I figured out that with my new hosting package of 300 gigs, I could "add on" domains - meaning I could MOVE sanadahiroyuki.com and jgraphicdesigns.com into my current package! Spent all last weekend talking to people on the phone and in forums to get sanadahiroyuki.com moved and working properly within the new hosting account. Because of the old host allowing the jgraphics domain name to expire, I have to wait about 10 days or so before I can get that site showing up, but I don't too much care about that at the moment.
Knowing that I have 300 gigs of space to spread around, it made me realize I could move the WebGallery and the SHIN forum up under the sanadahiroyuki.com domain name! This is the BEST thing that's come from having to go through all these changes, that and learning a LOT about backing up SQL databases and restoring them onto new servers. OMG! ;-)
And I haven't had a chance to mention it in here, but I managed to restore the ENTIRE WebGallery, with ALL of the 1,300 something photos, movie clips, etc - AND all of the memberships and view counts are intact. Having almost 400,000 file views really MEANS something to me and I like having that show up on the front page of the gallery. :-)
And the FORUM - it's HUGE now, so many more subject areas to write in. It's way more organized and I love taking extra steps to improve on it now. I've learned ways of adding "plug-ins" to the code base, which can help to administer the site so much better and I'm able to add new functionality that I think the members will just love - like being able to upload files and attachments straight to the forum, instead of having to upload their photos to some other site and then linking to them within their posts. (It would be more like what we are able to do here on VOX - MUCH nicer)
At first everything seemed so ... DEVESTATING to me, thinking I might lose years worth of work and love that I put into the Sanada-san site areas (they really were works of love for him and for his fans, some of the best friends I have ever made). SO many sentimental feelings behind what had been built over the years! But now I can sit back and think what I always think about difficult times ... everything really DOES happen for a reason. The problems opened my eyes and reminded me of just how much I LOVE doing this work. I am THANKFUL to have had my interests in web work revived. And it could not have come at a better time. I should have everything in place and at it's peak by the time Sanada-san's latest performances start showing. Sunshine, City, Rush Hour!!!! Very exciting!!!!!!
Ok gang, these are your key links to set as favorites:
http://sanadahiroyuki.com/forum/
http://sanadahiroyuki.com/WebGallery/
If anyone wishes to change links on their websites to point to the FINAL destinations of these sites, I solumnly SWEAR that these links will not change again!!! And I strongly suggest that the main site to link to would be http://sanadahiroyuki.com because that is where I will announce updates to any Sanada-san site areas and will make a more concerted effort to post links to news information (like pointing to Misty's site updates, etc.) I would very much like to think that new fans could go there first and then through the links on that main page, will be able to navigate to the forum, the webgallery, the performance listing, the translations and other things that are on the site about Sanada-san.
And my NEXT project is to update the main pages of sanadahiroyuki.com to match the look of the forum and the gallery. It will be something different (probably in a blog format) so that I can more effectively make announcements about site changes and be able to post links to new info on HSE or wherever news is hot. I'm really excited and eager to offer something new for the fans!
Ok, I'm off now to look at adding some plugins to the forum. I hope you are all doing well. I desperately need to put on the brakes for a while and read through all the posts that you guys have been posting in your blogs! I think that sounds like a wonderful way to start my day tomorrow. :-)
I'm so tired I can barely see how to type, but I wanted to give everyone the FINAL link to the LAST SHIN Forum!!!!!!!!!
http://starlit-designs.com/origshinforum/index.php
And be sure to read through this post that I made to give thanks to some very special people:
http://starlit-designs.com/origshinforum/viewtopic.php?t=290
Now, excuse me folks, I'm going to bed. I'll come back tomorrow at some point and give a little news about the WebGallery, but tonight ... it's ALL ABOUT THE FORUM. ;-)
CHEERS!
jgraphicdesigns.com came back up this morning. When I woke up and came in to log onto the internet, I find these emails with this HUGE PRINT all over them! ;-) They were both telling me that the old site was back up, that the forum was there with all it's old posts and everything. I couldn't believe it, but went to jgraphicdesigns.com and sure enough ... up come my old interface. I was in SHOCK.
