n00bie Webmaster questions

In My Humble Opinion
1

About five months ago I volunteered to take over a computer-clueless friend’s business Web page, as her previous Web guy had, er, suddenly left the picture and that’s all I’ll say about that. The old design was hideous and I used the opportunity to learn some basic HTML and create my very first Web page. In the process I learned a little about managing domain names and Web hosts, uploading via FTP, etc. Get that? A LITTLE. Just enough to be able to cause trouble, as they say.

Anyway, we toodled along just fine until yesterday, when I suddenly discovered that our host is going to go down for good this Friday. Oooops. Found a new host and signed up today.

Question 1: Can you suggest any forums where it would be appropriate for a newbie Webmaster like me to ask dumb questions? I’ve already been to the WebHostingTalk forums for host recommendations, but they seem to be more from the POV of hosts than hosts’ customers. The only other places where I might consider asking are here (heh) and my publishing/freelancing forums, but I’d rather find someplace a little more on topic.

Question 2: Barring that, my immediate question, if anyone cares to answer it, is this: How can I tell when the site has properly transferred and is being hosted on the new server? Here’s what I’ve done so far:

Uploaded files to new server
Changed DNS info with domain registrar
Checked WHOIS to confirm updated nameservers

But: When I send messages from my private e-mail to my webmaster@friend.com account, the headers still show it going through the old host’s server. (I did set up identical accounts on the new server.) Are we still waiting for the change to propagate? Will the headers change when that happens?

Basically, we’re playing Beat the Clock – I’d like the change to happen before the old host goes down sometime tomorrow. It’s not a big deal if it doesn’t, as the site is mostly info rather than live commerce. But I’m hoping that site access and e-mail aren’t interrupted.

Thanks for your time and any attempts you might make to remedy my ignorance. :slight_smile:

2

An addendum: I just tried using the new host’s webmail interface to send myself mail from the Webmaster account. The headers on the message did list the new host’s server. Not surprising, I guess. But I’m a little confused by the idea that when I send mail TO that account, it goes through the OLD host (and is auto-forwarded to my personal account), yet I can send mail FROM that address at two different servers (using webmail from either the OLD host or the NEW host).

:confused:

3

It’s been a while since I’ve read the list, but you might try the MonkeyJunkies list. Seemed to be a good place for questions on all levels.

4

Some I belong to and recommend:
Coding Forums
Help From Techs

HTML forums

Geek Village

Free Web Space Forums

5

Thanks much for the great suggestions, guys. drewbert, I don’t know if I can take on another mailing list – I’m already subscribed to several busy ones. But I’ll keep the monkeys in mind.

Daizy, a couple of those look great – the HFT forums particularly, with all their other forums for software, networking, etc. Looks like a good general tech resource. I’ve made some additions to my bookmark list.

6

I would suggest www.macnn.com. They have a forum section:

http://forums.macnn.com/index.php?s=

And a web developer section among other forum topics that should be able to help you with your situation

As far as knowing if your site is working, assuming your provider is hosting on a unix platform, simply ftp into the server and issue a ls command… this should list the root directory of your server, and all your files and folders should now be listed on your command line. Look for your index.html or default.htm(l) page (or both). Now go to your webbrowser of choice and type in the url ending with the index or not for the default.htm. It should bring up your site.

One thing to know is that your site might look different depending on the OS and web browser your veiwers are checking your site from, so it would be good to have both mac and windows boxes around that you can pull the site from to make sure it looks correct on both platforms… you might want to download more browsers such as mozzila, netscape and safari (for mac) and preveiw your site on all these browsers to make sure it looks correct on all browsers and both platforms. (these web browsers are available for both mac and pc’s. Then you can tweak the code to make sure it works good on both.

7

To check whether DNS is already pointing to the new server: use

nslookup friend.com [assuming your PC is Win or Unix/Linux]

on the command line. To be sure DNS also works for the domain with www. subdomain (which many visitors will use): type

nslookup www.friend.com

If the new IP address has not yet propagated you can check if the new server works OK in the following way:

[list=1]
[li]find the file called hosts on your PC (/etc/hosts on Unix/Linux, somewhere like c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on a Windows box)[/li][li]add the following two lines to that file (assuming 111.222.333.444 is the new IP address and friend.com is the domain):[/li]
111.222.333.444 friend.com
111.222.333.444 www.friend.com

[li]Now try to access the site on your browser. Your PC will bypass DNS and use the IP address that you noted in your hosts file.[/li][li]After done with testing, be sure to delete the lines that you added to the hosts file, or comment them out by adding a # at the beginning of the line.[/li][/list=1]