- A bb site I frequent now brings up a page saying that their server has switched to this. Is there anything I can do to reach it, or do I just have to wait until they reset the domain name? (The Apache notice page says to e-mail the webmaster@domainname, but I imagine a lot of people are already doing that now anyway. . .) - MC
Apache is a web server application. The majority of unix systems use it. If it is inaccessible, than it is inaccessible. Accessing any type of web server should be the same process generally speaking.
My guess would be that they also changed their board software, and they don’t have the old users migrated into it. BB functions are not specifically a part of Apache. When someone changes to Apache, they are often chaning from IIS, meaning that they are switching from NT to Unix. A lot of web software that runs on NT won’t run on Unix, and vice versa.
If this is the case, unless they have a migration plan, I’d contact that webmaster. 
As a vaguely related question, a friend of mine says that he always saves his addresses in the numerical form. He claims that this bypasses the need for the server to look up the domain name, making access faster and more reliable. Brilliant or bull?
Well, it’s not bull. It might even be brilliant. Your friend is correct – bypassing the name server will eliminate the delay caused by your request going up to your ISP’s DNS server, getting the address resolved into the raw IP address, and the request getting sent back to your machine. Most people don’t want to bother with that, though. I’d either get a faster modem or a faster ISP.
“He tried to kill me with a forklift…” – MST3K
Actually bypassing hostnames ain’t that brilliant. Normally a DNS request takes a second or two, and then it is cached. The caching is chosen by the folks who set up the hostname. It is commonly cached for anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 day.
Many newer, esp smaller sites are using what is called “Name-based virtual hosting” which means that many web domains can live on one IP address. The correct domain is chosen by what you enter as the hostname. The browser tells the server what host was entered as a part of the HTTP/1.1 protocol, which any vaguely recent browser supports. If you just put in the IP address of such a domain, you will likely end up getting a completely different domain.
So for the gain of a very small amount of time, you go to more trouble, run the risk of not getting the right site, and run the risk that the host will change IP addresses.
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- Thanks for respondng. It came back on its own today. - I dunno jaque sheet about servings and such. - MC
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Another argument against using numeric addresses is that the host may move to a different machine with a different address. If you are using the name, you will automatically get the new address. But if you are using the numeric address, you’ll always go to the old, and now incorrect, site.