Alert of potential problem with schlockmercenary.com
Posted July 27th, 2008 by Sandra TaylerNote from Sandra Tayler
If you have any difficulties reaching www.schlockmercenary.com over the next few days, please click over to www.schlocktroops.com. It has been set up as an alternate location for fans to get their daily Schlock fix. Please spread the word in the event of a problem. That is the important information. Like any good reporter, I’ve put it first in case people don’t care to read the rest of the story.
The rest of the story: We are in the process of renewing the Schlock Mercenary domain name. Due to a comedy of errors (some of which are our fault, why did we not take care of this months ago? I keep asking myself this and then remembering exactly how busy we’ve been for the last three months. That’s my excuse. I’m sticking to it.) the renewal may not be complete before the domain expires. We’ve set up the www.schlocktroops.com site so that no one need to go Schlockless while we sort things out.
Some of you may remember the domain name snafu of last summer when Howard and I only became aware of the domain expiration after the site went down. We vowed to not let that happen again because that was really embarrassing. So we’ve improved. Perhaps next time we need to renew the domain, we’ll figure out how to do it without a public brouhaha. That would be nice.
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July 27th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Please, dear, please — remember to renew your domain. In fact, have your registrar set it to auto-renew. I can’t tell you how many domains I know of that have been allowed to expire and then the original owner can’t get them back because a domain vulture (nasty, vile creatures) has grabbed it up. A guy in my rocket club can’t get his own name because a slimy domain vulture grabbed it during a period of expiration.
July 27th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
An auto-renew is a nice idea.
I don’t know who your registrar is, but I use NameCheap.com and they allow you to purchase several years worth all at once. This has an added benefit too, that if the prices go up (has happened recently actually) then you already got it for the old price.
A problem I had with a few of my websites was that the web hosting company forgot to renew the domain and it lapsed for a day or two. I have found through experience that it is faster and more reliable to have the domain registered yourself through a registrar. If your web host did this for you, and they are not a mercenary company, they will transfer your domain name to a registrar of your choice. I suggest doing that if you don’t have full control yet, since when you transfer the fees go toward renewing your domain name anyway.
Hopefully some of that will help you guys for the future. Thanks for the heads up and the alternate site.
July 27th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Yes we have remembered to renew. It is in process, but not yet complete. First thing Monday morning I will be calling the domain to make sure that the process is complete before expiration. Hopefully this notice will be completely unnecessary. BUT on the chance that all does not go as planned, we wanted to make sure people could still find Schlock.
July 27th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
What’s funny is that http://www.schlocktroops.com actually loads about 10 times faster than http://www.schlockmercenary.com does. At least here, it does.
There once was a comic names Schlock,
Whose domain name was held in a lock,
A new site was born,
But the readers were torn,
‘Cause the new site used less of the clock!
July 27th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
The details, because some of you really want to know:
Renewal is simple right? Yeah. We thought so too.
Company A sent us a renewal notice, suggesting we should renew and set up auto-renewal. “What a good idea I thought.” So I clicked the link only to have Company A’s website tell me that we are not registered with them. So why am I getting notices plastered with Company A’s name? I call Company A. The tech guy says that the name is registered with Company B and I will need to contact them to renew. I contact Company B. They tell me that they do not handle renewals and that I will need to contact a registrar company to renew the domain name. This bout of non-information lasts more than a week via both phone calls and emails. I ask Howard to please, please take care of this because I don’t know what to do next.
Howard is insanely busy and does not have time. He finally makes time and calls Company A. The tech guy at company A says that we are registered with company B, but gives Howard an authorization code sans any instructions. Howard has to leave for a convention and hands the mess back to me. (This takes another week)
I call Company A. The tech guy tries to tell me that the domain is registered with Company C. I not so politely explain that I am confused as to why we are continuing to get renewal notices saying “click here to renew” from Company A if they don’t have the domain name. Also what is this about Company C? I’ve never even heard of them before. I mention Company B, and the tech guy backtracks and says “Oh yes. You’re with company B.” Apparently Company B is somehow affiliated with Company A, so that Company A handles their notices, but not the renewals. Or something. I still don’t understand it. In order to renew the domain name I have to transfer the name from Company B to Company A. Apparently this is the purpose of the unexplained authorization code. At this point we are 9 days from expiration. Transfers take 5 days, we should still be fine. 7 days later the transfer is not yet complete. It is a Saturday, so no one answers the phone at customer support. The emails I sent to support go unanswered (Despite assurances of a 24 hour response.) It is now Saturday night and the domain is due to expire on Monday.
