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Post by stevemacdonald on Mar 12, 2006 15:34:53 GMT
There seems to be a big disconnect with regard to HWI's photos and the major search engines like Yahoo and Google.
The vast majority of thumbnails on their "images" pages for Hayley Westenra have url's from HWI.
But when you click on any of these HWI thumbs you get:
Not Found
The requested URL was not found on this server.
Why do all these HWI thumbs of Hayley continue to show up on the Google and Yahoo image search pages if the corresponding photos are not able to be located this way?
We're talking about hundreds, possibly thousands of images here, so I'm surprised no one has brought this up yet. Any new fan would think "WHAT is going on here?"
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simon
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Post by simon on Mar 12, 2006 17:05:49 GMT
A BIG disconnect indeed, Steve!
Not caused by HWI, but all thanks to Servage, I'm afraid. They saw fit to carry out an internal transfer of files from one server to another - without a single word of advice to me - and then promptly *LOST* the entire site. When I contacted them, they said the move was to give us extra speed, but had no idea where the files had gone, or indeed that they *had* disappeared.
This meant I had to re-upload the entire site - only to find the new server failed to recognize the ampersand symbol. This necessitated a change from "&" to "+" on all files and folders sitewide...
The end result is what you are now witnessing... A catastrophic loss of image links within every one of the Search Engines to which I'd promoted to site, and on every other that had recently spidered the site. Not only that, but the actual page URLs will be incorrectly referenced also.
The problem should resolve itself over time, as each robot newly spiders the site and updates it's own database. But in the meantime, we will undoubtedly suffer the consequences of a most ill-advised decision on the part of "someone" at Servage.
And my "compensation" for their error and my wasted time? Time that has run to many, many hours of totally unnecessary extra work...
Two months additional free hosting... WOW!
Surfing may be free - hosting is decidedly most not!
Unimpressed of Lincoln
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Dave
Administrator
HWI Admin
Posts: 7,688
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Post by Dave on Mar 13, 2006 15:51:03 GMT
There seems to be a big disconnect with regard to HWI's photos and the major search engines like Yahoo and Google. The vast majority of thumbnails on their "images" pages for Hayley Westenra have url's from HWI. But when you click on any of these HWI thumbs you get: Not Found
The requested URL was not found on this server.Why do all these HWI thumbs of Hayley continue to show up on the Google and Yahoo image search pages if the corresponding photos are not able to be located this way? We're talking about hundreds, possibly thousands of images here, so I'm surprised no one has brought this up yet. Any new fan would think "WHAT is going on here?" Hi Steve, I'm not involved in updating the HWI website but I do know a bit about the problem so I can add to what Simon has explained. UNIX servers don't like the ampersand symbol in filenames (it's a special system character) but Windows servers allow it. I don't know about Linux servers - but I presume that Servage use either UNIX or possibly Linux servers and the previous HWI hosts used Windows servers. When you switch from one to the other... problems can occur  Another filename problem is that some servers block or filter *all* non-alphanumeric characters apart from the hyphen and the underscore. My ISP servers do exactly this - I cannot upload or rename a file if it contains any characters apart from A to Z (upper or lower case), numeric 0 to 9, underscore or hyphen. In the forum here, the Proboards software has trouble with the plus sign (but not the ampersand). For example, the following link is not clickable - the link breaks after the plus sign (although there are some fiddly workarounds as mentioned elsewhere in this Tech support board): www.hayley-westenra-international.com/html/html-2006/2006_menu-radio+television.htmLinks containing spaces may work but they can end up looking strange, such as: www.hayley-westenra-international.com/galleries/gallery14_20060208_Il-Divo-minneapolis/Hayley%202.htmlLong links break in all Proboards forums (there is another fiddly workaround - see the thread about it elsewhere in Tech Support): www.hayley-westenra-international.com/galleries/gallery14_20060208_Il-Divo-minneapolis/Hayley%20Westenra%20with%20Il%20Divo%20007.htmlAnd if links contain a combination of problem characters, anything can happen! It's not just HWI of course, links like these occur all over the Internet. But it is not always obvious what is happening because Internet Explorer will sometimes (not always!) automatically correct url problems. Other browsers won't. From what I can tell, only A to Z, a to z, 0 to 9 and _ or - are completely safe in filenames, everywhere!  I know Simon is already well into the conversion process but it must be a nightmare to complete due to the huge size of the HWI website... we must all be patient. The search engines will catch up eventually. I suspect that the "only 24 hours in a day" bug may be Simon's greatest problem at the moment!  Cheers, Dave |
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Post by roger on Mar 13, 2006 18:59:52 GMT
You're right, Dave, in that the day being limited to 24 hours is not helping. But that isn't his biggest problem. I speak to Simon on the phone every day and I can tell you he is suffering from a severe dose of Servage-itis. Let's say that when he signed his post "Unimpressed of Lincoln", he meant it.
