Guest Posted July 26, 2002 Posted July 26, 2002 Hello, I filled out the submission form for my site, http://hemsell.com in the category Regional > North America > United States > Texas > Localities > K > Kingwood > Business and Economy It appeared to me as the most appropriate. If anyone could supply a status on it I would be grateful. TIA Todd R Hemsell
thehelper Posted July 26, 2002 Posted July 26, 2002 The site is waiting and there is no backlog in that category. I noticed you just submitted yesterday, I would give it at least one month and if you are still not listed follow up on this thread. BTW, if I enter hemsell.com I get a page not found error. Your full url works so I modified your submission to the full url. Good Luck and hope this helps -
Guest Posted July 26, 2002 Posted July 26, 2002 Thank you for checking, I am very grateful. However I am concerned about my site not resolving to http://hemsell.com Does that url not work for you? What did you have to do to get to the website? add a www ? Thanks again, Todd Hemsell
Guest Posted July 26, 2002 Posted July 26, 2002 Thanks, That really gave me a scare because that is how i submitted it ;/images/dmoz/purplegrin.gif
thehelper Posted July 26, 2002 Posted July 26, 2002 You should apply to be the editor of that category. There is a possibility it could take a while. I edit in Houston and I know the metro areas are suffering without editors. Good news is we had Texas down to zero unreviewed earlier this year. The bad news is that lasted about a day /images/icons/smile.gif
Meta windharp Posted July 26, 2002 Meta Posted July 26, 2002 And now http://hemsell.com doesnt work. Maybe you have some problems over there? Curlie Meta/kMeta Editor windharp
Guest just_browsing Posted July 26, 2002 Posted July 26, 2002 Its a little more complex than that. If one looks at the source of traffic to this site, its not actually about "Kingwood Computer & Network Support Specialists" The counter on the front page shows me http://extremetracking.com/open;ref2?login=hemhome and looking at "all keywords" makes one wonder what is going on here :-( A prize for the most plausible explanation "never realised that stuff was there", "must have been someone else put it there", "its a fair cop"
thehelper Posted July 26, 2002 Posted July 26, 2002 Its not directly linked so I don't see the problem here. The tracker could have been moved over as a temporary solution. I used my free trackers like that also.
Meta hutcheson Posted July 26, 2002 Meta Posted July 26, 2002 The "front page navigation" is seriously (ok then, totally) disfunctional. So the relevant question is not so much "when will this site be reviewed" but "how long will it spend in the queue before being deleted for being completely broken?"
thehelper Posted July 26, 2002 Posted July 26, 2002 Oh my, I guess you can tell I did not do much clicking around /images/icons/smile.gif Hutcheson is absolutely correct.
Guest Posted July 27, 2002 Posted July 27, 2002 Just alittle FYI, the three typical reason why a URL will work sometimes with the WWW, and sometimes without could be due to three main causes. 1.) Most Common - The site is new and has not fully propogated through DNS. (if your site is new give it time, on average 72 hours is the min. necessity, but i have seen this take longer) 2.) Common - A misconfiguration on the NS1 or NS2 zones for the server itself. (Nothing you can do here, but report it to your server administrator, unless you are the admin) 3.) Rare - the server has been setup for name based hosting, not IP based. Not that that is a problem, but if something goes wrong in the bind, you get this exact issue.(Again nothing you can do here, but report it to your server administrator, unless you are the admin) <-- I've seen this on verio servers. There are other reasons, but typically one of these three or a combo will fix the issue. Good Luck. If i can help you any further let me know.
giz Posted July 27, 2002 Posted July 27, 2002 Sometimes http://hemsell.com works and sometimes it doesn't, on a fairly random basis. Really odd. However when you do get there, most of the navigation doesn't seem to work as stated before. The source code for the page is also broken. Kingwood Computer wrote it, and claim to be Networking Support Specialists, but they certainly can't write valid HTML coding either: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fhemsell.com&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=HTML+4.01+Transitional Ugh!
