Swordie Bloggie

After searching for answer from the net, I found one which somehow explains what might have gone wrong with my website yesterday… it’s in my previous posting.

You see, all of us are accessing our website’s files from the server across the network. And we might be using Network File System (NFS) which is a network file system protocol. NFS allows us to access the files freely as if they are attached to our local disks.

It explained NFS has mechanisms to help it cope with error conditions. But what happen to my two folders yesterday? It went deadlock. No one have access to it. I think this is where the Stale File Handles was used to fix the two problematic folders by un-mounting and re-mounting the whole devices in my website services through service restart by the 24×7 support team.

So many talks about upgrading to WordPress 2.5 experienced flying around the net. I had a ‘tense’ experience when I upgraded my snapshots yesterday.

I started around 6.00pm by trying to rename the folder containing the website contents. But it gave me error! I tried a few more times but it still gave me the same result.

I was planning like this… once I renamed the website folder, I will upload the new version to the right folder. But that was hampered by the error encountered every time I tried to rename the folder.

I called Ben, to ask him if he had upgraded his website. He had but did encounter a problem. But it’s not the same as mine!!!

At the end, I took the drastic step… I dropped a BOMB by DELETING the folder’s contents! If you are not sure what I mean, I was actually deleting the website’s contents! During the deleting process then only I found out there are two folders giving error. I believe these are the causes I can’t rename the master folder.

I keep trying to delete the two folders but it just don’t allow me to do it… the error message said I have no rights to the folders!

Then I said ‘what the heck!’… I just uploaded the new version and paste whatever necessary files into the folder. After uploading, I tried accessing the updated website. Damm… it asking me for password to access the site!!! I keep cancelling the password message… and the upgraded site appears. Shoottt… this is the results of the upgrade!!!

Aaahhhhhhh… die lah!.. die lah!.. At the end, I send a 24×7 ticket to my host asking them to delete the two folders. After one hour around 10pm, when I tried accessing the website again, woohoooooo… it’s working… it’s OK!!!

I check my email… got reply from the host. They said it seems the two folders are just floating there… so they just restarted all the services to my website and the two folders gone after that.

OK lah… that was my scary experience yesterday.

The designs of a website do have major effect on the viewer. It can make the viewer stay longer or come back again for more visit to the website. It also plays roles whether the viewer will spread the news about the good design of the website to their friends. Of course the contents of the website also play major roles on those issues.

But why do we really want to make our website design attractive? One reason is, we want our website to be unique or attractive so it gets more attention and at the same time drive more internet traffic to it. The more internet traffic directed to the website, the better rank position it will get in term of search engine ranking. Most of the time, search engine ranking is treated as critical since it is used to determine the popularity of the website. That is why search engine marketing services are available out there to help improve the website’s search engine position.

But search engine rank sometimes doesn’t tell the whole truth. When a particular website is ranked high or better, sometimes a website with the same concept which has a poorer search engine rank has a better contents or popularity in reallity. So now, it is up to you whether you want to improve your website’s search engine ranking or get busy putting more better contents to your website and make its design more attractive.

Went to check if the Canon EOS 400D is ready at Investline Sdn. Bhd. during lunch time today. We sent it for fixing last month. Look like it’s not ready yet.

But it was fruitful since the Canon EFs 55-200mm f/4-5.6 IS lens is available. Now I have the chance to use it first before the 400D come back 😀

I told Lucy, the taukey, that I will write about her shop in my blog… and I gave her my blogs url 😀 Trying to get free promotion… win win mah…

I also get myself a HOYA CIR-Polarizing filter with 0.75 pitch. I know what polarizer can do, but I’m not sure yet about the figures. I will try this first and hopefully I got the right one. More of the polarizer result at my SnapShot ShutterBomb.

Investline Sdn. Bhd. located opposite of the road in front of Centre Point, Kota Kinabalu. You can get a good price from Investline if you know your way. I’ve compared with other shops around, and found out prices for body and lens can be much more cheaper here 😀

The look of the 40D with the 70-250mm… very long till my Lowepro bag has to be modified a bit to fit it inside.

