Archive for the ‘DNS’ Category
Friday, April 9th, 2010
I am working on converting a client’s site to WordPress. We’ve got it almost ready to go. We’re moving it from one hosting service to another. In order to make the change to the new web host, we have to make a DNS change.
The problem is that the current hosting company controls the DNS. We have to give them a one day notice to make the change. Instead of going live Friday night, we have to wait until Monday.
The moral of the story is that if you own your own domain name, you need to understand the technical issues involved and you need to know enough that you have control of it.
Maybe you don’t like keys and you’re not a locksmith, but you have a key to the front door of your house, right? Maybe you’re not a mechanic, but you like to drive your car, don’t you?
King of My Castle, Master Of My Domain Name
Here’s an overview of how it all works, in simple language.
A web server is just a computer that responds to requests for web pages.
It can also be referred to as a “web host”. You rent space on a web hosting company’s servers to put your web site on.
Each web server/computer has an IP address. That’s a technical number that uniquely identifies it among all the computers in the universe.
Every computer on the Internet has an IP address assigned to it. You may not know this, but your computer has an IP address associated with it.
IP addresses are the actual way that computers, servers, talk to each other on the Internet. It is the language of the Internet for computers.
Problem is that humans don’t remember those IP addresses very easily. We developed domain names to be easier for people to read and remember.
Domain names are just a convenience for people.
The next problem is tying the domain name to the IP address. We need something like a phone book. I know I want Joe’s Pizza, but what is their phone number?
Let’s look it up in the phone book. If the phone book says it’s 555-1234, then everyone calls 555-1234. If Joe’s Pizza were to move and get a new phone number, then the phone book would have to change to reflect that, right? If they change the phone book so it says that it’s 555-5678, then everyone calls 555-5678.
That’s easy, right?
Well, the system that manages these pointers or associations with domain names and IP addresses is called a DNS, domain name server. The “name server” is actually a computer, a server, that will tell you what IP address is associated with what domain name. You can ask it where is “www.walton.com” and it will tell you it’s at “76.246.231.1″, which happens to be the IP address of my web server/computer.
It’s just like a phone book for web sites.
How DNS Works
What happens is that you type in a domain name into your web browser, IE or Firefox or whatever. When you press enter, your computer tries to figure out what IP address that domain name is located at. It asks a DNS. It gets the IP address back from the DNS, then it goes and asks the server, computer at that DNS for the web page. It’s a two step process. Once it gets the IP address, it remembers it for a while, so it doesn’t have to ask again for a while.
From all of this, you see the whoever owns the DNS, owns the world, or at least your web site. It’s all about control.
Log into where you registered your domain name and see if there is a place to make changes to the DNS. If you have a hosting company manage it for you, see if there’s a place in the admin pages to make changes.
You don’t have to know all the details about how to do it, but you should have access to it.
I’m a nice guy and I’ve registered domain names for clients in my own name just to save them the technical difficulties. They just wanted to pay me and have it done with. That’s fine. I’ll do everything I can for my clients.
I’ve heard of other people having trouble with having access and control.
I know it’s a convenience/knowledge vs access/control issue. I know you just don’t want to deal with it. But you should at least know how to do it.
The more you rely on other people, the less control you have.
You should at least be able to log in and make changes yourself if you want to.
If you can’t do that, then you don’t have control of your domain name or your web site.
Posted in DNS |
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
Since the weather has been bad, I haven’t been riding my bike at the beach as much I used to. When I say it was “bad”, I mean that it got overcast and in the 60s, with maybe a little rain. I do live in Southern California near the beach. We have expectations.
I had to run an errand in Santa Monica a week or so ago, and I thought it’d be great to ride up there by the pier. When I got there, I grabbed the bike from the back of the truck and found that it had a flat rear tire. I had to drive home and fix it. I’ve never done that before, so it was a good learning experience for me. Part of what I had to do was loosen the brakes so I could get the new, fixed wheel back on the bike. I figured it all out and got it all working again. I had a huge sense of accomplishment.
I do live in Southern California near the beach. We have expectations.
When I finally got back on the bike for a ride at the beach, it was a windy day. I felt like I was riding against the wind going North AND going South. I wear a heart monitor so I don’t work too hard, but this day, I was working hard and my heart rate was a lot higher than my friend the trainer would like to see it. I cut the ride short because I was out of breath and working too hard.
The next two rides were also like that. Some wind, high heart rate, and a ride cut short because I was done. I was struggling, out of breath, and sore.
