I just thought I'd share a service notice for any customers using Linkpoint as their credit card processing gateway.  You should of received this notice already, but just in case:

LinkPoint Scheduled MaintenanceSunday April 29, 2007 12:00 AM -- 4:00 AM MDT

Dear Valued Client,

We will be conducting scheduled maintenance on the Linkpoint Gateway. This will be performed during Linkpoint's regularly scheduled maintenance window.

During this maintenance window you may experience intermittent connectivity issues.

Notice will be at www.LinkPoint.com web site, as well as current status of gateway operation.

For questions regarding the LinkPoint Gateway we can be reached at (888)477-3611, or via e-mail at support@linkpoint.com. Please DO NOT reply to this e-mail notice.

Internet Services thanks you for your continued business and on-going patronage.

The LinkPoint Internet Team

Email: support@linkpoint.com 
Phone: (888)477-3611

--------------------

Usually there is no detectable outtage when they send this message, but just to be safe keep an eye out for declined orders during that timeframe.

Shane Merem
www.websiteforge.com
Web Site Design and E-commerce

      Have any of you made a bone head mistake? We all have but are you willing to admit it? The truth will set you free if you just admit your mistake and just move on. Once you make a mistake it is your duty to help others learn from it. I feel this is the price you pay to make things better for the mistake you made. So with out any further fan fare please read my bone head mistake below. :) 

     When I built my site I weighed every product carefully and put in the weight exactly as it was. Then when a customer placed an order I could not figure out why I was losing money on that order. Well after a lot of finger pointing at many differnt people the problem was this. I did not take into account what the weight of the product was when it was packed up. Product+box=weight should be the simple formula when you set your site up. I wish I did not over look this simple but very important part of my web site. So please take a moment and think about your product weight after it is packed up.

     Please feel free to share your own bone head mistakes here so I can  feel better about myself.  No laughing and looking down your nose at me about this mistake is allowed until I leave the room. :)

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Brian

Hello.  Here is another important announcement.

Several of our customers have received calls from  web design firms claiming their web site does not follow "WC3 Standards" and will show you a report that claims you have all sorts of problems with your web site.  This is meant to scare you into thinking your web site is somehow flawed or incorrectly built.

www.w3.org  is a very important consortium for the HTML standard. It revolves around the strict guideline of HTML programming.

Several of our customers contacted us worried.

Don't be worried.  Next time that happens, ask them show you a report of Amazon.com or Ebay.com before they claim something is wrong with your web site.  If you followed every WC3 standard exactly your web site would be boring and may lack important functionality to conduct business.

The WC3 standard is an HTML standard.  HTML is one of the technologies used to build web sites -- not the only one.  It does not mean every web site will or should follow this standard to the "T".  The rules to follow are the standards used by most common browsers used by your customers.  Microsoft, Firefox, Opera, and other web browsers. 

Thanks, Shane Merem
www.websiteforge.com
Website Design and E-commerce

Hello.

This morning I'm writing in the BLOG out of frustration.  Yesterday I was told that some of our customers are getting emails returned.  The returned message reports that they are a spammer, or their email is blocked.

This is because an organization called www.spamhaus.org added one of the Website Forge mail server IP addresses to their "spammer list".  Spamhaus is a widely used source for identifying and stopping spam mail.  Just about any spam filter may use them to help avoid spam.

Why did we end up in this evil list?  It's because one of our Website Forge customers purchased a list of emails and mass mailed it.  He did not do it with the intent to spam, I'm sure the place that sold him the list assured him that the list was a list of "opt in users" and a great list.  Then he was probably convinced that it was "Legal" to spam if he added a few key items to his email.

Well, let me tell you first hand.  There is no "Legal SPAM".  Here is the rule -- If you did not obtain the email address from a person directly through your web site, then do not use the email address.  It's that simple.

- Do not  buy ANY lists.  I don't care if Pope Benedict himself swears the list is clean and legal!
- Do not visit web sites and harvest email addresses.
- Do not pay a company to do it all from their own "special spam servers" (Spamhaus.com will do a reverse  lookup on your domain and STILL block our servers)

Better yet, if you have even the smallest inkling to send any type of mass mail -- Call me first!  E-mail support@websiteforge.com or visit live chat and ask to get in touch with me. 

