Website Designers and Webmasters

Century Tel does it again! Yes, if you have ever had Century Tel for an Internet Provider, or have read either one of these posts: Century Tel #1 or Century Tel #2, than you know how low quality Century Tel really is.

At the end of my last Service Review about Century Tel, I finally got disconnected from them, and got Bresnan (for twice the speed and half the price). Unfortunately, I have moved to a ranch in the country, and the ONLY high-speed Internet connection available is… you guessed it… Century Tel. I put off calling them for as long as possible… but the time came, and I had to reconnect to them.

The First Call

I dialed their number as I was desperately searching the internet for another provider. A representative answered the phone with their “My goal is to provide you excellent customer service for your communication needs…” or something like that. I gave them my address for my new house and asked what kind of high-speed internet I could get out there. She said I could get 6MB/sec. Hey, that’s not to bad, considering I live in Polson, Montana. (Although I get currently get 8MB/sec with Bresnan.)

Right then I found Quest, who seems to have a sweet deal on DSL Internet, so I tell the Century Tel rep that I’ll call them back if I can’t find a better deal. Unfortunately I do have to call them back because quest doesn’t give service to my area.

The Second Call

I call Century Tel back. This time the rep says I can only get 3Mb/sec…. “WHAT?!?! I just called in and they said I could get 6Mb/sec!”

The Century Tel rep said, “Really? On this address? You had them check this address?… Hmm… let me check… Oh yea look here you can get 6Mb/sec.”

Are you serious? Then why did you tell me I could only get 3Mb/sec? I can’t see your screen, it’s your job to be a representative of Century Tel. But hey, it could be worse… at least I was lucky enough that time. If she was dumb enough to miss that one, maybe I could get an even faster connection… “Can I get the 10Mb/sec?”

“Yes, you can.”

I had two reactions to this last statement: 1) AAAAHH!!!! Why won’t you just tell me what I have available?! It’s not my job to quiz you on all of the different options I have, It’s yours! 2) Sweet! 10Mb/sec. I finally have a justification to using Century Tel over all of the other companies who don’t suck.

Century Tel Does It Again (Third Call)

I get a call from Century Tel two days later saying that everything has been set up and I can now use my Internet. So I move into my new house, and try to set up the Internet, and surprise, surprise, the Internet doesn’t work. I call into their help center, after doing a system and modem reboot. I get a guy who has be reboot my modem a couple more times before telling me that I should just wait a couple more days and then try it again…

Thank you for that suggestion, but I do websites. I only work on the Internet. I can’t just wait a couple more days. You said it would be up today, and then called me to tell me that it was all set up, and now you tell me to just wait.

The Fourth Call

I try fiddling with my set up to get it to work for a couple hours to no avail, so I call Century Tel again to see if I could get an intelligent rep. As luck would have it, I get a lady who immediately fixes my problem with a quick username/password. Thank you! I love when bad service gets lucky. My Internet works, and I have 5Mb/sec! It’s too good to be true…… literally…

The Fifth Call

This morning dawns on three computers without internet. I check all of the connections, the power, all of the lights are on. I reboot everything and make sure the username/password is in place. I didn’t change anything from last night, so why is it broken? I have to call them again.

I get another guy who has no idea what’s happening. He has me do the same things over and over, and nothing is working. After a half hour, it finally starts working but I’ve got 4Mb/sec and it’s getting slower.

Whatever. At least I have Internet, and I can get to work.

Century Tel at it’s Finest

At about 3:00 in the afternoon, a Century Tel truck pulls up, and a guy fiddles with my wires. He tells me that they dropped me down to 1.5Mb/second because the 6Mb/sec was acting up, and giving them problems… And sure enough, here I am stuck with 1.5Mb/sec.

Summary:

There really is nothing quite like being promised one thing and given another, and on top of that, having customer service reps who have no idea how to read. Century Tel promised me 10Mb/sec and here I am four days, and five phone calls later, with 1.5Mb/second.