The forecast was for rain, so, instead of leaving the bike in the back of the truck like I normally do, I bought it in the house. I noticed that the rear wheel wasn’t turning very easily. I looked closer and saw that the rear brake was adjusted too tight and was rubbing on the wheel. A lot. I guess I missed that detail.
How many details have you missed? What little thing that you always thought was fine is not fine? When was the last time you checked out the simple things on your web site? Is it listed in the local directories? How many backlinks does it have? Do you have an XML sitemap? Do you have a Google Webmaster account? When was the last time you checked your stats?
Maybe it’s time to check the brakes.
Posted in DNS, SEO |
Friday, March 27th, 2009
A domain name is worth whatever it takes to acquire it from it’s current owner. Is it worth that much to you? Maybe not.
The primary areas where there is value in a domain name for a business owner is in “ease of use” and in search engine traffic.
Ease of Use
If your business name is “Joe’s Bar and Grill”, then it’s easy for people to remember www.joesbarandgrill.com. It’s recognizable and easy to tell a friend. You don’t have to think too hard to know what to type in to find that web site. This domain name would be worth a lot to Joe, the guy who owns the bar and grill.
Search Engine Traffic
The stuff of SEO. If you have keywords that you want to be found for in your domain name, then you get points for SEO. Google likes to see those keywords in the domain name. Having them in order is even better.
As a business owner, those are really the only two factors that add value to the domain name.
Now, there are other factors that also add value, but perhaps not as a business owner. The less characters in the name, the more valuable. I can only imagine that it’s harder to get those and that more people want them, so supply and demand drives the price up. If a domain name can be used by more people, then the demand goes up with the price. None of these reasons interest me as a business owner.
If there is some sentimental value for the owner, then you will not be able to buy the domain name from them, even though it’s not worth as much to any one else. This whole post was prompted by a recent offer I got to by this domain name. It’s got a value on the open market, but it’s also my last name. I registered it on June 18, 1995. In those days, it was free to register a domain name. It was one of the first I had ever registered. (Wow. 14 years already? Time flies.)
I don’t want to sell this domain name. I can’t say I would never sell it, because realistically, if some rich person offered me enough money so that I didn’t have to work for a few years, I might take it. But in the meantime, it’s mine.
I’ve seen good domain names wasted by people who park them and hope to make a big cash score by selling them. There’s more value in developing them that in selling them. I own survivor.com, so naturally, as a fan of LOST, I talked to the guy who owns lost.com. He wasn’t interested in selling it or developing it. He’s done a bit with it now, but not as much as he could have. I also had a friend that was into Zydeco music. That domain is for sale on a parked web page. They want a bunch of money for it. Waste of a good name. Oh, well.
My advice is to get a good name that’s available. Make it unique. Make it yours. Make it easy to remember. Use keywords. Use your name. It won’t cost you much and you’ll get good results. Making money is the reason we’re in business, so keep your eye on that prize.
thanksforreadingmywebsite.com is available.
Posted in DNS |
Friday, March 20th, 2009
Search Engine Results Pages = SERPs
Who knows what magic algorithm Google uses to calculate what to return on those search pages? I’ve read about them. I’ve studied them. I’ve tested them. I don’t understand them. The more I know, the more I realize how much I don’t know.
I have a site that I’ve been trying to get ranked high. Per my research and everything I know about the on-page and off-page SEO and the competition, it should be doing pretty well. When I published it, it was #8 on the first page. Since then, it’s been slowly moving backward.
Down, down, down, into a burning ring of fire. – Johnny Cash
It’s been beyond page 3 for the last week or so, i.e., it doesn’t exist. I was bummed. What was I doing wrong? I knew a couple things I could do to make it better. I needed to work on the off-page back-links. I’ll get to those after some client work that needed to get done.
I check again this morning and it’s back on the first page! #10 with a bullet! I do some research on it and it seems that Google rolled through another one of my sites and recorded a bunch of links from those pages.
I guess my point is that random chance still has something to do with how you are rated on Google. The more I know, the more I realize how much they don’t know. They apparently are not quite networked with God yet, so they don’t quite know everything, all the time, everywhere. Yet.
If you are doing the best SEO you can and not getting the results you expect, give it some time. Time seems to be the great equalizer. Random chance will settle down over the long haul and the trends will stabilize.
You’ll get there. It will just take a while, or maybe a bolt of lightning.