Roger
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Post by stevemacdonald on Mar 13, 2006 20:45:32 GMT
Semi-good news: All those dead-end HWI image links on Google are finally gone.
Okay, on to my next problem: I have a hard time making quick sense of the dates given for the "Latest Updates"such as "20060306" and "20060311".
Does anyone else find that system a little confusing?
Why not use more familiar (and instantly understood) calendar terms, such as "6 March 2006" or "03/06/2006"?
I have a similar problem with military time and anything involving the metric system, but, thankfully, I don't encounter them in here.
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Post by Belinda on Mar 13, 2006 21:42:40 GMT
I think we should all be glad there are updates and a site to advise us on Hayley and Simon should be able to use what ever suits him,Re date .
And i'm sure there is a good reason for it being that way.
Belinda
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Dave
Administrator
HWI Admin
Posts: 7,688
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Post by Dave on Mar 13, 2006 22:39:40 GMT
I think we should all be glad there are updates and a site to advise us on Hayley and Simon should be able to use what ever suits him,Re date . And i'm sure there is a good reason for it being that way. Belinda He Belinda and Steve. Yes we should and yes he should and yes there is! I use a similar file naming convention to Simon's, although I think we came across the method independently of each other. Here are my reasons for doing it like that. File names such as the one in the following link (just mentioned by Oksana in another thread): www.hayley-westenra-international.com/video-files/videos-2006/20060306_prayer_sop.html are the easiest way of making files "list" in date order - when you want them to. And all the dates contain exactly the same number of characters - this can be important in certain situations, for example if you want to extract the date from the file name (in this case, the complete file name is 20060306_prayer_sop.html). Standard US, UK or International numerical date formats don't work well in file names, neither do formats using letters or words for the month names. Simon's method works the same in every Country using the Western alphabet - which is more than can be said for any other fairly easily recogniseable method of quoting dates. Searching for "lost" files is also easier in some situations. It would be possible to translate the dates to other formats in the web page descriptions - but I don't think that should be a priority when there are other more important issues to resolve. Simon may have other reasons too, but those are mine. Cheers, Dave |
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Post by postscript on Mar 14, 2006 14:36:14 GMT
Interesting point the arrangement of dates and it threw me inititially BUT. this is in fact the most sensible way for a computer to read a date and I have adopted it for my own filing system!
Think it through. It is the only way a computer AND A MANUAL USER can make sense of dates in sequential order when used as a file name, especially if you start all your files with date arrangement! That is, publication or written date as regards authorship, as opposed to dated updates as far as the PC filing system is concerned.
BUT, with the USA doing one thing and the UK doing another it can be sometimes confusing as to which way round the month and day go with some dates.
However, one of the problems with web management is that you need a seuqnetial date coding independent of the PC's or server's date coding. On a much smaller scale than HWI, I too run web sites and can see where they are coming from as regards article/file management.
My view on it when I twigged, was why on earth isn't this system used more widely and already in use (at least I'm not aware it was).
There have been date sequentail marking systems for file creation on major office doccument systems but these have usually been in the context that we might use dates in the ordinary way..Here, we are using the PC system to its best advantage rather than under-using its resources by forcing 'our accustomed' system on to the PC's way of thinking.
Am I right, technical guys?