Maximum 200mm towards Centre Point, Kota Kinabalu and Wawasan Flyover while moving inside car.

Wondering why I have not posted anything about Formula 1 anymore?…

Well, it’s not because McLaren did not get any podium at the 2008 Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix on 6 April.

I’ve moved all my Formula 1 posting to my new blog, Sparkie

See, I was not leaving behind my F1 team… although they did not get the podium 😛

Team Toyota

Last Saturday, did some extra work at the office from afternoon. Went back around 6pm and stop by for drinks at Grand Millennium Plaza at Penampang Bypass with Jonathan.

When we arrived there, the sunset is just setting… so immediately took out camera. There will be more photos from my big gun at my Photo Blog soon.

 
Jonathan with his big gun… no lah, thats my S5… checking what he captured… he said got ‘Tiger’ on the photo he took… I also confused 😆

I still feel over-burned because everyday… meeting after meeting… discussion after discussion… How I wish I strike the Jack Pot…

Luckily I’m tough enough to sustained all these with my built-in energy and fitness 😉 … although I never exercise other than hitting golf balls at the driving range once in…. two weeks?

Anyway, for energy I drink this once in a while…

I was blog hoping for the past few days and I notice some are working hard promoting their website or blog. But did they ever think of advertising their blog on the TV? So far I have not seen any blogger advertising their blog on TV. If any of them wants to advertise through Direct Response TV or DRTV service, they definitely will need a TV advertisement production team to do it.

But what exactly Direct Response TV is? DRTV is actually a commercial or infomercial shown on TV which try to convince viewers to buy the product or service they are promoting. They will urge the viewers to respond immediately to their advertisement. OK, by now you should be able to tell what Direct Response TV is all about.

Last night around 10.30pm, while checking my blog, suddenly it went BLANK!

It was saying something like my DATABASE is missing!!!

Ooooo boy… sound really SERIOUS!

I was so freaked out!

Earlier in the afternoon, I was checking on how to backup my database. I found the tutorial and tried login to my account. I’ve seen the interfaces but I did not proceed with the backup.

The  ugly part is, I have not backup anything from my blog since I build it in July 2007… that’s why it really made me freak out.

I tried this and tried that, but still the same error message!!!

I calm down myself and pretend it’s not happening… I don’t want to hit the panic button.

Luckily, after like 20 minutes, the pages started appearing but very slow. I believe this error must not be coming from my blog… it must be caused by my hosting service provider… maybe they were restarting the servers.

It gets faster and faster until past 12am… pheww… it’s back to normal now 😀

If you ever receive any reminder from any of your online account like PayPal, make sure it is not a phishing email.

If it is a phishing email, and you login to your account by clicking the links provided… you are DOOM.

You are not login in to the real site but at a phishing site… they try to fish you by fishing you!.. and you eat their bait!

When the link provided clicked, it will bring you to a very long URL.

http:// adsl-69-155-94-28.dsl.rcsntx.swbell.net/paypal.com/webscr.php?… (it’s very long but i shorten it… same with the rest)

Then you will be redirected to another site….

http:// 83.38.2.105/paypal.com/index.php?cmd…

Notice the http:// 83.38.2.105/paypal.com/…

Yea, looks like it belongs to paypal.com

Phishing always put the ULR like this. In actual fact, the site is not http:// paypal.com but http:// 83.38.2.105

Here, the paypal.com is the subdirectory of http:// 83.38.2.105, so it is not http:// paypal.com site.

Another example from http:// numenmail.com which always come to my inbox saying I won $400

http:// numenmail.com.l-pages.l-prize_center.php.l-id.8d.5k.nq.tq.rv.s3.lang.in/whois.php?…

Always look for the first slash ‘/’ to start interpreting the URL…  this site belongs to http:// lang.in

The next time you see a long URL, make sure the first part is the site you really going to… check to the left from the first /

The PayPal phishing email I received today: . . . Continue Reading »