A week silently passed on my simple IT help desk request (read the sad story). There was now a consequence as the main page for our site was hijacked via the vulnerability I reported (see the blurb on this, we were definitely not alone). So since the requests were not answered, I resorted to the […]
This is one of those found be serendipity things, what happens when you just freely poke around the web. Maybe it is obvious to many others, but it’s new to me. Some folks rely on technorati for taking a pulse of links going to their content, and it sure provides some good insight. I just […]
It is re-assuring when a faculty member investigates a new technology and runs with it. I got a recent email from Liz Dorland, chemistry faculty at Mesa Community College, and maybe one of 7 people in our district who read this blog (You are never famous in your own country, Hi Liz!). She shared form […]
Apologies again, as this server, also the host of Feed2Js, went south for about 10 hours Friday night – Saturday morning, just like last week. I had found in the server logs where the services were crashing, but nothing to indicate a cause nor why it was able to restore itself. Given it occurred at […]
flickr foto Hashknife Ridersavailable on my flickr One of the many members of the Navajo County Sheriff’s Posse who participated in the Hashknife Pony Express, which re-enacts the delivery of mail by horseback, riding from Holbrook to Scottsdale. They did not look tired at all. It was cowboys, cowgirls, clowns, dogs, young republicans, vegan protesters, […]
Now that the Furl-Delicious-Frassle-CiteULike-Connotea-Bag Bookmarklet Tool (a simepl web form to help you build a one click browser bar tool for adding web sites to various collections) seems to be working– I decided to make another tool. This one helps you create a browser bar button for quick searching of any MovableType weblog, as described […]
Does anyone still look up number, business names in a big thick yellow pages phone book? Is that still the first reflex when a net connected computer is in reach? Two recent observations indicate that for many folks, not just techies, but Jane and Joe Citizen, the web is becoming the reflex. We have a […]
I keep a pad of frequently called numbers near my office phone- there is a number next to a label called “Helpless desk”. In theory, this is how our helpdesk works. I go to a web site and fill submit a problem request form. It gets routed electronically to someone who addresses the issue. The […]
Do you remember when the web was young and everything was about having a “Home Page”? The legacy is still there in our web browser’s “Home” button (and do you wonder why we are limited to one home?). In fact, when I started our web server in 1993, like others, I made our primary web entrance a file named… homePage.html
In fact, in those days (late 1993), the correct URL to get to the MCLI main entrance was:
http://hakatai.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/homePage.html
Using a few little tricks of web “redirection”, this 11 year old URL actually still works and gets you to the current main entrance at http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/. Is it magic? Not at all, and it is easier than you think. The biggest mystery is why so many sites, big and small, are willing to leave old links hanging in the breeze.
I will show later how I have been able to 3 times migrate a 70+ Mb web directory to different servers yet never produce a bad link message for that pile of content.
But I am not writing to be nostalgic about the web of the early 1990s (remember those ugly grey pages? Title tag animations? The Green Netscape logo?). Let’s take a look at scenarios that might happen among the people who create web content:
“We’ve improved our site to use interactive scripting so all web file pages will be changed from *.html to *.asp”
“That is an effective data analysis web site you built in your personal directory, Smithers, but since it gets so much traffic, we want to provide it a shorter URL by moving it to a top level on our main web site.”
“Most of the web content will be re-organized from a directory structure based on department names to ones based on services provided.”
“That is sol old, let’s just delete it from the web server”
What do these have in common? Let’s talk about Linkrot…
From suggestions, I’ve added two more sites to the web site submission multi tool, what was once blogged the DeliciousFurlBagConnotea Marklet Maker is now… DeliciousFurlBagConnoteaFrassleSiteULike Marklet Maker— having added posting tools for CiteULike and Frassle. Check it out, your mileage may vary given my tendency for programming typos: http://cogdogblog.com/alan/marklet_maker.php