Yesterday, some woman from Byteshack wrote to me and said they were assigning my support ticket to a new ticket (whatever THAT's supposed to mean) and that to correct the problem with my site, I would need to pay the amount on the invoice to renew my domain name. ALL the hair stood up on the back of my neck and I wrote to her that **I** did not allow my domain name to expire, because that was something that Dzones always took care of me. I told her I have emails to prove that people had helped me each year with the domain registration and that it was included in the price of my hosting package. :-O I told her that I was disputing the charge to the credit card and that my credit card company would be contacting them soon. I told her I would fall over backwards if I were to receive some kind of response from them, considering no one ever responded to my emails anymore. They closed threads that I opened in their support forum and no one would even ANSWER THE PHONE when I tried their support number.
Then she writes back and says, "You still need to pay the amount of the invoice." The hair was standing straight up on my head after reading that, so I wrote back ... "How does one pay for an invoice that they NEVER RECEIVED!???" and left it at that ... and now here we are. The site is back up. I'm so confused I can barely think straight and I find myself SHAKING as I try to back up the files that are out on the old site. I'm scared to death they will let it go down again and I'll never be able to access our precious files. I've written an official update of how I want to handle things going forward on this page:
http://starlit-designs.com/?page_id=19
There servers are still horrible and one minute I have access to pull files using FTP and then the next it goes down, so I'm currently sweating bullets, trying to get as much as I can as soon as possible. I'm thinking I might have better luck downloading files from the office tomorrow, but am still trying to get all I can with my slow internet connection now.
Before I head off of here, I wanted to thank Charo and Rei for their last comments and big thanks again to Misty for posting, yet another link (the link above) to HSE. If we survive all this, I think we'll have even better places to enjoy Sanada-san. :-)
I just typed the following out for Reiko, but thought others may want to know what's going on as well ...
I'm off from work for 4 days and have BIG plans of things that I will do to try to get visitors coming to the right places.
From work, I was able to upload and activate about 700 photos to the new WebGallery!!!! YIPPEEE! (I had an old backup of the site saved to my hard drive at work!!!) Then before I left the office, I had about another 500 photos being uploaded, so I'll be able to activate them here from home and then they will show up in the gallery. I'll be posting links all over the world to the new WebGallery today, so people will know that all is not lost.
I did get in touch with someone at Bank of America to dispute the charge of approx $143 that Byteshack charged me for the renewal of the site. So I'm not so worried about that anymore. I'm just hoping that the dispute of this charge will not cause problems with the sanadahiroyuki.com site. I'd say with that site being up and down like it is, I'm not getting my money's worth with that either, but I don't want to have it go completely down. I'm afraid when it comes time to renew that domain and hosting package in September, I'll probably lose it, just like I've lost jgraphicdesigns.com. :-O The greatest loss there, would be the loss of the domain NAME of ----> sanadahiroyuki.com. I think I'll talk to my new hosting company and see if they can help me MOVE that domain name from Byteshack to BlueHost.
Just to be clear, these are the most important links to remember:
http://starlit-designs.com
http://starlit-designs.com/shinforum/
http://starlit-designs.com/hsgallery/
MUCH to do ... I'm uploading the avatars and smilies to the forum right now. While those are loading I'll get out there and edit the main page of the sanadahiroyuki.com (SHIN) site to post the links from above. Hopefully the site will stay up long enough to allow me to make the change! :-O If it won't, I'll just keep trying ...
Wish me luck, hopefully by the end of this weekend, I can make it easier for people to find everything. I still have to change my links in the IMDB site, Gia's site and the Sunshine Fan Forum. If anyone can think of other areas where I might need to do it, will you let me know?
- - - -
Progress so far, this morning:
- Uploaded the avitars and smilies for the fourm, but have not activated them for use yet. (That is really the time consuming part of the whole ordeal.)
- Added a special page to the new starlit-designs.com site to explain what happened to the old WebGallery and SHIN Forum
- Added this page in as a link at the top of my navigation area, called "Hiroyuki Sanada Pages", so hopefully people can't miss it.
- Made a special post directing people to that new page, which DOES include the links to the newly created gallery and forum.
- Updated the front page of the sanadahiroyuki.com/home.html page to guide people to starlit-designs.com, which is where all news will be posted about the development of the gallery and forum
- Updated the Forum and Gallery links in the nav bar on the sanadahiroyuki.com/home.html home page to reflect the TRUE paths to the newly create forum and gallery.