SERP Position by Date
| Date |
Position |
Page |
URL |
| February 26, 2009 |
9 |
1 |
www.site.com/ |
| February 28, 2009 |
9 |
1 |
www.site.com/ |
| March 1, 2009 |
8 |
1 |
www.site.com/ |
| March 2, 2009 |
16 |
2 |
www.site.com/ |
| March 3, 2009 |
18 |
2 |
www.site.com/ |
| March 4, 2009 |
18 |
2 |
www.site.com/ |
| March 5, 2009 |
17 |
2 |
www.site.com/ |
| March 6, 2009 |
16 |
2 |
www.site.com/ |
| March 7, 2009 |
25 |
3 |
www.site.com/ |
| March 8, 2009 |
25 |
3 |
www.site.com/ |
| March 11, 2009 |
25 |
3 |
www.site.com/ |
| March 12, 2009 |
24 |
3 |
www.site.com/ |
| March 13, 2009 |
Not in first 30. |
Not in first 3. |
No Pages Found |
| March 15, 2009 |
Not in first 30. |
Not in first 3. |
No Pages Found |
| March 17, 2009 |
Not in first 30. |
Not in first 3. |
No Pages Found |
| March 19, 2009 |
Not in first 30. |
Not in first 3. |
No Pages Found |
| March 20, 2009 |
10 |
1 |
www.site.com/ |
Posted in DNS, SEO, Wordpress, free |
Monday, January 5th, 2009
In the recent debate on how evil Network Solutions is, I neglected to give you the non-evil alternatives.
JumpDomain Whois
The easiest thing to do is go to an old registrar that quit answering my emails so I moved all of my domain names away from them. They had non-existant customer support, so I’m sure they won’t mind us using their tools.
https://domains.jumpdomain.com/whois/whois.cgi
Go to the URL above and put in your domain name. Hit Submit Query. It will also return all of the DNS info. Bookmark that page. I use it all the time. It’s by far the easiest and fastest way to look up available domain names without getting into trouble.
Whois?
First, if you are a Mac user (and I won’t get into that religious debate now), if you go into your utilities folder, there is an application called “Network Utility”. If you open that up, you’ll see all of the tools listed across the top. Click on “Whois”.
You can type in the domain name you want to check on and click on the “Whois” button. It will return all of the DNS info for that domain name or it will say “No match for…” the domain name you are looking for.
Terminal Whois on a Mac
If you are brave, you can open the Terminal application and type in “whois” followed by the domain name. That will also give you the DNS info.
Posted in DNS |
Saturday, December 20th, 2008
I ran into a situation where I had some old hard coded pages that I needed to drop into a WordPress site. The pages can coexist with Worpress just fine, but getting them to interact was a little harder.
I added the bit of code that would then display the menu.
Each page already had a PHP include for a menu file, which at that point was a hard coded bit of HTML. At least I could change the menu for 20 pages easily by changing one file.
The next step was to get those 20 hard coded pages to use the same menu that I was using in the WordPress theme. I needed to change the content of that included file.
Here’s how I did it:
I took the index.php file that WordPress uses to do all of it’s magic. I copied that file over to the location of my existing menu.php file, replacing it. My new menu.php file now has the same content as the WordPress index.php file.
<?php
define(‘WP_USE_THEMES’, false);
/** Loads the WordPress Environment and Template */
require(‘./wordpress/wp-blog-header.php’);
?>
<!–start meu–>
<tr>
<td colspan=”6″ align=”left” valign=”middle”>
<div id=”navmenu”>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_pages(‘title_li=&depth=1′); ?>
</ul>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
<!–end menu–>
Where it says to “define(‘WP-USE-THEMES’, true);, changed it to say false. This is where is can get all of the information, the variables, the values that WordPress has to offer, without all of the themes and HTML stuff along with it.
I added the bit of code that would then display the menu. That is between the comments. It adds a <tr>, because this is going into old school table designed pages. This table row will have a div whose ID is “navmenu”.
The actual WordPress tag for the menu will not have a title and it will only display the top level of pages; depth=1. Here’s the WordPress menu tag that I used on the whole site:
When this whole file is included in the static, existing, hard coded PHP file, it will display the existing menu for the whole site. I can add a page or change the name of a page and it will be reflected on these static, hardcoded, pages that are not part of the Worpress theme world.
Pretty cool, huh? Saved me a bucket of work trying to convert all these existing pages into WordPress with a new template for each page.
