My website vanished on Wednesday morning and has been gone since. I've spoken to 23 people in BT (who host it) and they cant resolve the problem as of 2.45pm today.
However a few moments ago a BT staff member said she could find me using Google and the site was all functioning ok as far as she could see on her internal BT computer. She could not explan what was going on.
The bizarre thing is I'm running three separate Macs and cant get the site to load at all, and all my linked images here on NPN are gone, and my recent posting on Wednesday has a comment from Adam Seward to the effect that he cant find my images, and today I've had a couple of friends say they cant find the site either.
Can you kind folks look and see if you can find me here : http://www.john.macpherson.btinternet.co.uk/johnmacphersonph.html
or via www.john-macpherson-photography.com
or via Google or whatever other method you wish.
If you could post your comments here on whether you can or cant see it that would be great as the BT web folks will pop in to monitor what's going on.
Posted by Edwin kats on March 20, 2009 at 11:46 AM
Sorry John,
I can't find your website. Good luck and I hope it will be fixed soon.
Edwin Kats
Posted by Vincent Jones on March 20, 2009 at 11:49 AM
I can see it no problem at http://www.john-macpherson-photography.com this is using a PC.
The site http://www.john.macpherson.btinternet.co.uk/johnmacphersonph.html though is down.
I can see it using Windows XP and Internet Explorer by both your long address and using google. Had no problems seeing image of Starlings posted either. 15.30pm Friday.
Dave
Posted by Lewis Thomson on March 20, 2009 at 12:10 PM
I get page not found from my PC here for http://www.john-macpherson-photography.com/. But I can access the site ok from a server in London. I'd say something has happend to the DNS records of your domain name. That would perhaps explain why it works some places but not others as it can take 48 hours for changes to propagate around the web.
Ditto Mark Sellings for me. Your images on the forum just show a red cross.
Posted by Fran French on March 20, 2009 at 1:47 PM
Both working fine for me on my vista laptop with Firefox John, no probs at all.
Hope you soon get it sorted.
Fran
Posted by Mark Wilson on March 20, 2009 at 2:06 PM
John, I am with Tristan on this - it sounds like the DNS record for your domain or BT's server got screwed up and the fix is still propogating across the interwebs.
FWIW, works fine here in the USA on XP, Vista and Mac with Firefox
John,
Now not visible on either Safari or Firefox 3 on a Mac in Scorland. Tend to agree that it's a DNS problem with Bt's servers. For some reason your website address appears with hyphens between john, macpherson and photography rather than dot when you enter it in the address box. Don't know if that has anything to do with the problem. I empathise with your frustration , if you have it, with the windows-centric people on customer service sites, BT or others. I'd start thinking about changing ISP provider.....
Thanks very much indeed folks - I've alerted BT to your comments and told them to keep checking in here.
My foray into the darker recesses of BT's innards has not been pleasant - not one individual in the 23 I've spoken with has any idea what went wrong, why it went wrong, whose responsibility it is, nor how to get anywhere near fixing it.
I've been told its because its a "legacy product" and I've pointed out that after being a BT customer for 30 years, and 12 years of them hosting my site, I'm a legacy customer and I should be rewarded for my loyalty not penalized - which left the BT person speechless, and eventually in agreement. But no further forward figuring out whats going on.
I'd appreciate it if some of you would keep an eye on it on your various PC's and give me a heads up from time to time over the weekend as to its status, as I suspect nobody in BT with the correct screwdriver will appear to fix it until Monday............
John,
Now not visible on either Safari or Firefox 3 on a Mac in Scorland. Tend to agree that it's a DNS problem with Bt's servers. For some reason your website address appears with hyphens between john, macpherson and photography rather than dot when you enter it in the address box. Don't know if that has anything to do with the problem. I empathise with your frustration , if you have it, with the windows-centric people on customer service sites, BT or others. I'd start thinking about changing ISP provider.....
Thanks Tom - the hyphenated URL's are domain names I own that forward to the BT webspace. Any attempt I previously made to go straight to the BT space were unsuccessful. I dont think the forwarding service is at fault as all the images that were here on NPN, as links from my site, vanished for the last few days too, but they reappeared this afteroon - and MAY still be here, I've not checked for an hour or so.
The problem is on BT's servers as far as I can see. Its not just that there's this problem, the crazy thing is that NOBODY in BT has any idea how to access/remedy/work with this. BT Business deal with web site stuff and as I'm not a customer of theirs, having obtained my websapce through a Residential service package, they cant help. Residential dont do web space so they just sigh and say sorry!
I appear to be trapped in some cyber no-mans land bereft of Ovaltine...........
Posted by Brian Irving on March 20, 2009 at 3:01 PM
Hi John
No problems for me using a Mac and safari 3.2.1
Good luck
Brian
Posted by Magnus Hird on March 20, 2009 at 3:10 PM
Hi John,
Can't access either address, or via Google - get a site not found message. However the DNS seems to suucessfully direct you from the personalised URL to the BT address so perhaps the problem does lie at their end.
You'll probably not see much improvement for the next day - even if they've done something about it... DNS updates can take 24-48hrs to propagate out, and external visibility can be patchy in the meantime. BT themselves will probably be able to see the sites happily enough as they access their local DNS - not other peoples.