- Updated my links on THIS page to reflect the TRUE paths to the SHIN Forum and WebGallery
- - - -
Things to do:
- Take a nap (HAHA)
- Go to the new forum and make some mention of the progress that's being made with the WebGallery and repost links LOUD AND CLEAR about where everything is at now.
- Activate the 500 or so photos that are hanging out in the WebGallery that cannot be seen yet.
- Activate the smilies and avitars for the forum
- Get out on the web and go to sites where I've posted links to my sites previously, to correct the locations of the gallery and forum
- Take ANOTHER nap!
- - - -
I know I'm bound to be forgetting things, so please be patient with me as I try to pull all this together ...
Hi Gang,
First let me comment on the sanadahiroyuki.com site. It IS up and then down and UP and then down. :O The new host is changing all the sites over to new servers, so it causes down time. Since they told me that they had two servers burn up on them, I don't get good feelings when the site goes down for any amount of time. I'm working on downloading everything that I can to my hard drive when the site is up though.
Now for the really IMPORTANT news. I bought the new domain and webhosting package. I've gotten no kind of refund from the old host and they do not even answer their damned PHONES. It's INSANE, but anyway, I'm getting rather excited about the new site and have decided that things will work out even if it will take a while to recreate the WebGallery. The sanadahiroyuki.com site is where the birthday card and the translations were housed and I have them backed up on the pc now. All that WILL be posted to the new site eventually. Note that word "eventually" keeps popping up. ;-)
So here's what I've done. I set up the new forum, the best that I could and made the following comments on Misty's blog to try to get the word out to fans:
- - - - -
WRITING IN ALL CAPS TO GET ATTENTION OF SANADA-SAN FANS!!!
Jamie here, to let everyone know that I did purchase a new domain name and hosting package. I have no idea if they will ever get my old site back up and things are not look good at all. My new domain is http://starlit-designs.com. Over time I will recreate the WebGallery with all the photos, movie stills and multimedia files, but that will take a lot of time.
For now I was, at least, able to load a new forum. It has the same graphic interface, but the structure is different, since I had a hard time remembering all of my old categories. And the really sick part is we have lost all our old threads (posts), so we have to start with an empty forum. But we HAVE ONE, at least. Hopefully, the topic structure will be interesting to the fans. Please go to the following URL to reach the new SHIN forum:
http://starlit-designs.com/shinforum/
(NOTE: All members of the old SHIN forum will need to register again on the new site.)
- - - - -
The main thing right now, is to try to make as many people aware that there is a new URL for a Sanada-san forum. Misty, I'm afraid not everyone will think to look in the comments of your last "site is down" post. Would you be willing to make a seperate post, mentioning the new URL for the new forum, I've set up? I HATE to be a pain, but I have a feeling that most anyone that would have gone to the old forum would think to go to your site when they see that the old site is down. It's sure where I would go first and maybe we can get a lot of old fans back, if they are able to see a post like this clearly???
Ok, I'm off to do some work that I'm supposed to do for my real job. :-O I'd SO much rather keep working on the websites. I MIGHT actually still have the old theme for the WebGallery loaded on my pc somewhere. That would be incredibly convenient!
Talk to you guys more soon ...
And THANKS to all that have been pulling for me to get a site back up for the fans!!!
Haven't heard a word from anyone at Byteshack since Saturday. :I I emailed them Sunday night and sent a long email last night. Guess I'll be calling them tomorrow. If I can just get them to make it so I can access my files, I'll start backing everything that I can up and I WILL transfer to a new site and then will cancel my service (or lack thereof) with them.
I won't dwell on this for now though. I'll continue to keep you guys posted on what's going on every few days.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Wanted to share some good news though. Rachel has set up a blog with vox now. She'll most likely want to invite eveyrone to her neighborhood and we can all be connected. I've just sent her an invite to the Sanada-san group. Maybe as she learns her way around in here, she can show Norene how to join. Maybe, little by little, we can get as many of the old SHIN members in here as possible and will be able to continue communicating through vox, while SHIN is in limbo. As I've said before, I really think this is a fun place to hang out for a change anyway.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ok, I'm off to work on a graphic project for one of my old bosses from work. I'll talk to you guys soon. Take care all.