Here’s the method in work. Look at the “Portfolio” pages on this site:
http://www.flowerart.biz/
I also wanted the highlight to happen on that parent menu item. I couldn’t get the “child_of” to work, since these are not actually pages in WordPress, so I had to look at the “page-item-14″ since that parent page will always have that class. I added this line to my style sheet: .page-item-14 { background-color: #DBE1BB; } It’s not the cleanest way to do it, but it works and I don’t know any other way around it without putting each of those pages into WordPress.
Posted in DNS |
Saturday, December 13th, 2008
1. ICANN accreditation
Check to see if your domain registrar is accredited by ICANN. Don’t use the registrar regardless of the prices or their offerings if they aren’t. ICANN should ensure that you receive professional, stable, reliable service from a reputable provider. They can help with problems that may arise.
2: Customer Support
There maybe be occasions when you need help transferring domains, delegating administrative permissions, or just renewing existing services. You should know that their technical support is capable enough to help you out. Most have toll-free telephone numbers. Review their support policies. Some offer live chat as well as live telephone support.
Well Designed Tools
3: Well Designed Tools
Trying to make sense of confusing DNS configuration tools can quickly prove overwhelming, particularly in the middle of a crisis. Even if you have to test a domain registrar’s DNS tools using a practice domain, getting familiar with a registrar’s DNS configuration tools and how to use them before working on a live site can prove invaluable. Don’t use a registrar whose DNS tools are difficult to access or understand.
Posted in DNS |
Saturday, November 1st, 2008
The Internet is a bunch of computers that all send little packets of data back and forth between each other. The computer that you are reading this on is one of them.
Each computer must have some sort of identifier so that it knows where to send the data to and so that other computer knows where to send it back to. These identifiers are called “IP Addresses”. IP stands for “Internet Protocol”. The address itself looks like this: 63.74.159.145. I’m sure you’ve seen something like that somewhere before.
But when you want a web page, you don’t tell your web browser to go get data from an IP address. You use a “domain name”, like “www.google.com” or “www.walton.com”. That domain name needs to be “resolved”. It’s got to be translated into an IP address so the data knows where to go. That all happens behind the scenes.
I’ll go through all the steps that happen so you’ll know what you need to do to get your own domain name set up without being taken advantage up by low life registrars. More about them later.
When you type in a domain name into your browser and hit enter, your computer goes and asks another server, called a “DNS” or “Domain Name Server” what the IP address is for that domain name. When your computer knows the IP address, it sends off the request and receives that answer back. In this case, the request is for a file that creates the web page in your browser.
Before I go farther, two terms you need to know are “client” and “server”. Each is a computer that can talk to other computers. The difference is that a “client” sends a request, while a “server” responds to requests. One asks and the other answers. Any computer can be either, or both, a client and a server.
Web pages are only one type of request, but probably the most common type. There are time servers that only respond with the time. There are Instant Message servers that sit between two people and send IMs to each of them as they are received. DNS responds to domain names with IP addresses.
So how does that DNS know what IP address is correct? From the “Root Servers”, of course! (No, they don’t serve roots.) There are 13 root servers that contain all of the information for each domain name that has been registered. Yes, they are pretty critical.
When a request for a domain name is received by a root server, it only knows which DNS to go ask for the IP address. DNS servers (Yes, the S is redundant, but who wants to call them “DN servers”?) are also called “name servers”.
Too many technical names? I think I got them all out so I can stop now.
The DNS are located all over. Anyone can have one. I have one here. Anyone can provide the service for you if you really wanted. Now, the DNS manages the relationship between the domain name and the IP address. Root servers know which DNS to ask and the DNS knows the IP. There are local DNS for each computer that needs to look up stuff. There are DNS that have authority over specific domain names.
The root servers get their information from “domain name registrars”. (That’s not really a technical name, so it doesn’t count.) You’ll hear people talking about their “registrar”. GoDaddy.com is one. Networksolutions.com is also one, but they are evil, so NEVER, EVER use them for anything. Did I mention that before?
A registrar will charge you some money per year to register your name. They usually provide a web interface so that you can manage what the name servers are for that domain name. They might provide the DNS for you and they’ll let you manage that too. The strength of that interface and what it will allow you to do is very important.
So, to review, you type in a domain name into your web browser. Your web browser asks the local DNS what the IP address is. If the local DNS doesn’t know, it asks the Root Server, which then tells it which DNS has authority for that name. Your local DNS then asks the DNS with authority, which then responds with the correct IP address. The web browser then sends off the web page request to the proper web server to get the web page.
All of that happens in the blink of an eye, which is a technical term for “under 200 milliseconds”.
Posted in DNS |