So we set up an alternate domain address. First thing Monday morning I will be on the phone to discuss the situation with a manager rather than a tech guy.
July 27th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
perhaps reminding them of several thousand fans with unhealthy obsessions with large caliber weaponry, high explosives, and creative uses for duck tape who may become cranky\homicidal if not given their daily fix of schlock may help speed the process and cut the run around crap
that or just send Sgt. Schlock to negotiate and you may end up with a free domain for life by the time he’s done
juenger1701
July 27th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Interestingly, I work for the company the domain is registered with. I can confirm it’s good until 2009. If Howard or Sandra wants to contact me regarding anything to do with the domain, I’ll be glad to help. :)
July 27th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Thus Spake Juenger1701:
“perhaps reminding them of several thousand fans with unhealthy obsessions with large caliber weaponry, high explosives, and creative uses for duck tape who may become cranky\homicidal if not given their daily fix of schlock may help speed the process and cut the run around crap”
^^ This. Exactly this. If the webcomic-fandom equivalent of “OMMMMINOUS HUMMMMM” doesn’t get ‘em to straighten up, nothing will! Ha! ^^
Also: I suggest you seriously consider getting an entirely-new Registrar; this company A/B/C stuff sounds …….. unreliable, that’s a nice non-profane term: unreliable. Yeah.
July 27th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Woot, looks like you’ve got it for another year.
I don’t know how tight your budget is but renewing for a decade at a shot will give you not only better prices, but a lot less stress in your busy lives.
D.
July 27th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
What’s a bit funny is that this occurs at aboout the same time as webcomics nation goes down and anything at the site redirects to a page with the URL http://expired.revenuedirect.com/park.php?domain_name=WEBCOMICSNATION.COM&site_id=38206
…implying that the same thing has happened to a larger comicky site.
July 27th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Cripes – that Company A/Company B “who’s got the registration” stuff sounds a lot like the “slamming” business that was going on when we left the US five years ago. That is, our phone service was with Company B, but Company A would call and say we needed to renew (with them silently implied) and in the process steal business. Turned out that I had to request to Company B that we not be transferred without my explicit permission (I’ve forgotten — there was a specific request that made it necessary to explicitly contact me before changing my service). Suddenly the “you need to renew” calls stopped, apparently because I could no longer be “slammed” easily.
Especially that “you need to transfer to us so that you can renew” sounds like they are playing the same game, just a different tech.
Good luck!
July 27th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
umm..hate to tell you this but it expires in 2009. You cant renew it because it has not expired yet…..
Domain Services Provided By:
000domains, support@000domains.com
http://www.000domains.com
Registrant:
Howard Tayler
1066 North 440 West
Orem, UT 84057
US
Registrar: 000DOM
Domain Name: SCHLOCKMERCENARY.COM
Created on: 28-JUL-00
Expires on: 28-JUL-09
Last Updated on: 26-JUL-08
Administrative, Technical Contact:
Tayler, Howard howard.tayler@gmail.com
1066 North 440 West
Orem, UT 84057
US
801-426-5714
Domain servers in listed order:
NS3.BKWM.COM
NS2.BKWM.COM
NS1.BKWM.COM
now that thats done maybe we can fix the forums hmm ? schlock should have only one forum without retarded third party message boards.
July 27th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Okay – to give better technical information. – here’s the ‘WHOIS’ information from Saturday, July 26th, at 11 PM CST.
Domain Name: SCHLOCKMERCENARY.NET
Registrar: BASIC FUSION, INC.
