news from the front lines of web and graphic design

backup is my bane no longer

As you might have gathered based on the date of my last missive, things have been busy. Finally having a moment to breathe, I thought it might be worthwhile to revisit my bellyaching from backup is my bane. As it turns out, both situations are solved and have been running smoothly for several months.

1. The Buffalo Linkstation Live: While the browser-based administration is still painfully slow, since I figured out my issue I've fortunately had to use it very little. Turns out the external 1TB drive I bought as the Linkstation's backup - a Seagate FreeAgent - includes power management. A worthy feature that I applaud. However, somehow the drive going into sleep mode or whatever completely disoriented the Linkstation such that it was unable to complete a backup.

Installing Seagate's Manager utility (have I ever mentioned that I really hate having to install a whole windows application for nonsense like this) and turning off the drive's power management did the trick and the Linkstation's backups have been running smooth as silk for the most part.

I still have a stuck backup job that can only be eliminated by resetting the Linkstation to factory defaults, so next time I have a half day with nothing better to do and want to punish myself I'll tackle that fun little project. In the meantime I only need 6 backup jobs so it doesn't really matter.

2. Offsite backup: My last word was that Cobian Backup seemed finally to be set up properly. That was correct, it's been working like a charm since then. Every day I get a little email summary telling me how many files from each folder were transferred. Once in a great while I ftp to the remote server just to make sure recent files are showing up. They are.

Now I just need to get this set up for the Linkstation... LOL.

no comment

Commenting on these articles has been disabled for the moment, due to ever-increasing amounts of comment spam and related email inbox pollution.

Comment spam is how those clever porn marketers get the word out about their sites - they send bots around the internet, looking for any old web form to submit, inserting nonsensical links to their wares. The hope is that the form contents will get saved in a database and published on the web without any kind of checking. I guess even a miniscule success rate is worth their while.

Arsenal Productions did not fall prey to their evil scheme, though. The comment form was set up in such a way that comments are tied to a specific article, and since I don't have many articles entitled xS4edfW645f their spammy submissions never saw the light of day. They did become an annoyance, though. The comment form sends me an email with the commenter's name and message when it's submitted, and shortly after implementing this feature I started getting trickles of emails from folks named 3dfEDAKJ^hdfsk or $$DFfdhg7 blathering endlessly about nude celebrities.

The trickle has lately become more than that - maybe a dozen messages a day. This type of situation is why you have to fill out CAPTCHAs all the time. You know, those distorted letters/numbers that are difficult or impossible for machines to decipher. And that is what I will be implementing here. But until then: no comment.

backup is my bane

For several months now I have been struggling with two distinct backup situations:

1. In August 2008 I purchased a Buffalo Linkstation Live 1 TB NAS, with the thought that I would collect the contents from all my internal and external drives and put them in one place. It has performed that function more or less satisfactorily, but the unit in many other ways has been anything from less than satisfactory to an absolute nightmare. Configuring the unit via its browser-based utility is s--l--o--w. And getting the backup function to work reliably has been hell.

First I figured I'd use those old external drives as backups. Good thought, except every time I'd disconnect one the Linkstation would cross them up, so that what was orginally backing up to disk 1 would now go to disk 2, which of course didn't have space for both backup sets. So I'd have to repoint every backup job to the other drive. With the Linkstation's snail's pace web interface that took at least 20 minutes every time. That said, more or less it worked for awhile, but I always had in mind that I'd get a single external 1TB drive and be done with this foolishness.

I finally did that recently, and now the problem is the backups crapping out 1/3 of the way through. Don't try to copy the files manually either, because if you connect the external to your computer and touch the _backups folder, the Linkstation won't be able to copy to it any longer. Don't bother looking for help online or in the documentation, because both Buffalo's support site and their product documentation are questionably accurate and incomplete. Their best advice always seems to be to reset the unit to factory defaults - oh joy, now I can spend another two hours with your painfully slow web interface again defining my users, shares, and backup jobs.

2. We decided to set up a remote backup solution for one of my clients, who has somewhat modest requirements (~70GB or so). The popular web-based options are either expensive, don't work with network shares, or have received less than enthusiastic reviews. So a roll-your-own solution was called for. Luckily Dreamhost, my web host, offers 50GB of backup space, with more available for rent by the gigabyte. Cool, now we just needed a program to make it happen.

After many frustrating hours trying to correctly configure Cobian Backup to do a FTP backup as we wanted it, I looked around for other solutions. WS-FTP has a Remote Synchronize feature that will only do the top level directory even if you specify subdirectories. No go. FTPSync doesn't allow for automation. Also no go.

Finally, I ended up manually uploading the files with WS-FTP and now I think Cobian is set up correctly. I have to say, Cobian overall works pretty well if you can figure out the configuration and it looks like that's where we'll end up... finally.

Why do I care so much about backups?
Once bitten twice shy. If you've ever lost any data due to a drive failure you know what I mean - you never want it to happen again. Plus it's a nice feeling to know that even if your computer instantly disintegrates, you have the important stuff - your work and data - safe in at least two places, and the most it's going to cost you is a day or two to reinstall your applications and such.

propaganda

In Spain direct mail is usually kindly referred to as publicity; another commonly used term is propaganda. I always thought that was cool.