(POST SCRIPT! I'm such an IDIOT!!! I just now saw that Norene's already joined up, but she didn't invite me to her neighborhood, so I didn't know she was on board with us already. I'd already sent Rachel a welcome, so I'm off to write to Norene now ...)
Feel not alone Reiko-chan and Issy-chan ... I get down about three paragraphs and I start feeling positively DIZZY. I think I just put that in here as an example of how insanely geeky the website world can be. This is why people NEED web hosts - good DEPENDABLE ones. All a person should have to deal with is picking out a domain name and picking out a package that is affordable, has enough space for the content, allows enough traffic (bandwidth), provides good scripts for things like forums, image galleries, blogs, shopping carts, chatrooms, etc - so one has goodies to play with, but above and beyond anything else one must read read read all the reviews they can to find out who has the best customer support. And we want good support beCAUSE, we want THEM to go in and diddle around with DNS settings, make regular backups, restore backups when needed and just be there ... to hold our hands when times get tough. I'm OVER trying to know every little aspect of server types, settings for this or that - just let me play with setting UP my site and let them do the dirty work! HA!
Latest news ... Aaron is trying HARD for me. I've received about three emails from him this morning. If he can get my site back up, I might stick with them. One thing that I do know is once he gets the dns settings in place, it will take at least 24 hours for the site to show up. That's not ByteShack's fault. That is just how long it takes that ICANN database or whatever to update a change. I read on one hosting site that it can take as long as 48 hours for that main database to update. :O
But now I have the fever to buy a new domain and hosting package, just because I want to build a new site on my new PC. :-O This is mearly an example of a shopping addiction that I must battle with. heehee
More news later ... ;-)
This is just GROSS and why I'm putting it in here, is almost beyond me. Maybe I think that if I put it in here I will refer to it in the future and maybe ... just maybe ... if I read it about 1,000 times, it will all start making sense. Right now, it makes me a little sick to even try to read through it just once. I do know about IP addresses, but that's about all I get from this:
- - -
DNS 101
Written by Dru Lavigne, DNSstuff Contributing Writer
Friday, 23 March 2007
While you probably use DNS every day, in fact you used DNS to find the webserver hosting this article, you may not be clear on how DNS works.
This article will cover some of the terminology used in DNS.
ICANN
Think of DNS as a global telephone book that computers know how to access. But instead of matching names to phone numbers, the global DNS keeps matches computer hostnames to IP addresses. This allows you to type a name such as www.google.com into your web browser and make a connection to the IP address 72.14.203.104.
It's important to ensure that the global DNS contains accurate information and that it avoids duplicate IP addresses or hostnames. This is the job of ICANN. From their FAQ page:
“The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is responsible for managing and coordinating the DNS to ensure that every address is unique and that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses. It does this by overseeing the distribution of unique IP addresses and domain names. It also ensures that each domain name maps to the correct IP address.”
root servers and TLDs
While the DNS is a global database, its contents have been distributed using a hierarchical format. The format looks like this:
Root . Top level domain . Second level domain . Hostname
When you compare that format to a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) it appears backwards. For example, in the FQDN www.google.com:
- www is the hostname
- google is the second level domain (SLD)
- com is the top level domain (TLD)
While resolving that FDQN to find its IP address, DNS will:
- query a root DNS server to find the IP address of the DNS server hosting the com portion of the database
- query the com DNS server to find the IP addresss of the DNS server hosting the google portion of the database
- query the google DNS server to find the IP address assocated with teh host named www
The list of DNS root servers can be found at root-servers.org; all DNS servers contain a copy of the file listing the root servers. You don't see the root in a FQDN as it is considered to be a silent or implicit dot at the end.
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) maintains the lists of TLDs. Some of the TLDs are by country name, such as us, uk, de, and jp. Others are the original TLDs such as com and org, and the newer TLDs such as biz and name. Remember, the TLD is always the last part of a FQDN.
zone and resource records
The SLD, or the middle part of a FQDN, is the portion that is purchased from a Registrar. For example, Google had to purchase and register the google name. (You can see who purchased the name and when by querying WHOIS—see the WHOIS article for details). When a name is registered, the Registrar is responsible for adding the new entry to the TLD database. In other words, when google was registered, the Registrar added an entry to the com database pointing to the address of the google DNS server.