One thing though... if you're trying to access the BT master site using BT broadband, then you should be able to see it yourself as you should be picking up their DNS directly... if you can't access it, there's something else wrong and they may need to look deeper.
As to being a legacy customer... you're just that - it doesn't make you worth anything in todays feeding chain. Sadly, you're just another brick in their wall. Call centre staff aren't experts either... it usually takes a few days to eventually be passed to someone who knows what they're on about - either that or you lose it with them first. If you're a domestic user, you have to suffer... If you're a business user, then you should demand better service.
With any luck, it'll all be running OK tomorrow or Sunday.
Don't know if you have sorted this now, I just got in. I'm getting your website just fine from www.john-macpherson-photography.com/ on a PC in Firefox, IE, Chrome and Opera.
One final thought - are you sure the problem is actually with BT? Your domain is not necessarily hosted with the same company who your website is hosted with. The nameserver records appear to be with fasthosts or UKReg and if the DNS records are maintained by them then that may be where the problem is. Did you buy and setup the domain directly with BT or some other company? Tristan
Tristan - I bought my domain names separately and configured them so they simply forward users to the BT space. Once a user clicks on the domain they get to the BT space and thats the domain's job done. If the problem was the forwarding system that would not account for the fact that ALL the images I've posted here on NPN disappeared over the last two days, and none of their URL's contain the hyphenated domain names - they are ALL variations on the www.john.macpherson.btinternet.co.uk/ etc etc etc web space location at BT. The problem can only be with BT as far as I can figure it out! But hey - like the 23 BT staff I've spoken to, thats just my guess.....!
Ah, I see how you have it setup then - I can't see any of it from here. If you have a full offline copy of your site then I'd perhaps just get some webspace elsewhere (with a hosting company with good reputation) and point the domain at the new hoster - will probably be quicker and less hassle than dealing with bt :-)
Your suggestion crossed my mind more than once Tristan - however my assumption is that ALL my pages referenced around the web over the last dozen years will no longer be valid. Which would be a shame. And - would such a change affect my Google ranking ??? - which at present is top of the page on my name, and also my name + 'photography'.
Yes, I'd say its BT. www.john-macpherson-photography.co.uk redirects to www.john-macpherson-photography.com perfectly OK which suggestes they are both working. Both of those domains ping fine where as I cannot ping the bt address at all. You'd be a better off not using redirecting in such a way anyway - not very search engine (or user) friendly.
Personally I wouldnt worry about dropping the bt urls - your main domain name comes up on google. Yes you'll lose a certain amount in the search engines and you'll get quite a few dead links but if you put a little bit of effort into it you could get far better rankings all round.
No better this morning I'm afraid. My diagnostics can see your forwarders to ping/dns/traceroute, but cannot find the BT ones, not even a hint of them. To the world, your BT space doesn't exist.
If others can still see it, it may be that their ISP's still have an unfrefreshed DNS cache, or have actually cached the pages somewhere and are fetching those instead of actually contacting BT for the pages.
If BT can't/don't get it resolved for you, then you need to look at hosting somewhere else - NSDesign / 1and1 / Heart Internet / lunar pages are a couple of places you could try instead. You can either get another domain name and redirect to them as you're doing now with BT, or you could take up the hosting and ask them to transfer in your two existing domain names so that the web host has everything in one without redirecting. That would take a little bit of co-ordination between your existing hosts and the new one, but would tidy things up for you.
Thanks Nick - BT are apparently "working on it" and I cannot get out of my mind visions of a guy with a rusty grapefruit spoon peering into a mess of wires with a matchstick in his teeth...........
Hello John
I have tried it for the first time and it opened up no problem on both of your posted links - I use IE7 and Norton on Vista 32 bit.
Very strange!
Best wishes
Phil
It works from my bird photographer links at
www.peregrinesbirdblog.blogspot.com
Posted by John Varley on March 22, 2009 at 7:21 AM
Hi John tried it a couple of days ago, using a Mac and Safari and nothing except a blank page. Today it all works fine so presumably the correction has propagated through DNS.
Discussion
46 repliesHowever a few moments ago a BT staff member said she could find me using Google and the site was all functioning ok as far as she could see on her internal BT computer. She could not explan what was going on.
The bizarre thing is I'm running three separate Macs and cant get the site to load at all, and all my linked images here on NPN are gone, and my recent posting on Wednesday has a comment from Adam Seward to the effect that he cant find my images, and today I've had a couple of friends say they cant find the site either.
Can you kind folks look and see if you can find me here : http://www.john.macpherson.btinternet.co.uk/johnmacphersonph.html
or via www.john-macpherson-photography.com
or via Google or whatever other method you wish.
If you could post your comments here on whether you can or cant see it that would be great as the BT web folks will pop in to monitor what's going on.
I can't find your website. Good luck and I hope it will be fixed soon.
Edwin Kats
The site http://www.john.macpherson.btinternet.co.uk/johnmacphersonph.html though is down.
Did this by googling john macpherson photography
Hope this helps
Vince
Good luck
Dave
I see both fine too!