Guest just_browsing Posted July 27, 2002 Posted July 27, 2002 Part of the problem may be that the site has been substantially altered from the one that existed till recently - see Google cache http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:eJHDNCRmHq4C:hemsell.com/+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 And it may be that the site owner has not had the time to check his ammendments
Guest Posted July 28, 2002 Posted July 28, 2002 Now that I have been thoroughly bashed let me respond to a few things. First of all the reason my site is not resolving as often as it should is that I am using granitecanyon as a free nameserver and it does not work very well. ns1.hemsell.net is the same server as my site hemsell.com is on and it does reply 100% of the time, one nameserver is not sufficient on the internet though. NetSol required me to list two of them. Second of all my site was for a long time just a "play and learn" are for my own personal use. I still have some of the content I had on it before, mostly pictures. the are located at hemsell.com/pictures I took the links to them and the links to my other 2 urls down (I left the pictures up because a few ppl still visit the site and like it). I changed the site and now intend to try and drum up some business repairing computers. The old pictures are no longer appropriate content to link to from the main page. I Have NEVER tried to make money from the site before. I have never (previously) submitted the site to ODP as a picture site nor anything else. It is now truly a website advertising my computer repair services and I submitted it as such. HTML coding is not the same thing as repairing hardware and operating system issues. I do not, nor do I advertise as doing webdesign. additionally google cache does not affect the dns issues. All of the links on the Main (index) page are functional and do point to other pages. The links in the Resources, Examples, and Other Stuff sections point to developed and functional content. Of the 7 links in the Services section: 3 point to valid, but not very well developed content, and 4 point to pages that I am at a complete loss of words for. I made my site from structure, then tried to flesh it out with writing. I have not written very much, but did not submit it into a category that really required much more than being (trying to be) a local business. As far as the kind suggestion I received to apply as editor of the category, I think that would be a conflict of interest and would like to avoid that accusation. At one point in time I became interested in editing a category in the Directory, but after reading postings and discussions about it on the internet, decided that I did not want to subject myself to the types of abuse and accusations that i saw about other people that were trying to contribute. Additionally I could not think of very good desciptions for the websites I thought needed to be added, just as I am having difficulty writing stuff for my own site. I work full time troubleshooting computers and rely on a few very relevant websites for information. none of those sites are in the directory and I thought they should be. But quite honestly it was not worth submitting myself to abuse to get them in there. I welcome all constructive criticism, but the implication that I am somehow trying to scam someone, I really resent that. That is precisely the type of person and attitude that made me withdraw from applying to be an editor. I realize you guys do get scammed quite a bit, but a person deserves the benefit of doubt before castigating him publicly. I hope you all have a nice week, Todd Hemsell
Guest Posted July 28, 2002 Posted July 28, 2002 Please note the date on this post on the google forum pre-dates anything I put on here. http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&c2coff=1&safe=off&threadm=c4cc2b8c.0207261055.98923da%40posting.google.com&prev=/groups%3Fhl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF8%26safe%3Doff%26group%3Dgoogle.public.support.general In It i pretty clearly state that I just re-worked the site. Also, If you want to see the complete history of any site I would suggest the web archive over google's cache any day. http://web.archive.org/web/*/hemsell.com there you can see all versions of any site. the asterics dentone when the modified date changed on the file. Todd
Guest Posted July 28, 2002 Posted July 28, 2002 Hi, I just wanted to clear something up: only the people with Editor, Editall, or Meta in their member titles are actually ODP editors. Some members of the public joined originally with questions and then stayed around to troll, but they're irrelevant. It *is* important to have your site working properly, and to make sure your server is performing as it should.
thehelper Posted July 28, 2002 Posted July 28, 2002 When your site is finished and ready to go resubmit. Your current submission was rejected for lack of content. This rejection should not prevent you from getting a fair review when you decide to submit again. Hope this helps -
apeuro Posted July 28, 2002 Posted July 28, 2002 ...Some members of the public joined originally with questions and then stayed around to troll, but they're irrelevant. Please try to avoid making overtly broad generalizations such as these. We value the contributions of everyone that posts here - whether they are ODP editors or not. Editors don't have a monopoly on knowing how the ODP works, and we are quite fortunate to have some non-editor members who care enough to share their knowledge with us - they are certainly not irrelevant. That being said there are trolls but they are easily spotted. Although, I haven't seen any instances of trolling in this thread.
old_crone Posted July 28, 2002 Posted July 28, 2002 Todd, if you want some help with your site, leave me a private message. I'm not an ODP editor but I do understand the guidelines for getting listed and I've developed and managed several business Web sites. Your site just needs a little tweaking, then it will be good to go!
Editall/Catmv lissa Posted July 31, 2002 Editall/Catmv Posted July 31, 2002 >>That is precisely the type of person and attitude that made me withdraw from applying to be an editor.<< Please don't think that becoming an editor automatically makes you subject to dealing with these types of people. This forum is frequented by both editors and general public who like to be vocal about issues. There are many, many parts of the directory that are quiet and non-controversial and the only people you interface with are other like-minded editors. >> I could not think of very good desciptions for the websites I thought needed to be added << A very honest assessment. However, a desire to help and a willingness to be mentored can overcome this handicap. There are formal mentoring programs and plenty of friendly editors to help you find your way. We would love for you to reconsider becoming an editor - if you wish, email myself, a Texas editor, or another editor in this forum, and we'll try to help! -Lissa
Guest Posted August 5, 2002 Posted August 5, 2002 Hello Everyone, I re-submitted my site after a thorough re-working of everything including DNS Server, HTML, and Content. The site should resolve 100% of the time now thanks to secondary.com (if they are not in ODP they most assuredly should be, an excellent free service) The HTML is all valid excepting the ie specific tags regarding margins. And there is enough content to explain all that we do. All links to "in development" pages have been removed. I appreciate all of the suggestions I received, if not necessarily the tone of some of them. One of the hardest things in life is to take good advice presented in a mean spirited manner. Particular thanks to thehelper and Lissa for the kind words and even tone. Now that I reveiw the replies, I do notice that *most* of the distrustful and mean spirited posts are from other members such as myself and not from ODP volunteers. If you do continue to experience DNS issues when trying to reach the site please reply to the post or PM me. I was unaware of it until I posted here. Regards, Todd Hemsell
giz Posted August 5, 2002 Posted August 5, 2002 Not required to be listed on ODP, but changing <script language="javascript"> to <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> will remove a couple more of the validation errors. Hope that helps! [JavaScript tutorials NEVER seem to mention this] Site access seems reliable today, and the whole thing looks and feels a LOT better than before; the navigation now seems to work (I didn't try every link though).
Guest Posted August 5, 2002 Posted August 5, 2002 Thanks! I had been looking for an example of that and was unable to locate one. I found numerous references to it, but no clear examples. I am trying to figure out how to get rid of the marnheight errors, I was thinking CSS, would that do it? Todd
giz Posted August 6, 2002 Posted August 6, 2002 There isn't a specific forum for HTML type questions on http://www.resource-zone.com/ but I have found the people on http://www.webmasterworld.com/ [in the "Browsers, HTML, and Web Page Design" forum] to be generally friendly and helpful on these topics.
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