Peter
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Post by stevemacdonald on Mar 14, 2006 17:14:29 GMT
Heh, since I did voice my little cavil in "tech support" I should have expected the technical bias to prevail, and sure enough it has.
I fully admit my lack of smarts here. I typically look at a string of numbers like 20060206 with trepidation. Too many oughts, too little time. That there's actually a specific day of my life lurking within that number is scary. I realise that's not an issue for a webmaster any more than the sight of blood is for a hematologist.
Maybe to overcome my fear-of-filekeeping I should embark on a program to number all of Hayley's songs accordingly. "Who Painted The Moon Black" from the NZ-edition of Pure would be "010101" because it's the first song on the first album in the first country of release. At the other end, "140203" would suffice for "She Moves Through The Fair" on the special UK release of Odyssey.
Wish me luck.
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Post by postscript on Mar 14, 2006 17:52:22 GMT
Dear Everyone.
Re: Steve Macdonald's post.
I do believe he's got it! By Jove he's really really got it.
Now, let's have it once again.
Where are those flipping names?
Why, in numbers, very plain
It's so easy to explain
when putting numbers in a name.
Which leads me, of course, to wondering if Hayley would do Eliza Doolittle!
Well, i got Rex Harrison's song in!
Peter
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Post by postscript on Mar 14, 2006 19:26:48 GMT
Dear Simon/everyone.
Server problems.
1. Thank goodness the wole site existed in its entirety elsewhere. I do the same in case of such a loss and double back-up that too!
2. Poor Simon. Bangs his head before Christmas so he becomes a double egg-head, figuratively and then literally. Then gains another headache not of his own making after Christmas! How is the head Simon?
3. May I propose a round of superb standing ovation, like we give Hayley, for Simon. It is not just the time and the mundane drag but doing everything over again pointlessly is so very dispiriting.
Well done Simon.
Peter
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Post by gareth on Mar 14, 2006 19:48:05 GMT
Hmmm Steve, I have a habit of adding a page date to all videos and web pages I upload. I consistently use this format: ......ddmmyy. The first two digits represent the day, the next two digits the month and the last two digits the year. I simply do that for my own administration - I do not use it as a means to sort items in chronological order. A proper chronological sort does indeed require the year first, then the month (two digits), then the day (two digits). As to your other suggestions, Steve, I won't touch them. I refuse to use spaces in file names on Internet, and I would even refuse more to use the "/", "\" and any other chracter that may have a special function in either links, or HTML or script languages. In fact I also try to avoid the use of capital letters - I believe that on a Wiindows Server, there's no difference between "A_filename" and "a_filename", but on a Linux/Unix server there is! Cheers, Gerrit Semi-good news: All those dead-end HWI image links on Google are finally gone. Okay, on to my next problem: I have a hard time making quick sense of the dates given for the "Latest Updates"such as "20060306" and "20060311". Does anyone else find that system a little confusing? Why not use more familiar (and instantly understood) calendar terms, such as "6 March 2006" or "03/06/2006"? I have a similar problem with military time and anything involving the metric system, but, thankfully, I don't encounter them in here. |
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Post by alien on Mar 14, 2006 21:11:49 GMT
Hi all, I agree with Gerrit, it's not practical to use special symbols for a website given all the potential incompatibility problems. It's already a huge improvement since the old 8.3 days i.postimg.cc/9fYxy370/smilie-big-grin.gifUsing a date "March 7, 2006" as an example. I do find the representations "030706" and "070306" a little bit confusing. For naming videos originated from outside north america, I usually change the date to the "07Mar2006" format... even "07Mar06" is too confusing for me  However, for north american videos, I use "Mar07_2006" instead. Okay... this is getting too confusing, but I'm a Canadian, we have to please both sides of the world  As a compromise, may I suggest the use of "yyyy_mm_dd" (e.g. 2006_03_07") format instead? It's suitable for easy chronological sorting by computers yet still reasonably readable by humans. The underscores ("_") really helps with readability. Hopefully all the discussion on date format doesn't cause Simon anymore headache Allen |
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However, for north american videos, I use "Mar07_2006" instead.