Articles in Category: Website Management

Internal Server Error

How Do I Fix “Internal Server Error”?

An Internal Server Error happens within the server attempting to show you a webpage. It’s usually a server-side problem out of your control.

Computer Help

7 Things Your Sysadmin Probably Won’t Tell You

If you run a website and have someone administering it for you — a system administrator or “sysadmin” — they may have much more power than you realize.

Website Construction concept

What Is JavaScript and Why Do I Need It?

JavaScript is a programming language that operates important features on many websites.

Ask Leo! in 2003

How Do I Get an Old Version of a Webpage?

It’s generally not possible to recover an older version of a webpage, but we’ll look at a couple of straws to grasp at.

Your connection is not private???

How Do I Fix “Your Connection is Not Private”?

“Your connection is not private” errors are often benign, but are worth paying attention to.

www.

When Is “www” Needed and Why?

The “www” in website addresses is now typically optional and even redundant, but there was once a reason as to why it was required in URLs.

Missing an Image?

Why Don’t Pictures Show When I Visit Some Websites?

There are many reasons pictures don’t show on websites. Some you can control, but others are problems with the websites themselves.

How Do I Change My Website to Be an https Secure Site?

How Do I Change My Website to Be an https Secure Site?

Setting up an https-secure website is both simple and complex. The HTML doesn’t change, but you’ll need different hosting for the secure layer, as well as a certificate, to provide the security of https.

reCAPTCHA

Why CAPTCHA?

You’ve probably seen CAPTCHAs and not even realized it. CAPTCHAs are used to make sure systems aren’t gamed or spammed by machines.

https

Why Can’t We Use https for Everything?

HTTPS provides validation and encryption, two important pieces of security. Using it for everything is possible but costly, and issues would remain.

Dagmar

Why is a website trying to open a file on my machine?

If clicking on a link causes a request to open a file on your machine, chances are the web page author made a simple, and common, mistake.

MSN marketting

How do I get the old msn.com homepage back?

It appears that the look and feel of msn.com is changing yet again. To many that have msn.com as their home page, this change may or may not be welcome.

HTTPS

What makes a site secure?

A secure website means the site owner has jumped through the technical hoops necessary to qualify for https. Safety is another thing all together.

Why Am I Getting Empty Form Submissions from My Website?

Spam, spammers, and hackers. They make website management quite difficult, and you may be experiencing this with your web form.

Webpage Not Available??!!

My webmaster left. What do I do?

If your webmaster leaves unexpectedly, you can have a lot of trouble getting access to your own website. I’ll review some of the things that you need to do to prepare – just in case.

HTTPS

Will adding an “s” to http make my connection secure?

If you can turn http into https and it works, that means that the site has a security certificate. So why aren’t they using it?

IE Certificate Error

Why Do I Keep Getting Certificate Errors from My School’s Website?

Ultimately, a problem with a security certificate belongs to the owner of the website. There may be a way to get around it, but you probably need to contact them.

Under Construction

How do I secure my website?

When you operate a site on the internet, you’re putting yourself in harm’s way. Hackers would love to compromise your site for their own purposes. I’ll look at common problems and what to do about them.

What Does Error 500 from a Website Mean?

The 500 series indicate errors on the server, the remote computer that is “serving” that website to the internet. There are only a few things you can do to try to resolve it.

Advertising!

Why am I getting double underlined links that display an ad?

This sounds like an advertisement coming from the website. Advertising funds websites that deliver otherwise free information. If you don’t want to look at it, you have only a few options.

Computer Frustration

Is There a Way to Determine which Browser Tab is Playing Sound?

Websites that automatically play sound are evil, pure and simple. And there is only one way to quickly get rid of the intrusive sounds.

Why Did this Site Go Away? And How Do I Contact the Owner?

The site you’re used to visiting has simply gone away. Tracking down the owner might not be easy to do.

How Can I Find a Good Web Host?

Where to host your website depends on what kind of a website it is. Options range from free to expensive based on your needs.

How can I automate an SFTP transfer between two servers?

No, not correct. As it turns out, this is something I do regularly with ssh, as well as both sftp and rsync, as part of my backup and load balancing approaches for Ask Leo! Let me walk you through what I’ve done.

Why do my “.cfm” files work in some browsers and not others?

Well, the good news is that’s it’s most likely an easy, if obscure, fix that you, or your webmaster, needs to do. The “bad” news, if you want to call it that, is this: the browsers that are showing you what you expect? They’re technically wrong.

What rights do I retain when I publish an RSS feed?

Let me preface this with the standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. But that doesn’t prevent me from having an opinion… RSS, by it’s very name, was developed for syndication – the act of aggregating and/or republishing the content published in the feed. There’s a problem that results from the tension between those two … Read more

The Weakest Link

Can I track what links people are clicking on, even if they go off my site?

It’s often very desirable to see what links people are clicking on. Redirection services can often provide that information.