the Emotiomental Graffiti blog

Jul

2009

Bulletin Board: Announcements

Written By: EMG
Posted On: Jul 12, 2009
Filed Under: Administration

November 03, 2010: Just an Update

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this Bulletin Board and so I thought I would take care of it!

On the AddThis front, AddThis added a Print Friendly functionality to their repertoire of sharing functions a while ago which allows single posts to be printed straight from a blog’s main site rather than through the individual post view.

This was a feature I had inquired about in the community forum back when I was still learning the ropes and seeing it finally come true was – and still is – way WAY cool.

Also, in case my previous Bulletin Board post confused anybody, the W3C validation error was fixed very shortly after I discovered the bug and the issue was reported. Thanks especially to Justin Thorp who reported the bug to the developers who then fixed it!

As a token of my thanks for the awesome service the little button offers my site and for the awesome support I have received from the team since I have started using the AddThis service, I created a little button of my own which links to the AddThis website.

Check it out on my sidebar! Just scroll on down to where I’m Giving Props!

In relation to Giving Props, I’ll (HOPEFULLY) have all of my Giving Props buttons, links, and whatevers working and operational before December rolls around.

It’s been a seriously CrAzY ride for the past year starting from August of last year up until now and owing to the things that have happened, it’s hard to keep up with everything at times.

With that said, thanks for your patience and understanding!

3 Comments

Aug

2010

Twenty Ten Bottom Margin Bug – A Fix!

Written By: EMG
Posted On: Aug 22, 2010
Filed Under: In the Studio, On the Web Design Front, On the Web Development Front, On the WordPress Front

Tagged With: catching bugs, CSS, CSS bugs, CSS tips and tricks, On the WordPress Front, Twenty Ten theme, WordPress themes

I’ve been working on a fully fluid-width, XHTML Strict, table-less, three column child theme for WordPress’ Twenty Ten default theme…

And in the process, discovered a bottom margin bug!

I submitted the bug to a Trac ticket HERE and also documented the fix that would squash the bug flat and make Twenty Ten render the way it was supposed to which I will share here in my blog.

The Bug (in short):

The margin-bottom: 20px that is applied to the footer div triggers a well known CSS bug causing the 20px margin to be applied to the adjoining/bottom margin-touching wrapper div instead of the footer div.

That bottom margin you see at the bottom of the page where the end of the content wrapper should be touching the bottom of the screen?

That’s the bug.

The Fix (in short):

To correctly apply the 20px margin-bottom to the footer div and not accidentally to the wrapper div, the wrapper div needs to be given a 1px padding-bottom and the footer div needs to be given a 19px margin-bottom.

The padding applied to the wrapper where it touches the bottom of the footer container will trigger the margin-bottom to be rendered correctly for the footer and not the wrapper as the padding will add some ’separation’ between the two containers.

Another fix is to add a 1px border to the bottom of the wrapper and leave the 20px margin-bottom on the footer.

The border adds ‘content’ to the bottom of the wrapper which triggers the margin-bottom for the footer to be rendered correctly.

Why the Bug Happens:

Read the Full Post

2 Comments

Aug

2010

Resolved! – Web Hosting Gone Wrong

Written By: EMG
Posted On: Aug 20, 2010
Filed Under: In My Mind, In the Cyber World

Tagged With: customer service, customer service gone right, making amends, Media Temple, shared hosting

It’s been a few long months owing to me having to take care of emergency familial issues, but remember that post I made back in March about Web Hosting Gone Wrong?

Shortly after I wrote that post, I spoke with Andrew from Media Temple about this matter and where he obviously was not allowed to go into situation specifics aside from what was publicly posted by Kyle, we were able to talk more in-depth about Media Temple’s policies and about specifics regarding theoretical situations which could result in the scenario that Kyle experienced. I aired my concerns – elaborated where necessary – and Andrew addressed them all quite thoroughly and we spoke at length about the various topics I had addressed in my previous blog posts.

At this point (actually, much earlier, but I have been unable to really sit down to write until now – sorry, Andrew!), I have to say that where I still have mild concerns about the potential ‘ease’ of going over resource allotment, I am satisfied with the results of the conversation and no longer have that sour taste in my mouth or the same misgivings I once had.

In case it wasn’t evident in previous posts or in case anyone needs a reminder, I will reiterate that my concerns were NOT regarding MT charging for overages (in other words, I wasn’t saying that MT shouldn’t charge for overages, period).

My greatest concern was how unexpectedly the overage-causing situation had happened (it was a total and complete accident and there was no prior indication that such a problem would happen), what the ramifications were (triggering the overage as the situation caused resource over-usage), what the implications might be (how easy would it be to go over resource allotment?), and then how MT INITIALLY handled the situation.

