Very slow checkout

[harlequin]

cheers to that

thanks, im sorry if i get a little precious about my choice of servers, they are like my little babies, really, i am quite odd indeed..

steve

[Sly9er]

I thought I did!

[harlequin]

your not really sad now are you SLY9er ?

and im sure your love for your servers is deep... ooopsss sorry alistair for continuing on..

alastair, im sorry if you think this is off subject and getting in the way of something more serious, but the fact remains, the original guy asked for help and his website still appears to be crippled 1 month he was advised to jump ship...

im outta here..unless i can be of any use...im not hard to find..

steve

[pinbrook]

One last comment

I don't think the issue over whether a server is windows or unix is the over riding issue here. It is how the servers are managed.

As Steve says there are many cheap and cheerful hosts out there with unlimited everything. These hosts are a lottery, normally everything is ok until it goes wrong, then it is a nighmare.

the ones that charge abit more are normally the ones who have realistic charges and will still be running servers in a year or so,

The point about UK hosting for UK sites is a valid one, I too have pulled sites in from US hosting in order to get UK SE listings.

if you have a com domain name and US hosting, you will not get into UK SEs

if you have co.uk and US hosting you may get in but with a struggle

[harlequin]

engines

and as we understand it, if you have a .co.uk domain and host in the uk you will find it harder to get results on the google.com domain....although if you use a .com and have a host in the uk then google.com (the global variant) will treat you the same as anyone from anywhere and give you the same chance to be listed on google.com

so, for uk sites, host in the uk and try to obtain the .com and .co.uk variants of your domain, especially the .co.uk variant... this gives you the all round best chance of decent results.

we sucessfully split our google page rank between the .com and .co.uk variants of our site months ago and you do get registered for both..visit the google section of www.webmasterworld.com for more info on most things google..also www.seochat.com and www.google-dance.com

i suppose its a little more like true shopping now in that if you wish to trade in a country you will really probably having to host a website in that country...alls fair in love and business etc...

and i think this is still all relevant to this post as uk traders need to consider carefully exactly where they host their sites if they are to be truly successful.

steve

[jonwilliams]

My goodness...you guys have been busy while I was in bed!!

Do I get a prize from Actinic....60 something replies and 600+ views of the thread I started! Must be a record ...

Even though my site is still not working, I have no way of telling whether this is a Unix problem or not. When the site first went up on Unix, it DID work (albeit shortlived) and the original checkout speed problem seemed cured. There are other advantages I can see to Unix (although I don't know whether these are just at my host) such as online stats, online control panel for setting up domains, email addresses etc, webmail. So thanks for the offer Harlequin, but I'd prefer to stick with it and try to work out what the problem is.

Thanks to those who have offered to take a closer look - I will be taking you up on your offer because I am almost at my wits end. I thought I'd be clever by designing a nice bespoke template (which is not bad for an amateur I think) and using all the extra actinic bits I could use, but it really seems to have backfired. Plus having splashed out on the Developer version as I have more sites I want to do, I am a bit cheesed off with the whole thing to say the least.

Thanks for the useful comments about SEs too.

Any more ideas about the problem....?!

Thanks
Jon

[wfl]

The site does work, it did last night and it is not too slow. Even the bloody perl script seems to work OK.

You can go to it and enter via the front page links no problem.

But then some very basic html links don't work.

That is not down to the server it is down to pathing and file naming.

For instance on this page http://www.globaholic.com/acatalog/ind.html the link to incense doesn't work because http://www.globaholic.com/acatalog/incense.html doesn't exist.

We are not looking at server issues here. We are looking at pathing or naming issues.

I think Jon needs to go back and look at some basics on the customisation and hard coding he has done.

[Jenny]

However, I am still here with my windows 2003 server (ok on older servers) checkout/perl problems but to move to linux I have to set up some binary codes to cope with the guys affilaite software and that's greek to me.

Is anybody else working Ok on Envisage Microsoft windows 2003 servers ok? As I say my older windows servers are fine!
Jenny

[jonwilliams]

Well it's not working from where I am sitting....either at the day job (where I am now: IE 5.5 through a corporate firewall, and tried Netscape 7 as well) or at home on IE6 on a 56k dialup.

Thanks for pointing out more hardcoded errors. I did change some file names to see if that had any effect, and I need hardcoded links in places as I have duplicate categories for most products (based on product type and country of origin) (Actually I am going to change that anyway as it is too confusing). But that is NOT the main problem. I still can't get at any of the pages via actinic-generated links from the home page (either from the dropdown menu or from the images on the left which are brochure fragments linked to sections.

So how come sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't?

Jon

[harlequin]

just for 't' record

john, i really hope you sort your issues out and get your site working...i can still hear the note of disparity in your voice and if you were having trouble with ANY host or ANY type of server we would probably offer a temporary 'shelter' from the storm of obtaining reasonable, working hosting..

the facilities you mention in my opinion should be offered by any serious webhost and of course come as standard over at our place...

the record straight part is that, having just said all of that (and the above posts), i must point out we are not 'sharking for your business' just appreciative that 1 month ago your site worked and utilised asp on a windows server and something went wrong and if thats the case and you still have copies of where you had gotton to at that point, i am almost 100% sure we could have you live and trading in far less time than it takes to change the domain name over...if you are relying on income from the webshop it would give you a month or two depending on how much you flattered us to sort something long term out whether with us or anyone else.

with any luck though you will get sorted now you are almost there with the wealth of cracking advice here....and enjoy some stability.

knowing my luck, i shall spend the day attending to windows problems for my cockiness!

steve..

ps. jenny, if your windows 2000 servers are the only ones working fine why do you need to move or upgrade them...is there some compelling reason to go 2003 or Linux?

[jonwilliams]

Thanks again for the offer Steve and I know you're not just "sharking".

I really appreciate all the help I am getting from some obviously very well qualified people, but we still haven't identified what the problem actually is so of course we don't know how to fix it.

I would prefer to try to sort out the problem first on my current server, as it would mean further (if minor) upheaval changing again and re-introducing the asp forms etc, but as time goes on I am getting more and more concerned. I have an absolute deadline of 1 September when we are attending a trade show, and at that point we will definitely need the site up and running as we will be giving the address out in literature/business cards etc.

Jon

[harlequin]

tell ya what, you can send me a snapshot if you like, i will upload to my server, and simply test if site and links start working,

if it works on my server, or i suppose even, doesnt , i would then happily see if i can spot what is wrong on yours for you...ps i did host actinic on unix for about six months at the start of our business so i am confident that if all the permissions are correct on your server, which i could verify, and if the settings in actinic are correct, and some other things like all the pm and pl files in your site1 folder are the correct versions, and your hard-coded elements are right, then the only thing after that would be your hosts overall setup of the machine left to blame..especially as its super-linux, it cant be anything else..


my one shining light in all of this is the knowledge that with some tweaks Actinic would probably run from a zx spectrum if you configured it correctly.. (and had a 32mb memory for it )

the offers open, if you do want to, then send a zipped up snapshot to steve@<removethisbitcosofspambots>harlequindomains.com

i will look at it today for you...AND happily get it going on a 'sniff' unix server if i can....a challenge to me is a challenge..

steve

[Jenny]

I just sent an email direct offering the same service but not on the server that does not work!! hoho.. Perhaps I could have some offers for the rest of my work load so I could sunbathe (unpaid of course)
Jenny

[harlequin]

jen

why you are compelled to use win2003 / Linux ? rather that the working win2k

im just curious,

steve

[jonwilliams]

Thanks guys. I really do appreciate your help - I am sending you a snapshot shortly.

Cheers
Jon