Thursday, February 24, 2005

Mail

For some reason, my email has been really flaky sending anything lately.  I receive email just fine, but I can’t send anything.

So… if you’ve emailed me recently and I haven’t responded, I’m sorry.  I have a slew of messages sitting in my outbox.

(11) Comments
Posted by Owen at 0734 hrs
The Blog

  1. I’m not sure what’s causing that.  I think the server’s just been ornery lately.

    Posted by Jed on February 24, 2005 at 0739 hrs


  2. Yeah, it’ll work sporatically, but it seems to be getting worse.

    Posted by Owen on February 24, 2005 at 0746 hrs


  3. Shouldn’t you be filling in circles on a Scantron, Jed?  grin

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on February 24, 2005 at 0807 hrs


  4. thas ok owen we just figured you thought we sucked lol.

    regards
    gbfan

    Posted by gbfan001 on February 24, 2005 at 0842 hrs


  5. Need a gmail invite? grin

    Posted by Harvey on February 24, 2005 at 1008 hrs


  6. O-Dog,
    That’s odd, I just had the same exact problem for about 3 days.  I finally changed my settings from my website smtp to SBC Yahoo’s (my isp) smtp settings.  And as soon as I clicked “okay,” everything shipped off as normal.

    If you are using the bootsandsabers.com outgoing mail server, you might want to think about switching to your isp’s. (if you have SBC the setting is smtp.sbcglobal.yahoo.com - if you have charter it’s mail.charter.net)

    This won’t affect your incoming mail, just your outgoing mail.

    BTW, Jed - B&S.com is always the slowest-loading site out of all that I visit.  I don’t know if it’s your host, if it’s a problem with expression engine, or if there are just so many people visiting the site… but it does get quite annoying.

    Posted by Fuzz Martin on February 24, 2005 at 1518 hrs


  7. Some ISPs, including SBC/Yahoo, are now filtering port 25 (SMTP), forcing you to use their SMTP server.  You might check your ISP’s help pages for SMTP or Port 25 to see if that’s what’s going on.  SBC, at least, will un-filter it if you request it through their “Report Abuse” webform.

    Hook ‘em!

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on February 24, 2005 at 1624 hrs


  8. Fuzz,

    Can you do a little test for me?  Try using the two column format (links at upper right of the main page) and let me know if it’s still as slow. 

    I’ve noticed the slowness on occasion, but I haven’t had any luck replicating it with any frequency or isolating the problem.  I think it’s just sloppy coding because I learned css and php on-the-job with this site, but I just haven’t had time to go line-by-line through the code and sort it all out.

    Posted by Jed on February 24, 2005 at 1818 hrs


  9. The main content loads quicker, but the blogroll and the rest of the sidebar still seem to trickle. I always come in to the individual comment pages via rss live bookmarks.  Unless you roll the 2 column format out sitewide, it won’t really have an effect on my browsing times.

    I have a suggestion regarding the 2 and 3 column format.  If you are calling the different formats with CSS, you should use PHP SESSIONS and/or COOKIES to hold the user in the format they choose. This way you could also pass either CSS style to the individual pages. (like this one.) That means users like me aren’t going from 2 columns on one page to 3 columns on the next… and if the user comes back an hour later they won’t have to click the “2 column” button upon my return.

    Of course, you could have already had that in mind…

    If you have any questions on how to ‘git-r-done,’ send me an e-mail.

    Posted by Fuzz Martin on February 24, 2005 at 1900 hrs


  10. Within the next couple weeks, I’m actually going to attempt a site-wide redesign that will cure the 2 v. 3-column problems (the 2-columns was a short-term fix to accomodate Mac browsers that don’t handle the floating columns very well), and hopefully speed up the load times. 

    I don’t really understand what’s causing the delay in the sidebars, unless it’s the blogroll.  It’s not one blogrolling session, but six, and when their servers slow even a little bit, it slows the loading of our blogroll to a screeching halt.

    Posted by Jed on February 25, 2005 at 0132 hrs


  11. I’ve always found it better to keep control of my own external links.  I tried blogroll once, but with pMachine I can add a link in less time than it takes to do the former. This also alleviates the problems that occur when you’re at the mercy of someone else’s servers.  You and Owen are big time now.  You shouldn’t need to bow to an external link management system. Besides, you paid for EE.
    Expression Engine and pMachine offer great ways to keep control of content. They’re not just for the ‘blogging’ end. It makes sense to take advantage of all of their features.

    Posted by Fuzz Martin on February 25, 2005 at 1144 hrs


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