Open the PDF, print some out and give 'em to your friends!

marketing in a down economy

Yesterday I heard from a fellow freelancer with whom I hadn't spoken in some time, and almost immediately the conversation turned to marketing - both what our clients are or aren't doing, and what we ourselves are doing to drum up business. The takeaway corresponded very closely with what one of my clients has been saying for some time; to paraphrase, in this economy we need to do more marketing than ever, just to maintain the level of business we've been doing.

Most companies' typical response in a down economy is to cut costs, and advertising/marketing are an easy target because it can be difficult to quantify their contribution to the bottom line. You'll notice, though, that those who operate in a contrarian manner are often the most successful - this applies both to investing (think Warren Buffet), and to operating a business. Those who actively reach out to their customers and prospects now, when their competition has perhaps scaled back their outreach efforts, will be freshest in their prospects' minds when the economy or their business inevitably bounces back.

So... what are you doing to take advantage of current economic conditions? Get in touch if you'd like to talk about marketing your company.

is google the god of the internet?

Does this SEO-related scenario sounds familiar?

You've coded your site the right way, with relevant text in your <title>, <h1>, and meta description tags, coded your image ALT tags appropriately, supplied an XML site map, do updates regularly, and so on ad nauseum. In short, you've done your best to follow all current best practices when it comes to search optimization.

Yet despite your best efforts, your site shows up on page 57 of google's search results, just like it has forever. And the site that shows up in the top spot doesn't seem to be doing anything differently than you, or maybe they don't follow any of the best practices du jour, and their page rank is lower to boot! It's not easy to counsel patience in this situation, either to clients or to oneself, but apparently patience is exactly what is called for.

I do believe that work put in to updating and improving a site will eventually pay off, but at times this can be an article of faith, as if google were the god of the internet to which we all have to pray. Come to think of it, I suppose google is the god of the internet, or at least one of the major deities. Okay, let's all join hands and pray for page one search results.

browser-specific applications

One of my clients is a recently converted Mac user, so her browser options are (realistically) limited to Safari or Firefox. A site that she sometimes uses in the course of her business is a web application that only works in Internet Explorer. Note I didn't say PC-only, I said IE-only (I know this because I tried it in both Firefox and Safari on the PC because I couldn't believe it).

Once upon a time it might have been okay to force people to IE, back when they were 90% or more of the market. Times have changed. According to Wikipedia's page on browser market share, IE is down to 70%, with Firefox at 20% and Safari (which I suppose closely correlates with Mac ownership) at 7%. The remainder are stragglers like Opera, Mozilla, and Chrome. No disrespect to any of them, that's just how it is. But anyway, these IE-only applications are shutting out 30% of their potential audience!

There are a number of self-evident economic reasons why this is a bad idea, and philosophically it's contrary to what's supposed to be the open, standards-based nature of the web. Hey all you falling-behind-the-times web sites and applications out there! Time to look seriously at a rework or redo! When you're ready to move to an open architecture and platform, maybe I can help.

End of today's rant.

no comment? why not comment?

In case you have been waiting to post your own comments on these news articles, now you can! It's open to everyone for now unless it starts to get too spammy, at which point captchas will get built in.

the new web site launches

After considerable delay arsenal productions relaunches for 2009! The old saw about the cobbler's kids running around barefoot certainly holds true for web designers, at least the ones that are busy. The overall look is similar to the previous version, but there are a number of tweaks to the organization, content, and code, in case you're taking notes.

I experimented with a number of more image-intensive and "web 2.0" layouts, and finally decided clean and to the point was best. And tried to stay away from some of the overused current web design trends that would date the site by the end of next month.

realtor's site launches

cathleenmoore.com marks Arsenal Productions' first foray into the murky world of MLS and mortgage rates. Every realtor who wants to put up their own site also wants to allow clients to search MLS (Multiple Listing Service) properties. Integrating these often unpleasant interfaces into a good looking site can be a challenge, one which was overcome for this site.

arsenal productions goes international

With the launch of the ARGADI INGENIEROS web site in Vizcaya, Spain, arsenal productions is now officially doing business internationally. Argadi is an alternative energy pioneer in their geographic area, a company that designs and installs geothermic heating systems.

MassMEDIC conference draws a crowd

Though the economy in general is going through a rough patch, the medical device industry has so far been less affected by the downturn. The MassMEDIC Investors Conference is an annual event that connects early stage medical device companies with potential investors, and the 2008 edition was as active as always. Arsenal Productions provided much of the print marketing and collateral for the event, including a save the date postcard mailer, invite, program materials, and event signage.

nonprofit counseling site relaunches

Community Counseling of Bristol County engaged us to help rebuild, reorganize, and (most importantly) redesign their web site. They're very pleased with the results, and are hopeful that it will allow them to better connect with their clients. CCBC serves the mental health needs of people in their area.