Please understand that though this customer thought he was "following the law", thousands of Website Forge customers are potentially affected by this issue.  In extreme cases we have to take the "offending customer" offline to get our IP removed from the spam list.  I don't want anyone to experience any type of hassle sending email for any reason.

I emailed the situation to someone at SpamHaus and they are so arrogant and unforgiving that he only replied once in 24 hours and he did not yet remove the block.  I am stuck waiting for this guy to check his email and hope he believes me when I tell him the spam issue has been resolved.  It's ridiculous (don't get me started on how these spam organizations conduct themselves).

I will work non-stop until this issue is resolved and send an update.

Shane Merem
www.websiteforge.com
Website Design and E-Commerce

     The new Extended Validation Security Certificate (going green) that Websiteforge has acquired for us will give us a huge advantage over other web sites that do not have it. I really do believe that. Now it is up to us as web site owners to take advantage of it. As with any new security feature released to the public customer acceptance comes down to marketing and customer education. Customer education on this new and better security standard for us as web site owners is very important. I feel with proper customer education this will lead us all to more sales with our sites. So it is up to us to show them why we are special with our new Extended Validation Security Certificates on our web sites. With a little bit of marketing on our part we could have a great opportunity here to get even more business for our sites.

     On my site I have taken the step to create a link explaining what Extended Validation Security is and showing why that Extended Validation is special. I have it posted all through my check out process and product search pages and close up picture pages. We have a great advantage here over our competition now let all of us be wise enough to take advantage of it.

 Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Have a great day!

Brian

Hello. 

I had an urgent issue from a customer Friday where the formatting of his site was all messed up.  Turns out he was using cut and paste to place the content on his site and the source text had some hidden codes that were not "web friendly".  This happens occasionally depending on the source of your text.

He was obviously quite frustrated and wanted it fixed immediately (rightfully so).   I determined the likley issue and resolved it.  I found out after that he did not "PREVIEW" his changes before publishing.

Here is the main point of this post.  Using the "PREVIEW" feature to review the page before hitting the "PUBLISH" button may save you undue anxiety.  

It's easy to get in the mode of hitting PUBLISH each time you make a change to your site because usually things look fine -- however it's important to remember to PREVIEW your changes each and every time you update your site to avoid a similar situation.

P.S.  I am a big offender of this rule myself.  So this is a reminder for myself as much as a helpful reminder for our Website Forge customers! :)

Shane Merem
www.websiteforge.com
Website Design and E-commerce

Hello Website Forge customers.

I just wanted to notify you of a scheduled upgrade in the data center.  We expect no noticable impact during this upgrade.

DATE: 4/10/2007
START TIME: 11:00 PDT
ESTIMATED END TIME: 02:00 PDT 4/11/2007
PURPOSE OF WORK: Core2 Switch MaintenanceIMPACT OF WORK:
None expected, possible suboptimal routing and/or some session resets
during the turn down and turn up.

Shane Merem
www.websiteforge.com
Website Design and E-commerce

The entire Website Forge team wishes you a Happy Easter and Passover (and any other holiday I may have omitted :) )

Enjoy your holiday weekend!

Shane Merem
www.websiteforge.com
Website Design and E-commerce

Hello.

I spent a lot of time yesterday working with a customer who called me because his web site was down.  Turned out his domain name was expired and needed a renewal to re-activate.

After talking to the customer I found that he had already paid for his domain name which is held at www.registerfly.com.  However the domain still reports as expired.  He spend most of the day on hold trying to contact customer service -- no luck.

He then found this shocking article that registerfly.com is involved in a class-action lawsuit.  We can only assume the company is abandoned.

http://www.registerfly-lawsuit.com/press/index.shtml

If your domain name was purchased or transferred to registerfly.com -- you need to check your web site and follow this lawsuit to make sure your interests are protected.

So far we have only one customer affected.  Registerfly.com is not a very large domain name registrar so hopefully no other Website Forge customers will have this problem.

Happy Easter!

Shane Merem
www.websiteforge.com
Website Design and E-commerce