/icons/ to show what she actually has uploaded in those directories to keep her links alive versus a listing of Apache icons (which you can see demonstrated here if you’re unfamiliar with what I’m talking about¹). The subdomain, icons.domain.com, shows what she has uploaded to the icons directory, but domain.com/icons/ does not and neither does icons.domain.com/icons/.

I read in the Site5 Forums that they have been able to change this in a case-by-case basis. I explain very simply what is needed. I even include links. They email me to say:

Hi,

I’m able to access http://domain.com/icons/ without any problems. Are you still unable to access it? What is the error that you get?

I said nothing about errors in my original ticket. I even specifically said that when I access it it’s a directory listing of Apache icons and how that’s not what is needed.

I just ended up explaining to tech support how Apache servers work. I should be on their payroll.

I wake up this morning to this lovely message:

Hello,

What you can do is to create a symbolic link for the /icons folder. That way both icons.domain.com/icons and domain.com/icons will show the exact same content.

Please let us know if you have questions.

Dude, that’s like the exact opposite of what I want. Why would I want to do that?! I want it to display what’s actually uploaded to them, not display the exact same content².

And why would they just say ‘create a symbolic link’? How many people emailing technical support will actually know what they mean by that? Just because I understand why /icons/ displays what it does doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll know the ins and outs of .htaccess. It mostly means that I’ve been messing around with different servers for the past eight years and have seen a lot of different hosting and server situations. It also means I am a master Google-ninja extraordinaire so if I don’t understand something, I’ll just fucking Google it before I ask questions.

Does someone have good stories about Site5 and/or Site5′s support? Because right now I’m about ready to rip out my hair and I paid for an entire year in advance to save myself $100USD and because everyone says they’re so great.

Update: Partial victory! Apparently they understood enough to enable domain.com/icons/ which is good…except for the part where I said at least three times that domain.com/icons/ could be lived without and icons.domain.com/icons/ was what we were really looking for. I’m hoping it won’t be too difficult to get that enabled, but I’m not getting my hopes up. ;)

1. In that directory I actually have a file called rss.png uploaded and nothing else, but you won’t see rss.png at all, much less be able to link to it from elsewhere, like what she needs. ↩
2. Which it’s already doing, technically speaking, since both are displaying ugly Apache icons used for FancyIndexing. ↩