Fade Away and Radiate, Part Deux

Clearly I spoke too soon. For anyone who’s had trouble accessing my blog (yet who is still somehow reading this), here’s a new bit of information: none of the pages on my blog will open unless one manually adds a “www” before the URL each time. (Does anyone with greater web-savviness than mine have any suggestions? Yahoo has thus far proven singularly unhelpful.)

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21 Responses to Fade Away and Radiate, Part Deux

  1. Mike April 24, 2008 at 4:06 pm #

    Works for me without the www. Is it a permalink problem in WordPress?

  2. Aaron Brown April 24, 2008 at 4:29 pm #

    Two things:

    As far as the www thing, it looks like it’s your WordPress
    setup (or other server setup) that’s at fault, not your DNS.
    Doing

    GET /blog/2008/04/ HTTP/1.1
    Host: praxeology.net

    gets me an empty page no matter which IP address I use,
    whereas doing

    GET /blog/2008/04/ HTTP/1.1
    Host: http://www.praxeology.net

    gets me the real thing no matter which IP address I use.

    The other thing is this: look at the source of any of the
    pages on your blog. Scroll down to the bottom and you’ll
    see a bunch of what look like spam links that are hidden
    with CSS. Unless you know a good reason these should be
    there, it looks like you’ve been cracked by a spammer.

    Good luck! (Looks like just the blog is affected; the main
    praxeology.net page doesn’t have these.)

  3. Daniel April 24, 2008 at 4:30 pm #

    Seemed to open just fine for me, but you might look into DNS configurations. I don’t know how your server is hosted, so beyond that I am no good for advice.

  4. Aaron Brown April 24, 2008 at 4:33 pm #

    > Works for me without the www.

    http://praxeology.net/blog/2008/04/24/fade-away-and-radiate-part-deux/

    worked for me the first time I tried it, but not now. Addresses
    like

    http://praxeology.net/blog/2008/04/

    haven’t worked at all since I read this entry and started testing
    them.

  5. Brad Spangler April 24, 2008 at 4:56 pm #

    1) Get into the WordPress admin area and go to the Permalinks page under either “Options” or “Settings” (depending on your WordPress version).

    2) In another window, use FTP or a web-based file management tool to find your .htaccess file and delete it.

    3) Once #2 is done, switch back to the WordPress browser window and click on the Save button on the Permalinks page.

    The above will create a new .htaccess file without the flaws in the current one.

  6. Administrator April 24, 2008 at 5:53 pm #

    Thanks, Brad — except Yahoo doesn’t use .htaccess files. Any suggestions?

  7. Administrator April 24, 2008 at 6:02 pm #

    Thanks, Aaron! At least I’ve got that spam deleted now.

  8. Brad Spangler April 24, 2008 at 8:25 pm #

    re: “…except Yahoo doesn’t use .htaccess files.”

    Gadzooks! Your site is hosted by BARBARIANS!

    You are correct, though, according to this .

    Going by the info here, I’d say that Yahoo doesn’t let their clients have adequate access to fix this themselves. You’ll have to demand that Yahoo fix it. They leave you few other alternatives.

  9. ka1igu1a April 24, 2008 at 8:53 pm #

    It’s not an access problem I don’t believe because sometimes the page loads and sometimes it’s blank. Therefore, the culprit likely is the WP-Cache if you have that plug-in enabled(Yahoo enables it by default). I would disable it and see if that resolves the issue. If that’s the issue, then you will need to do a minor code edit to a config file to re-enable caching without having the blank page issue.

  10. Rad Geek April 24, 2008 at 10:57 pm #

    The spam links hidden by CSS are the result of a vulnerability in older versions of WordPress. The best thing to do to stop that from happening again in the future is to upgrade to the latest release (2.5) of WordPress.

  11. Brad Spangler April 25, 2008 at 1:21 am #

    @ka1 – I didn’t say it was an access problem. I suspect a URL rewriting problem (one which can’t be addressed because of lack of access to an .htaccess file). A bad carburetor isn’t a “molten steel problem”, but welding the hood of the car shut might prove an impediment to fixing it.

  12. ka1igu1a April 25, 2008 at 1:46 am #

    Brad- hehehe, man you lost me with your analogy.

    Blank pages are typically the result of a known bug in the WP-cache config file. Sometimes the pages load and sometimes they don’t when i’m using safari. When i use IE i have no problem navigating the site. Problems with the url rewritter would typically trigger a page not found error…

  13. Brad Spangler April 25, 2008 at 1:54 am #

    IE? Now that’s interesting.

    I had discounted the possibility of it being a cache issue early on. Perhaps I did so prematurely.

  14. ka1igu1a April 25, 2008 at 2:04 am #

    Brad:

    well i spoke too soon, now pages are coming up blank in IE. I’m pretty certain this is a caching issue. The easiest way to determine it is to disable to the Word press Cache plug-in and see if this resolves the problem. If it does, then before re-enabling caching again, edit the wp-cache-phase2.php file and search/replace “ob_end_clean()” with “ob_end_flush()”

  15. Geoffrey Allan Plauche April 25, 2008 at 4:52 pm #

    Just FYI: I’m one of those who can’t access your blog without adding ‘www.’ but Google Reader is picking up your posts just fine and that’s how I’ve been reading them.

  16. Tom G April 25, 2008 at 10:03 pm #

    Yay !!! I was getting worried there for a short time. I can read your blog again now (4/25 evening US) but was unable to for over 24 hours.
    Glad it was some issue with WordPress ( or whatever else it was – i’m no web expert).
    Speaking of, have you WordPress guys read Jeff Atwood’s post recently about it? (Coding Horror is the name of his blog). I have no idea if he’s correct but he seems well-regarded in the software field.

    Roderick, I am very pleased to be able to read your blog again. You have been one of my regular daily reads for months.

  17. Mark April 27, 2008 at 8:35 pm #

    http://praxeology.net/ is a crap shoot. Adding www just fixed it.
    http://praxeology.net/blog/2008/04/24/fade-away-and-radiate-part-deux/#comments and other in-site links w/o www work fine though.

    Missing www subdomain has fraked-up other sites I visit. Simple issues like http negotiation failing is evidence that the Internets is jumping the shark and Idiots are infesting the IT bureaucracy.

  18. Mark April 28, 2008 at 8:26 am #

    Hey look, Baltar is her on Earth: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45fBXa7fC0s&feature=related

  19. BDP May 7, 2008 at 10:28 pm #

    Are you any closer to resolving this, just today I started being unable to access your website without the www prefix. Previously, it was working fine, and the non-blog areas still do work fine without the prefix.

  20. Administrator May 8, 2008 at 8:37 pm #

    No, I am no closer to resolving this. I have been back and forth and back and forth with Yahoo on this and it is the most frustrating experience I have ever had with customer service anywhere. Every time they tell me a different thing. Lately they’ve been alternating between “it’s a WordPress problem so it’s not our responsibility to solve it” (although they won’t allow me access to my .htaccess file so my prospects for solving it on my own are slim) and “we tested your site and don’t see anything wrong.” And they will seize on one phrase in my question and answer that as if it was my question.

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