I better get a discount on my ridiculously priced service, or yet another Service Review about Century Tel will be coming along soon.

-”Oh, the Importance of Quality Customer Service.”
-Ashton Sanders

There is a very common problem when trying to upgrade sites made by “newbie” website developers or when you realize that html isn’t the only language on the internet, and you need to upgrade your site.

Problem:

You have a site where every page has a *.html or *.htm extension, and you want to add a dynamic, server-side programming language like PHP.

Solution #1:

Go through your entire site, and change every file name to a *.php extension. Then go through every page and correct all of the hyper links. Then do testing on your entire site to ensure that you haven’t missed any links. Also, if you know anything about search engine optimization and websites, you’ll know you need to create 301 redirects from your old pages to your new so that you don’t lose any Rankings you may have gained. Then you have more testing to do to make sure all of your 301 redirects work….

Solution #2

Add this one line of Code into your .htaccess:

AddHandler x-httpd-php5 .php .htm .html

That’s all it takes to add PHP to my html files?

Yep, that’s it. That little line of code has saved me hundreds of hours of work, and I’m sure it’s not as commonly known as it should be.

-Spread the Wealth
-Ashton Sanders

Wow! It’s been three days since I posted on my blog. That is horrible. Before three days ago, I had posted 41 posts in 47 days! That leaves only 6 days that i hadn’t posted in a month and a half!

My excuse is a simple one: I’ve moved to a new residence, and I am forced to get CenturyTel…. If you are curious as to why that would cause three days of no internet, read this.

And prepare yourself for yet another service review of Century Tel.

-Ashton Sanders

This ActionScript/Flash Tutorial is like all of my tutorials, quick and to the point. I hope I don’t type too fast for you.

Using “this” in Flash/ActionScript

The “this” command/function is an extremely useful one. It makes it easy to use relative paths (as opposed to absolute).

Here is what the Adobe Dictionary says about “this”:

Description
Keyword; references an object or movie clip instance. When a script executes, this references the movie clip instance that contains the script. When a method is called, this contains a reference to the object that contains the called method.

Inside an on event handler action attached to a button, this refers to the Timeline that contains the button. Inside an onClipEvent event handler action attached to a movie clip, this refers to the Timeline of the movie clip itself.

To put that into English:

If you have a movie clip, and your “on (press)” statement is:

//On Press, the button will disappear.
on (press){
this._visible = 0
}

This will work no matter how many levels deep into the movie you move this movie clip. “This” calls the path to that movie clip. So if your movie clip is named “mcbutton”, and it’s placed on the root of your movie:

on (press){
trace(this);
}
// Returns: “_level0.mcbutton”

That is a very useful piece of ActionScript to know, as you will end up using that in every movie you make.

_level0.is basically the same thing as _root. A more extensive definition will come soon.

Another Note about “this”

If the above example was done with a button instead of a movie clip, the trace(); would return “_level0″

-”Flash is by far my favorite computer program.”
-Ashton Sanders

My Last Post discussed ActionScript Variables. Now I’m going to do a quick run down about ActionScript Structure.

You will notice that many different programming languages have a similar format. PHP and ActionScript, for example, have a very similar syntax. A lot of functions are written exactly the same for both of them. There is one very unique thing about ActionScript: Symbols can be inside Symbols inside Symbols inside Symbols. (A symbol is either a Graphic, Movie Clip or Button. F8 will turn the selected items into a symbol of your choice.)

This structure is very useful for animating in Flash (and a lot more). You can also store variables within movie clips. Lets say you had a movie clip called “ball”.

//This is programmed onto the first frame of your movie.

x = 3;
ball.x = 4;

That code will store two different variables. Even though the variables have the same name, they are located in different places, so the second variable wouldn’t overwrite the first one.

-Yes, this is very basic.
-Ashton Sanders