Archive for the ‘Technical Support’ Category

A client of ours recently employed the services of an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) company. They sent her a “report” of the work that they had done to date which she sent to us and, as a result, prompted us to do a bit of digging, as the info in the report just wasn’t quite right… Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever tried to start your car with your house keys? How about using your office key to unlock the front door of Westpac afterhours? You’d never think of it right… or would you?   [Don't answer that!] … Read the rest of this entry »

An important word of caution – White Dog Green Frog will never send you a mailed letter about your domain renewal. Our customers have been getting a fair amount of these letters lately from other organizations such as Domain Renewal Group or one received just the other day from Domain Name Group… Read the rest of this entry »

Recently we’ve received many support calls which relate to people’s Internet connections, their speed or being unable to connect to services such as Google or their email… Read the rest of this entry »

Every now and then, we receive a support ticket that might seem complicated at the time but the solution is so simple that we’d be foolish not to share… Read the rest of this entry »

We encountered a strange incident yesterday: an image that showed up in Firefox, Chrome, and Safari but not Internet Explorer (IE). … Read the rest of this entry »

The internet is changing in a big way today (May 5th 2010) – security is being added to the domain naming system (DNS).

It looks like it won’t affect most people as the ISPs will “insulate” people’s routers from seeing the changes. However, if you’re in IT, this is essential knowledge…

Read more here.

The intention is to add further security validation to the domain naming system so it’s harder for the baddies to “take over” websites such as your favourite banking site. For the next month or so, they’re effectively running a trial and they’ll be turning on the real thing in about 30 days – see the article for more information.

If you’re anything like me, and not a great tech-head you may struggle with the concept of passwords like I have!

One of my “learned colleagues” put it into language that made great sense to me recently: “You wouldn’t use the keys to your Porsche to start your Mercedes would you?!!” As if! It occurred to me though that to liken the password to my car keys was a good analogy … well at least one my small brain could understand.

I now have a small notebook in which to jot down my various passwords – probably not a great and secure idea but one that I can manage – just don’t make it too obvious that’s what it’s for! Some people use KeePass or Sxipper to remember their passwords but again only a good idea if your PC or Mac is secure or password protected. There are all sorts of things people do to remember their passwords. One that worked well for me when I had one randomly generated by and ISP was to ask my kids to come up with a word for each letter. It made a quirky sentence that was easily remembered.

One important and simple tip is not to use the same password for your internet banking sites as you do for other sites – in fact, one password per internet banking site is a great, simple idea!

One simple way to make good passwords is to run a couple of syllables from different words together and add a number or a punctuation symbol.

Here’s a password generator site that makes up the reminder for you!

I’m sure you’ve noticed there are a lot of web hosting companies out there, some making outrageous claims, and some appearing to be very cheap. What should you be looking for in a webhosting company? Why is White Dog Green Frog different?

One of the key areas, I guess, is that I (Brian) come from a background of being a (Unix) system administrator for many years. Having worked for Fortune 100 companies, and training staff doing system admin at those companies, I understand how they think and I’ve been able to bring some of that thinking to the practice and value that we bring as a company.
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About 90% of our support calls are related to email. Usually the call starts with “My email doesn’t work”! The following is a fun article which will solve a lot of these issues for you, hopefully saving some time.

Before you do anything, perhaps obviously, the very first step to troubleshooting is to ensure that your internet connection is working. Without an internet connection, you will not be able to receive email or view your website (or any website for that matter).

Check to see if you are able to go to www.google.com. Next step is to enter in your domain name here. If your internet connection is not working, contact your internet service provider (ISP) such as BigPond, iiNet, Internode etc.

AUTHENTICATION FAILURE
I know computers can be annoying and cryptic at times, but surprisingly, the error message that Outlook (or the other various email programs – Thunderbird, Mail, Entourage etc) provides, actually usually tells you exactly what the problem is.

Example: You hit send/receive but a popup appears that says “Enter Network Password:” you enter it in your password and it appears again and again and again and so out of frustration you finally hit “cancel” only to receive this error:

Your email rejected your login. Verify your user name and password in your account properties. Under Tools, click Email accounts…

Here’s a question for the class. What do you think that error message means?… CORRECT! You’ve either entered in your password incorrectly or you’re not using the entire email address as the username.

REMEDY: Enter in the correct password. If you don’t recall your password, you can always reset it in your hosting account Control Panel (cPanel). “Authentication failure” is just a fancy pants way of saying “login incorrect”.

FIREWALL BLOCK
Quickest way to determine if you have a firewall block is to go to your website. If there is a firewall block, it will read something like this:
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