Whois Server: whois.basicfusion.com
Referral URL: http://www.basicfusion.com
Name Server: DPNS1.DNSNAMESERVER.ORG
Name Server: DPNS2.DNSNAMESERVER.ORG
Name Server: DPNS3.DNSNAMESERVER.ORG
Name Server: DPNS4.DNSNAMESERVER.ORG
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 08-aug-2007
Creation Date: 07-aug-2006
Expiration Date: 07-aug-2008
—
The big issue here is Tucows, the Registrar that wouldn’t. They don’t actually provide any registration services on their own. Rather, they sublet registration ability to other companies, such as Basic Fusion and 000Domains. This means that if you backtrack the domain, it’s actually registered through Tucows, not the subregistrant, but the subregistrant has to process all renewals and moves. It’s a really confusion situation, especially when Basic Fusion went through a bunch of ricocheting around last year with Tucows.
So, what this means is that the update system finally processed the transfer request during the 12 PM EST cycle.
In case anyone wonders why I still have yesterdays whois information, it’s because I was working on the problem last night and still had the log of that terminal session.
July 27th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Now – what’s wrong with the forums? There are two main forums. The Blank Label Comics forums, and the NightStar forums. Which one is ‘retarded’?
July 27th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
My apologies – that was ’schlockmercenary.net’ -which is owned by a squatter. Here’s the .com
Domain Name: SCHLOCKMERCENARY.COM
Registrar: TUCOWS INC.
Whois Server: whois.tucows.com
Referral URL: http://domainhelp.opensrs.net
Name Server: NS1.BKWM.COM
Name Server: NS2.BKWM.COM
Name Server: NS3.BKWM.COM
Status: ok
Updated Date: 21-jul-2008
Creation Date: 28-jul-2000
Expiration Date: 28-jul-2008
—-
Note that it _says_ tucows, but it was a 000Domains company.
(Basic Fusion was also related to Tucows, thus my personal confusion)
July 27th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
thanks for reminding me why i use joker.com which is a swiss based (and apparently immune to us based registrar asshattery).
i cant register at any of the forums. how bout making a schlock forum with wordpress and getting rid of the third party b.s. forums which arent used much anyway ? oh and single sign on please.
July 27th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Zurk – if you only want to be offensive, then there’s not much I can do to help you.
“I can’t register at any of the forums” is a ridiculous statement. In what way can’t you register? As for the ‘Third party BS forums’, I take care of those as well as this. Also, those forums are used, just not exclusively by Schlock Mercenary fans.
July 27th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
hmm let me count he ways i cant register.
your username contains invalid chars
your password needs one capital letter, one number … (what is this, a bank ?)
i’ve tried about 20 times. and yes i even tried with those retarded password policies. not working.
and why does schlock need more than 1 forum and login ? you tell me.
userfriendly has the forum integrated right into the page. thats how it should be. more advert impressions as people post and refresh, easy to comment on the current cartoon, single sign on. bliss. for everyone, including the cartoonist.
July 27th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Thank you very much Bookworm for jumping in to help with the problems. Thank you again for providing the technical information for interested parties. Folks, you all need to be nice to Bookworm. He has saved our bacon on technical issues many many times without ever complaining.
July 27th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
1) What username are you trying to use? Letters and numbers are the standard. If you try to register as %##^&&, no, you shouldn’t be able to register.
2) Password – If you don’t like reasonably secure passwords, then I don’t know what to tell you. My normal passwords have letters and numbers by default.
3) Which of the two forums is giving you the login problems?
4) Schlock Mercenary has two forums because initially, Howard was on his own. It was easier to use the Nightstar forums because a large number of the fans were on there, and also on the #Schlock_Mercenary channel on the Nightstar IRC network. Upon joining up with the other artists to forum Blank Label Comics, they decided to have a central web site, with centralized forums. The only BLC artist that has separate forums is Greg Dean, because he already had his own set up, and didn’t want to dump them. Perfectly reasonable.
