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July 30, 2008
There's Always Something
I have always been the website admin for our "Make Mine Chocolate!" site. This spring, I also took over the CHRS site, relieving Karalee of that responsibility. It's something I should have done a long time ago since, most of the time, I really enjoy working on our websites.
Being a website admin is as close to the perfect volunteer job as I am likely to find. Most of what I do these days is maintenance: writing a blog entry, adding adoptable and sponsor rabbits, and other mundane activities. These tasks require very little effort but provide the perfect excuse for postponing less interesting responsibilities like unloading the dishwasher. After all, if I don't get Tanner's information posted tonight, that perfect adopter who visits our site tonight will not see him and Tanner will miss out on that forever home he clearly deserves. It's a bogus excuse but, as an expert procrastinator, my standards for what constitutes an acceptable excuse are pretty low.
But every now and then I get THE CALL or THE EMAIL. Invariably, Karalee is the sender and the message is usually pretty consistent: something that used to work now doesn't. I immediately begin a memory search, trying to remember what I worked on the previous night. Because, almost invariably, I made a mistake. Most of the time it's a simple fix but every now and then, I actually have to do some troubleshooting, which can mean a late night. Once the source of the problem is identified, the fix is usually pretty simple.
As you probably already know, I got THE CALL today. Columbusrabbit has become a debt relief site. Huh??? No memory search this time - yes, we've wandered off the reservation of what I know about websites. All I could think was, at least it's not a porn site!
The website looked fine on my work computer and on my new cell phone. Terri Cook said it looked fine. Initially, only two people, Bev and Karalee, saw our new debt site. My initial thought was a virus. So poor Karalee spent a chunk of her afternoon running virus scans. There are few things more boring than that but we were both in a panic by this point. Only later would we find out that Bev, who first discovered the problem, uses a Macintosh. That piece of information immediately demolished my virus hypothesis.
I then contacted our service provider for the second time. Their initial response suggested changing passwords but a quick look at the files indicated that the website content was untouched. They also suggested that local computers could be the source of the problem, such as a virus. But I subsequently learned that they were investigating the problem on their end.
They eventually discovered that there was a problem with the DNS zone file. Google is a marvelous thing and provided a simple explanation. I won't bore you with the details but, basically, there is a file that provides a directory of locations for sites such as ours. This directory somehow got modified and our website disappeared. My suspicion is that there are multiple directories and only one got changed. Which would explain why not everyone got to see the new debt site.
Thankfully, the problem now appears to be fixed. Our sincere thanks to Bev, Heather, Terri, and the other folks who helped us troubleshoot the problem.
I would like to use this occasion to make a request. If you ever see something on either site that doesn't seem right, please let Karalee or me know as soon as possible. It can be a concern that something on the site isn't correct as Laine Kathary did when she questioned something I had written about Teddie in this blog. Or it could be something more dramatic, like what happened today.
Karalee keeps a watchful eye on our sites but we need as many eyes as possible looking after our sites.
All's well that ends well, and I look forward to a quiet evening. Terri has sent new pictures of Tanner so I'd better get them up on the site. After all, that perfect adopter just might stop by!
Posted by Sue at July 30, 2008 4:38 PM