Lewis.
Dave
XP with Firefox
Hope you soon get it sorted.
Fran
FWIW, works fine here in the USA on XP, Vista and Mac with Firefox
Hope that its sorted for you now.
Edwin Kats
Now not visible on either Safari or Firefox 3 on a Mac in Scorland. Tend to agree that it's a DNS problem with Bt's servers. For some reason your website address appears with hyphens between john, macpherson and photography rather than dot when you enter it in the address box. Don't know if that has anything to do with the problem. I empathise with your frustration , if you have it, with the windows-centric people on customer service sites, BT or others. I'd start thinking about changing ISP provider.....
Tom J
My foray into the darker recesses of BT's innards has not been pleasant - not one individual in the 23 I've spoken with has any idea what went wrong, why it went wrong, whose responsibility it is, nor how to get anywhere near fixing it.
I've been told its because its a "legacy product" and I've pointed out that after being a BT customer for 30 years, and 12 years of them hosting my site, I'm a legacy customer and I should be rewarded for my loyalty not penalized - which left the BT person speechless, and eventually in agreement. But no further forward figuring out whats going on.
I'd appreciate it if some of you would keep an eye on it on your various PC's and give me a heads up from time to time over the weekend as to its status, as I suspect nobody in BT with the correct screwdriver will appear to fix it until Monday............
Now not visible on either Safari or Firefox 3 on a Mac in Scorland. Tend to agree that it's a DNS problem with Bt's servers. For some reason your website address appears with hyphens between john, macpherson and photography rather than dot when you enter it in the address box. Don't know if that has anything to do with the problem. I empathise with your frustration , if you have it, with the windows-centric people on customer service sites, BT or others. I'd start thinking about changing ISP provider.....
Tom J
The problem is on BT's servers as far as I can see. Its not just that there's this problem, the crazy thing is that NOBODY in BT has any idea how to access/remedy/work with this. BT Business deal with web site stuff and as I'm not a customer of theirs, having obtained my websapce through a Residential service package, they cant help. Residential dont do web space so they just sigh and say sorry!
I appear to be trapped in some cyber no-mans land bereft of Ovaltine...........
No problems for me using a Mac and safari 3.2.1
Good luck
Brian
Can't access either address, or via Google - get a site not found message. However the DNS seems to suucessfully direct you from the personalised URL to the BT address so perhaps the problem does lie at their end.
Mac with Firefox here.
Hope you find someone who has a clue soon!
frederic
You'll probably not see much improvement for the next day - even if they've done something about it... DNS updates can take 24-48hrs to propagate out, and external visibility can be patchy in the meantime. BT themselves will probably be able to see the sites happily enough as they access their local DNS - not other peoples.
One thing though... if you're trying to access the BT master site using BT broadband, then you should be able to see it yourself as you should be picking up their DNS directly... if you can't access it, there's something else wrong and they may need to look deeper.
As to being a legacy customer... you're just that - it doesn't make you worth anything in todays feeding chain. Sadly, you're just another brick in their wall. Call centre staff aren't experts either... it usually takes a few days to eventually be passed to someone who knows what they're on about - either that or you lose it with them first. If you're a domestic user, you have to suffer... If you're a business user, then you should demand better service.
With any luck, it'll all be running OK tomorrow or Sunday.
Don't know if you have sorted this now, I just got in. I'm getting your website just fine from www.john-macpherson-photography.com/ on a PC in Firefox, IE, Chrome and Opera.
Hope this helps
Terry
No on pc and mac,got your website saved,can't find it,search on google no joy!
Craig
www.craigchurchill.co.uk
Working fine for me here: both the long address and the shorter one.
Lovely Wildcat shots on your site!!
(Windows XP and IE7)
Hope you can get it sorted!
www.john-macpherson-photography.com
www.john-macpherson-photography.co.uk
The actual BT server space address these domains forward to is:
http://www.john.macpherson.btinternet.co.uk/johnmacphersonph.html
And the entire site at BT consists of this: http://www.john.macpherson.btinternet.co.uk/
plus various text string suffixes for the respective pages.
So if its a DNS problem I'm assuming it has to be with BT. Yes?
No better this morning I'm afraid. My diagnostics can see your forwarders to ping/dns/traceroute, but cannot find the BT ones, not even a hint of them. To the world, your BT space doesn't exist.
If others can still see it, it may be that their ISP's still have an unfrefreshed DNS cache, or have actually cached the pages somewhere and are fetching those instead of actually contacting BT for the pages.
If BT can't/don't get it resolved for you, then you need to look at hosting somewhere else - NSDesign / 1and1 / Heart Internet / lunar pages are a couple of places you could try instead. You can either get another domain name and redirect to them as you're doing now with BT, or you could take up the hosting and ask them to transfer in your two existing domain names so that the web host has everything in one without redirecting. That would take a little bit of co-ordination between your existing hosts and the new one, but would tidy things up for you.
I have tried it for the first time and it opened up no problem on both of your posted links - I use IE7 and Norton on Vista 32 bit.
Very strange!
Best wishes
Phil
www.peregrinesbirdblog.blogspot.com
John