For the same reason, Howard isn’t going to drop the fans already on the NightStar forums and tell them to go elsewhere.
As for single signon – If I enabled that, it would be more likely that the _forum_ login would be the username and password used for the blogs, not the other way around.
July 27th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
ok..this is getting silly
1. zurk
2. reasonably SECURE ?? for a FORUM ?? are you kidding me ?
3. both
4. history is irrelevant. im sure microsoft thinks that vista has great history too. so did windows 3.1 and windows ME.
heres a suggestion — this is a comic about 35th or whatever century hard science. maybe we can update it from a 19th century user interface to the 21st century one…hmm ? and remove all the legacy cruft while we’re at it by *drumroll* MIGRATING user accounts/forum postings to a shiny new single sign on consolidated forum without silly security policies or user name restrictions that actually allows you to register properly AND generates more revenue for the artist while improving the fan experience.
July 27th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
I’ll check the user registrations on the forums, with the user ‘zurk’, and see what happens.
July 27th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Except that Nightstar has quite a bit of history and a good community going for it. That and (perhaps) Howard has better things to do than redo his website and try to manage a forum.
Relax, draw a deep breath, and enjoy the comic. If you still can’t register at Nightstar, send mail to spotslot at beer dot com and I’ll create an account on Nightstar for you. Fair enough, zurk?
D.
July 27th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Okay – on the Blank Label Comics forums, the user ‘zurk’ already exists, and is an active account – apparently you (or someone else) managed to register and activate it.
I haven’t checked the Nightstar forums yet.
July 27th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
For what it’s worth, I’ve been happy with register4less.com, who I found through http://www.userfriendly.org/. They seem to be a geek owned and geek friendly outfit.
July 28th, 2008 at 5:55 am
>Except that Nightstar has quite a bit of history and a good community >going for it. That and (perhaps) Howard has better things to do than >redo his website and try to manage a forum.
i dont know…for anyone else i’d say no … but i think howard is a professional and will improve his business image to the outside world, particularly to newcomers and will consider it as part of the cost of doing business i suspect. i could be wrong, and howard might simply just neglect the website UI, be sloppy, and lose ad impressions but i like to think that some people are professionals and generally try to maximize PROFIT! if its important enough to them. of course this website fiasco would never have taken place had the schlock house truly been in order. so i could be wrong.
July 28th, 2008 at 8:33 am
1. zurk objects to having to have a capital letter in the password.
2. zurk doesn’t use capital letters, except a whole word at a time.
Is there a connection? Or…
1. zurk whines a lot.
2. zurk doesn’t capitalise, except to shout.
3. zurk has only gotten a little bit of help, and took a while to get even that.
Maybe there’s a connection there.
zurk: I suspect that it’s more profitable to work on getting the next few books out quickly, and come up with new merch, than it is to fiddle with forum software to gain a slight increase in ad revenue.
July 28th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
So much to respond to…
There are multiple Schlock Mercenary communities because the web is like that — multiple communities. Nightstar, Blank Label, Keenspot, Myspace, Facebook, and LiveJournal all have groups, forums, or communities devoted to discussion of the comic. Providing single sign-on for those would be difficult, and would almost certainly be a violation of people’s privacy, since I’d need to capture credentials.
The schlockmercenary.com site itself is indeed due for an overhaul. I’ve been investigating some options, and until I decide on a direction, I’m not going to put additional layers of lipstick on the pig. Right now I’m more interested in getting through convention season, and putting out a few more books. Those pay the bills far more effectively than ad revenue ever did.
The domain name thingy was frustrating, but it worked out exactly like we planned it to… with the exception of the last minute panic. The system transferred the domain just before the registration expired, and now we’re set to auto-renew on the new system. Had we known that the transfer was going to wait until the last possible minute, there would have been much less panic.
Now that we’re off the legacy Tucows system there should be no further problems. We’ll be sticking with our current registrar.
I think that about covers it.
July 28th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
@zurk: Sorry I wasted your time d00d. Hopefully life will start to treat you the way you feel it should.
D.