Once an SLD is registered, the registrant becomes responsible for maintaining that portion of the DNS database and it will contain the DNS entries for the hosts belonging to the SLD. That area of responsibility is known as a DNS zone which is why you'll often see DNS configuration files referred to as zone files.
When configuring the zone, the DNS administrator adds entries describing the hosts that need to be found via DNS. These entries are known as resource records as they describe the type of resource. For example, an A resource record matches an IP address to a hostname, an MX resource record indicates that the host is a mail server for the domain, and an NS record indicates that the host is a DNS server for the domain. (additional resource records are described in detail in the resource records article)
TCP vs UDP on port 53
The DNS protocol uses port 53 for communications. Interestingly, it uses both the UDP and TCP transports. As a general rule of thumb:
- UDP is used when an FQDN needs to be resolved into an IP address
- TCP is used by the DNS servers within a zone to make sure they all have the most recent copy of the zone file; if a DNS server has an out-dated version, it will request a zone transfer over TCP 53
- Occassionaly the information needed to resolve an IP address is too large to ship in a UDP packet and is sent in a TCP packet instead
When configuring a firewall, UDP 53 has to be left open so FQDNs can be resolved to IP addresses. However, many administrators block TCP 53 entirely or restrict it to the IP addresses of that zone's DNS servers. This is because a DNS server outside of the zone has no legitimate reason to ask for a zone transfer. However, blocking TCP 53 will prevent the occasional name resolution packet that used TCP from entering the network. This is the reason why you will see a warning in “TCP Allowed” section of the DNS Report if TCP 53 is being blocked by a firewall.
Aaaaah, something that I didn't even think about ...
The CEO guy wrote me back while I was asleep (that was a pretty quick response, considering what they're going through right now - I'm kind of impressed). He ran a check on my DOMAIN NAME status. I purchased my domain name through Dzones AND my hosting package through them. Dzone's automated system may have considered my domain name renewal to be delinquent (since that renewal comes due at the same time that the hosting package renewal comes due). Both fees are paid together in the same payment each year. Since I made the payment and then ByteShack was supposed to reverse the payment the system may have considered the domain name as not having been paid and that could have screwed everything up.
Then he started talking about DNS settings and that flew right straight over my head. He said something "lapsed" and asked if I reset some settings and suggested that I change the settings to this or that and I was like ... WHAAAAAT - DUH - Don't speaky yo language Dude! LOL! Had to shame myself by replying to his email to say I had next to no idea what he was talking about and if any changes needed to be made, it would have to be them doing it. :-O
But what I did get from his email was that he was saying the site had NOT been hacked. It was what happens when a person's domain name dues has not been paid.
As for your questions, Michi ...
Yes, the forum and the webgallery both used the PHP open source coding language. And yes, sites that use this language can be vulnerable. Vox is using PHP for their blog formatting. HowEVER, if one keeps their site code very up to date, constantly upgrading to new versions of PHP they can avoid a lot of attacks, because the developers of this code are always creating new versions that use better security methods. I was safe for a long time and maybe still am, since the forum did not actually get hacked, but Aurora was running a very old PHP package. I wanted to upgrade it for her, but was not hearing from her when I'd email her, so was afraid to try to upgrade it without her permission and so ... Hiro Talk was vulnerable and we saw the end results. But really, I believe that I need to upgrade the SHIN forum and the WebGallery to use new code, but it is very tedious work that scars the crap out of me. :O
Still living up to my geekette title ...
Now I'm going to head off and read about "DNS settings". How exciting. 5:00 a.m., can't sleep and off to read techie stuff. That's kind of SICK. I really do need a life.
Bye for now.
(Oh and Michi, don't worry about making that post to your site, afterall. I have a feeling that ByteShack is going to straighten this mess out within the next 24 hours or so. Arigatou gozaimasu AGAIN! ;-)
When I said gather around me, I had no idea what sweet kindness and generosity I would encounter when I came back into vox. You people are just amazing and I send HUGE HUGS to all of you.
