Part Time Webmaster Blog

First, don’t panic, the information you need is available and it will take you about 5 minutes to figure out the next steps.

Ok, so let’s take a step back. Why would your webmaster not give you your domain name information? Well, I don’t know the answer to that one. But, we can find out It could be payment issues, it could be they are registering the site as themselves. Sometimes companies want to hold this information as leverage for hosting. Regardless, if you own the domain name, it’s yours and you can get it back with or without them.

Let’s start investigating your domain name and see if we can find out what’s happening. Go to this whois domain name lookup page. Type in your domain name and take a look at the results. What do you see? Do you see your information or someone else’s? Chances are you’re on this page because your name is not on your domain name.

Below is our domain name information with some descriptions on what the results mean. Review this next section, then review (See the section after this one if you want to get your domain name back from your webmaster):

[The registrant information states who registered the domain name. If it's not you, it could simply be your webmaster. ]
Registrant:
Joe Bailey
2849 Paces Ferry Rd
Overlook 1, Suite 750
Atlanta, Georgia 30339
United States

[Registered through: This is the name of the company that sold the domain name. So, if you do need to track down your domain name, this is the place to start. "Registered through".
It is possible to check the site and find out your webmaster is billing you more that the site is charging. That is possible, as we do it sometimes as well. Why, we initially set up and probably registered it in bulk and, it's a little extra money for us. Plus, you never have to touch it.]
Registered through: JoesWebShack
Domain Name: PARTTIMEWEBMASTER.COM
Created on: 15-Jul-05
Expires on: 15-Jul-10
Last Updated on: 16-Jul-09

[Administrative contact: This is here for any typical updates such as billing or whois information updates.]
Administrative Contact:
Bailey, Joe infoATparttimewebmaster.com
2849 Paces Ferry Rd
Overlook 1, Suite 750
Atlanta, Georgia 30339
United States

[Technical contact: Who can answer the IT questions, probably your webmaster.]
Technical Contact:
Bailey, Joe infoATparttimewebmaster.com
2849 Paces Ferry Rd
Overlook 1, Suite 750
Atlanta, Georgia 30339
United States
(678) 222-1758

[Domain name servers: The server where your site is located]
Domain servers in listed order:
NS01.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS02.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

The information looks nice, but now you’ve found out someone else owns your domain name, what do you do? Call the registration company listed in the “Registered through” area and prove to them you own the domain name. It’s not that bad though. You may have to provide some company documentation. Don’t worry, this is more common than you think.

Well, we ran into the same issue, our site was running slow. Because of this, people were not even waiting to visit the site, so we did some investigating.

Here’s some background.

• We’re on a shared server, we’re growing though
• We have a lot of Word Press plugins installed
• It was taking the page approximately 3-5 seconds to load, way too much time

After some reviews from other sites, we started off by investigating what we had installed. We found that we had some redundant plugins and honestly plugins we were not using. We removed all of those miscellaneous plugins.

Next, we investigated 2 different plugins to help speed up the site, namely WP Super Cache and WP Cache.

We first installed WP Super Cache, after many tries, we were not able to get it to work. It might have been the fact we had to edit our .htaccess files manually and may not have done it correctly. So, after an hour we gave up.

Next installation was WP Cache. We installed this, turned it on, and we were up and running. So, if you’re looking to speed up your site, we definitely recommend WP Cache for it’s ease of use and simplicity. Thanks!

Well, there are tons of companies now that host WordPress sites. This site uses JoesWebShack.com. With JoesWebShack, we are able to host this site for less than $5 a month. In addition, we bought the domain name for less than $10. So, for less than $100 a year, we can run this site.

IMPORTANT: When you sign up, sign up for Linux hosting.

In addition, there is a service we used to have the hosting company install it. Essentially, you go into your admin to install, here are the instructions on how to install WordPress.

1. Log into your account
2. In the top navigation, choose Web Hosting then My Hosting accounts
3. Click on the Manage Account link next to your hosting listed.
4. Click on the big box stating “My Applications”
5. In the left hand navigation, click on “Blogs” this will open up a list of applications.
6. Click on WordPress
7. Look for the red button titled “Install Now”
8. Follow the instructions and your site will be running within the hour!

First, I’d advise you not to update your site.

Next, think back to when you were talking with your webmaster. Did they ever send you any usernames and passwords? Hopefully they did. Track these and find out what they are used for. Chances are, they may be for an administrative back end or your ftp information.

It’s best if you have access to an administrative back end. What is this? Well, many sites are out there running on software that allows you to change the pages on a website. All you have to do is log into this Administrative back end and make the changes. As a precaution, if you are going to make changes, copy the content to notepad before you make any changes. I’ve seen it many times where someone makes a change and hits save only to remove an entire page.

If you have ftp information, that’s good too. But, you’re about to enter the world of coding. Before you make any changes, download a copy of your entire site. You don’t want to break something and not have the ability to fix it. Also, not all programmers keep a local copy. You’ll find that sometimes changes are made directly to the site without a backup copy made.

I strongly advise against making any changes through ftp. The slightest change to any file could render your entire site useless. This of course is the worst feeling in the world.

This can be for a number of reasons, but typically it’s a reference. Here are a couple of steps I typically try:

• Upload your graphic to the directory on your server.
• Try altering the url address to pull up your graphic directly. For example, this link will show google’s logo for search http://www.google.com/images/nav_logo6.png
• If you don’t see your graphic, then I’d wonder if the file is uploaded. Check to make sure
• If you’re certain the graphic is there, compare your ftp directory names. For example, some systems are case sensitive. For example, your server directory may be images, but your address link has Images. This can also cause the issue. And, this is probably the number one issue.
• If you still don’t see your graphic, double check the reference in code. It has happened where people will reference graphics on their own computer in code.

Hope that helps!

• 
No Comments
 | Posted by admin | Categories: Generic, Hosting |