Quirky

Two people have now e-mailed me to tell me that my page isn’t showing up right on their screens. I can’t reproduce the problem on my own browsers. is anyone else having this problem? Is there a difference between Mac users and Windows users? Where does the problem start within the page’s text? Is this problem only recent?

I’m wondering if it has something to do with the hacking of Blogrolling’s files the other day, since the coding for that is located in my sidebar. I haven’t touched anything in my site’s structure, so I’m not sure what is going on. No one ever complained about this before. Did someone go into my server files and mess something up? I wish I knew more about all this. The spamming and hacking are going beyond my level of experience or knowledge.

I’d appreciate any feedback on what you are experiencing with the page.

Thanks everyone.

Update:

I want to thank everyone for sending information on how the site appeared to them. Really appreciate it. Sort of eased the sudden panic I had that maybe my site was falling apart!

It looks like the problem is with the Windows version of Internet Explorer. The page works fine on my Mac version of IE. Until I can figure out how to fix this problem (IE is supposed to cause a lot of headaches for CSS structured websites), may I recommend two browsers (free, all platforms) that would fix the problem for you? Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird. Firebird is still in development, but is a fast and elegant browser nonetheless. You can even download an extension through the browser interface ( Firebird Extensions ) called “Edit CSS” that allows you to view and change ( only in your browser, of course! ) the CSS coding of any page that you download. Very useful for learning CSS.

I’ve been spending so much time trying to work out spam and hacker and improperly configured website coding for my site that I haven’t had time to publish the daily stories I’ve been writing off line! Ahhhh! Still can’t figure out why Internet Explorer suddenly went haywire with my site though.

Update 2

Wow, what a total headache this is causing. Dozens of people have contacted me now about the sudden change in my blog, and not being able to read it any more, whereas before there was no problem (all with Internet Explorer, Windows version). I went through my CSS codes and couldn’t find anything wrong with theme (at least nothing more wrong than before). I haven’t made any changes for about two months now, so the sudden problems don’t make any sense.

I did come across a mention on Japan Bloggers by Oli about spammers now using referrers javascript to insinuate themselves into people’s web pages: ( http://www.idly.org/2003/11/14/porn_sites_hiding_behind_blogs.php , Spammers in Referrers ) LINK REMOVED. I think it in itself is spam. Please do not quote this link on your blog or comments, it will automatically create a trackback to the Idly.org site… Since I was using a referrer script at the bottom left of the sidebar and only put it in a few days ago, and only yesterday a strange link which defied the width of my sidebar appeared that didn’t lead anywhere, I wonder if that was the problem. I’ve since removed the referrer script.

Does the page appear normal again now? I hope so.

If the referrer is the problem I would like to warn anybody else using Stephen Downes’s Referral System to be careful. I will contact him to let him know, and perhaps get some advice from him. In the meantime, to any people who are using referrers on their site, please be careful. Some of those links down there might be spam.

Update 3

Ignorance knows no bounds… What I took for spam was actually a lack of knowledge on my part of problems with CSS coding. All I had to do was specify the width of the referrer’s links to prevent overstepping the sidebar bounds and all was all right. Kind of embarrassing to have shared my ignorance and outrage with all the world. If there was anyone out there referring to my site whose link left a longer than usual link signature, please forgive any critical assessment I made of your link, calling it spam. I should learn before I speak…