As a courtesy to Andrew and Media Temple, I will address the issues one more time and then close this particular ‘chapter’ of blog posts regarding Web Hosting Gone Wrong.

Read the Full Post

1 Comment

May

2010

Hiatus Highway

Written By: EMG
Posted On: May 14, 2010
Filed Under: Administration, Convolutions

Tagged With: administrative, hiatus

So you might have noticed that I haven’t updated my blog recently…

The reason for that is because I am on a very impromptu hiatus right now.

Work and play (and blogging is a part of both for me) are currently on the backburner while I spend time with my family to help care for my mother who very recently suffered a hemorrhagic stroke on account of her previously unmanagable hypertension (overall health good, no risky lifestyle factors, etc which can be changed to help lower blood pressure) which had spiked up to 225 even WITH medications.

Geebuz.

Since it is only a minor stroke, things could certainly be worse, but dammit, things also could have been better, too!

So… yeah.

EMG over and out.

No comments

Mar

2010

GoDaddy Gone Wrong… and Right

Written By: EMG
Posted On: Mar 14, 2010
Filed Under: In My Mind, In the Cyber World, On Being a Webmaster

Tagged With: accessibility, bad impressions, customer service, customer service gone wrong, domain registration, GoDaddy, good and bad, things NOT to do, UI/UX issues, unprofessionalism, upselling gone wrong, usability, web hosting gone right, web hosting gone wrong

Cheap(er) domain registration prices and cheap(er) basic web hosting packages have never and will never motivate me to choose GoDaddy for any of my domain registration or web hosting needs.

NEVER.

However.

Due to the old RegisterFly fiasco (not my fault!) that happened back in the timespan of 2005-2007, I had a handful of domains that I had been maintaining at RegisterFly get pushed on to GoDaddy while one domain ended up with eNom. Several got moved elsewhere (DreamHost, here I come!) while I let others whose purposes had expired… expire.

Also.

Due to working with various people over the years – paid, voluntary, because we’re friends, and otherwise – I have been forced to interact with GoDaddy as the go-between fix-it and fix-up person.

But those incidents and instances aside, I myself would never – if possible – choose GoDaddy.

Why?

Good grief, but where do I start?

I know! How about in alphabetical order?

Read the Full Post

No comments

Mar

2010

Web Hosting Gone Wrong BUT Overage Waived

Written By: EMG
Posted On: Mar 12, 2010
Filed Under: In My Mind, In the Cyber World, On Being a Webmaster

Tagged With: customer service gone right, customer service gone wrong, making amends, Media Temple, shared hosting, web hosting gone wrong

So that post I made a while ago about the $1000 a month shared webhosting?

EDIT: A follow-up post has been made to this. Please READ THIS for the final update and the resolution.

To refresh your memory (or simply read if you never caught it in the first place), click HERE.

Apparently, according to Kyle Matthews whom this incident happened to, there has been a resolution offered by Media Temple – namely, $6XX amount of overage fees are being/will be/were waived.

Click HERE to read his update!

According to Kyle’s post, Media Temple sent him an email shortly after his blog post appeared asking him to call them back in regards to the “unfortunate circumstance of the issue”.

Funny, that (in my opinion anyways), when the original customer support emails had stated that nothing could be done when Kyle had first asked.

But.

Media Temple DID get back in touch and did acknowledge at least part of the gaffe on their part – good for them! That’s called customer service gone right. At least… part way.

But.

Like Kyle’s blog post states, it still leaves a sour taste in my mouth, too, and mostly because of what I had explained in my earlier post.

A company trumpeting the robustness of their service and backing it up with percentages and statistics and saying that only 0.3% and 0.03% of users (basically, VERY VERY FEW for the first and out of a random 10,000 for the second!) ever experience overage problems ONLY to be keeled over by the 2 million 404 Apache errors from one website which generated a crapload of overage charges just…

It just doesn’t sit well with me at all in any way, shape, or form ESPECIALLY knowing that once upon a not very long time ago at all, the same site had done just fine on DreamHost’s shared web hosting service.

DreamHost talks about what they offer in their services, sure, and you can go poke at their fine print if you want to, and you can read up on their thoughts regarding ‘unlimited’ this, that, and the other, and they even regularly post status updates on their servers and all but nowhere have I seen the sort of reputation/credibility-building (more like hyping, really!) that Media Temple posted on their FAQs page.

And DH managed to host the site just fine.

Blegh.

So yeah.

Resolution posted!

… But the sour aftertaste is still there and I still can’t help but wonder just what kinds of sites those 10,000 were that MT randomly picked out which generated a grand total of 0.03% of sites going over their resources.

I guess trust (or something like it) once broken is hard to fix and I guess after all the hype, I’m not sure what’s ‘realistic’ to expect from MT or not after seeing something like this happen.

… We’ll see.

~ EMG

7 Comments