Here's the update that I promised. I'm still in limbo to some degree, but I have, at least, found out that the money that I paid to "thesupportguys" was actually a company that works for ByteShack, so they were not some crooks posing as ByteShack. I managed to talk to the CEO of ByteShack on the phone after trying to call them time and time again today from work. I was shocked to get an answer from a human being, but to actually speak to a CEO was even more surprising. Probably shouldn't be too shocked, because as my friend Brent from work said, they probably only have an employee base of maybe FIVE people!!! ;-)
Anyway, dude asked me to email him the payment confirmation email that I got from the SUPPORTGUYS and he'd make sure that my account status was straightened out. He told me about how the supportguys are kind of like ByteShack's money collecting group. That was something of a relief.
However, friends - he told me that ByteShack would NOT post an advertising page on anyone's website, if they were late making their payment and they would not post an advertising page if they were doing technical work, like moving websites to new servers. We're both in agreement that the site has probably been hacked. :-(
So ... I have a support ticket in to have the site restored from a backup. It may be quite a while before they are able to do the restore because they are bogged down, moving websites to servers all over the place and dude talked and talked for the longest time (saying things that were so far over my head that some of my hair turned white) about how two of their servers were crashing on them over and over again and how some company actually sold some of their servers out from under them and on and on ... he mentioned something about losing some data on some of those crashing servers and that sounded fairly terrifying.
Here's the deal - if they can manage to get my site up at all, I'm going to back the whole thing up to my computer. I already have ALL of the photos, movie clips and everything that was up in the WebGallery on my pc and also saved on an external hard drive AND on the new PC. Our goodies are well preserved, but my concern is the fact that reloading them to the web will take a loooooooooooooooong time, considering I have to use a 56k modem to upload with. :O But it is doable. As for the forum, I cannot duplicate what we have. There's no way to load posts into a new forum. We'll have to start from scratch. I can reconstruct the format of the forum - like the different categories and such, but we'll lose the threads of conversations, which is almost too sad for words. I might find a way to take the database that contains the posts and make a huge spreadsheet that we could go back and look at. yes ... I could do something like that, I'm almost sure. (Thinking out loud here)
Please forgive me ... I'm rambling. Misty I thank you with all my heart for your offer to share your site space. What an incredibly generous offer! But here is my actual plan:
- Let ByteShack restore my site
- Backup and download everything that I can from the jgraphicdesigns.com site
- Buy a new domain name and hosting package - (Misty, who is your web host? I've been researching web hosts all day, looking for the best package at the best price. Turns out that now-days one can get HUGE sites for way less than what I've been paying for mine!)
- Cancel my account with ByteShack, which will mean that they will refund me a large part of what I paid for that annual renewal fee, if I act quickly enough.
- After that, it will take me a good amount of time, but eventually I can create a new Sanada-san WebGallery and Forum.
Tonight I am trying to think up a new domain name to buy. It's probably going to be something boring like JLHiner-Designs.com or maybe SHIN-Design.com ... unless YOU GUYS can think up something cool and original!!! ;-) I don't want it to be just about Sanada-san, because it will house my own personal art and such as well as my special sections dedicated to him.
- - -
Misty, I was actually going to ask if I might be able to get you to post a link on your site that would point to a page where I will write out what's going on with the WebGallery and the SHIN Forum. I'll have it posted on the actual SHIN website sanadahiroyuki.com. So far that site is still intact and unhacked. I can at least post updates about the new site's progress for the fans. It is not a large site, so I cannot house all the photos and a new forum there and I'm worried that the fact that it is hosted by ByteShack, it too may eventually have problems. But anyway, THANK YOU AGAIN MISTY, for making a post about the problems I'm having. I just know that if they hacked jgraphicdesigns.com once, they can do it again and THIS is the reason why I want to move the whole site and start fresh with hopefully better security. We know how Hiro Talk was hacked several times over and over and eventually it was too much for Aurora to fix. I have to make some kind of move NOW, I think. Now we just have to cross our fingers that ByteShack can restore the site so I can get in there and try to do some work with the content.
UGH, I am TIRED now. I best get off of here and try to get a bit of sleep. I'll talk to you guys more very soon.
Thanks again to EVERYONE for your support!!!!!!!!!!!!
on HiroSan