Problem Page
Descriptions of, and solutions to, problems with access to my website.
Having problems accessing parts of my website??
From studying the daily log of visits to my website, I'm aware that a few of you have experienced difficulties when attempting to access some of my webpages. I've described below some typical problems, why they happen, and what you can do to solve them.
If your particular problem isn't included, please e-mail me, John Ball, via my Contact Page, and describe the problem to me. I'll acknowledge your e-mail, and do my best to find a solution.
- File Not Found messages
These often mean that the page you are trying to access does not exist. There are a number of possible reasons why this could be:
- There's an error in the file-name you've entered into your web browser.
Check very carefully to make sure the address is absolutely correct. Webpage files end in either "htm" or html". On my website, the only webpage address ending in "html" is: http://www.jlb2005.plus.com/index.html - all my other webpages end in "htm".
- The file-name you've entered is one that I'm no longer using or have moved.
I'm continually developing my website, and this often means removing or renaming some of my existing files, or moving them to a different location on my website. If you bookmark any of my webpages in your web browser's list of favourite sites, make sure you bookmark one of the "gateway" pages, whose addresses are rarely changed. The two permanent addresses are:
- There's a faulty link on my website.
I include many "external links" which connect with websites elsewhere on the World Wide Web. Some of these websites go off-line or change their address. I check all the external links annually (in April), but if you find that one of my external links does not work, please e-mail me via my Contact Page and let me know. I can then either correct the link or remove it.
- Website Not Responding
Occasionally, you may be unable to get into my website at all - not even through one of my two main gateway pages. If you can access other websites, but not mine, this could be because:
- My homepage server is busy.
The homepage server is the computer used by my Internet Service Provider (PlusNet) to store all its customers' homepages. You connect to the homepage server whenever you access my website. At peak times the homepage server may become overloaded due to heavy demand. If this is so, try again later.
- My homepage server is off-line.
This could be due to an unexpected fault on the server, or due to planned maintenance. PlusNet provides a reliable service and unexpected outages are relatively rare. When maintenance is planned, my ISP notifies me in advance and I place an advance warning notice on my "Website News" page.
- Display Problems
You may find that some of my webpages do not display properly, particularly when lots of images are involved. Images may be pushed over to one side, or text may not wrap round the images properly. This could be for one or more of the following reasons:
- Computer monitor screen resolution configured differently.
I design my webpages to be viewed optimally on a monitor displaying at a resolution of 800 x 600 pixels or higher. If your monitor is set to a lower resolution, e.g. 640 x 480 on an old 15 inch cathode ray tube screen, you may find the layout of my pages is disrupted. I have fine-tuned all of my webpages so they will not be badly affected by being viewed on different screen settings.
- Different text size or choice of font.
I compose my webpages using medium text size, and using the Times New Roman font. If you have different settings selected on your web browser, the text may occupy more (or less) space than I have allowed for. This may cause the layout to be disrupted.
- Web browser incompatibility.
I test my webpages using the two most popular web browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 7.0) and Mozilla Firefox (version 2.0). Although there are some differences between these browsers, I try to ensure that my webpages display properly on both of them. If you are using an alternative browser, or an earlier version of either of the ones I've mentioned, you may find the layout is affected.
I'd like feedback on this if possible - e-mail me at via my Contact Page with details.
- Slow Downloading
This could be caused by:
- Large or multiple files.
Some of my webpages contain 10 or 12 images, which unfortunately may take a minute or two to download when using a slow dial-up connection to the Internet. I try to strike a balance between having images of acceptible quality and images which download in a reasonable time. I've designed the pages so that text supporting the images will usually download quickly, so you at least have something to read while the images continue to download.
- Low data transfer rate.
Slow downloading can be caused by congested Internet traffic (try again later), and/or by limitations in your modem or dial-up phone link.
- Decoding problems.
A webpage may take a long time to display or fail to display if it is one of my encrypted webpages. For further details see Blank Webpages (below).
- Blank Webpages
Since April 2003, I have encrypted a number of the pages on my website to prevent the e-mail addresses they contain from being harvested by the web-trawling robots which add them to the mailing lists used by SPAM merchants. Most modern web browsers decode the encrypted webpages automatically, so you will notice no difference in their appearance on your screen. However, for large files the decoding process may take a few seconds to complete, longer if your computer has a relatively slow processor. You may therefore notice access to the encrypted webpages is delayed, and you may be presented with what appears to be a blank page until the decoding process is completed. In a few cases, your web browser program may fail to decode the webpage or may even stall completely. Please let me know if this happens to you.
I have only encrypted the webpages which contain significant collections of clients' e-mail addresses, namely:
Since 25 January 2008, I have been encrypting the files using version 7.5.3 of HTML Guardian Personal Edition, which does not suffer the earlier problems of slow decoding.
HTML Guardian Personal Edition is available as a free download from: http://www.ProtWare.com/.
I would value feedback via my Contact Page on any problems you encounter with my encrypted webpages.
- More problems and solutions will follow as and when necessary.....
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