Afternoon all,

I’m posting this in the hope that it gets picked up by search engines on how to solve this painful problem!

Let me set the scene: We designed a website for a client, who rather than use our wonderful dedicated hosting plan, decided they wanted to remain with their current host, 1&1. Fair enough, we don’t dictate where clients have to have their sites hosted, so long as they support PHP and .htaccess URL Rewriting, which 1&1 claim to do.

The first warning sign was when I realised an AddType wasn’t working. Apparantly, 1&1 don’t use the pretty much de-facto MIME type of application/x-httpd-php, instead preferring x-mapp-php4 and x-mapp-php5 for PHP 4 and 5 respectively.

However, the real headache came with actual URL Rewriting, for example redirecting /aboutus/ to /index.php?page=aboutus, it just WAS NOT working.

Lots of reports about it online, and many solutions that worked for others, but not for this. In the end, I ended up calling 1&1, who after 25 minutes, most of it being put back on hold to “check the information”, couldn’t grasp that the /aboutus/ directory was the problem as it didn’t exist. 3 times I told them “it doesn’t have to exist, the .htaccess file is supposed to catch that and send it to the right page. I’ve tested it on my dev box and it works fine!”

In the end I had to hang up before I lost my temper with her down the phone. Eventually, I finally stumbled across the solution! I stumbled across a blog by Elliott Back complaining of a very similar problem, albeit with WordPress permalinks. So I thought I’d give it a go, and it only bloody worked!

So here’s the solution:
In your .htaccess, add this to the top (or add it to your existing Options declaration):

Options -MultiViews

And here’s the reasoning, thanks to Elliott:

It turns out that 1and1 (without telling me) enabled the apache Multiviews setting, which plays havoc with the rewrite rules…
…Since I also had a file called archives.php, Apache couldn’t decide whether to apply the rewrite rules in .htaccess or the multiviews logic that said all /archives/ were really archives.php.

So a big thank you to Elliott for saving me from another life-shortening call to 1&1!

James.

Comtecs have this week developed a new tool to make email marketing much more productive. How often do you email your customers with an interesting new product or service and get lots of web traffic but little in the way of enquiries? What about if you knew exactly which of your customers had visited the page? This would give you the opportunity to contact them with direct information about the products they were interested in. Not only would you know that they had read your literature but you would also know they had clicked any links you made available.

This service is still in beta testing but we already know very accurately which of our customers have visited our new website.

If you would like any further information on this service please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Comtecs Ltd. are pleased to announce the launch of its new and improved website. This website offers many of the same great features as the previous site; however, Comtecs have made a more user-friendly layout as well an updated look and feel coupled with an expanded product and services description.

Additionally, a new section has been added for members of the West Kent Chamber of Commerce. This section allows members to log in to access discounts relating to each area of our expertise. Members of the WKCCI can log in using the same username and password as the Chamber Homepage.

Comtecs have been providing both Recruitment and IT Consultancy services for over 6 years to a wide array of customers within various business sectors. With the addition of Web Development and eCommerce to our portfolio we can offer a large variety of solutions whatever your requirements.

We hope that you find our new site both useful and informative please feel free to bookmark us and visit regularly. We will be running competitions from time to time and giving updates on what has been happening at Comtecs in our blog not to mention IT tips and tricks and advice on real time virus alerts.

Feel free to leave us a comment on the blog or any other aspect of the site you like or dislike.

Now you might think this is a little strange coming from someone who has signed up to have their photos on the web.

But what is it with people and their ego’s these days? Everyone in the country is so desperate to get noticed! Now I am all for people being famous for actually achieving something. Look at Isambard Kingdom Brunel - he designed the Clifton Suspension Bridge, The Thames Tunnel and most of The Great Western Railway. I bet most people reading this have never even heard of him! He is less famous today than Nikki the airhead from Big Brother. All she has achieved is wearing very little and being constantly cold. We are from a country that has invented and built things like : - Disc Brakes, Cats Eyes, Fax Machines, The Electro Magnet, Penicillin. The Jet Engine, Television and even The Internet.

Years ago Britain was truly Great! We were one of 2 countries worldwide that had managed supersonic air travel for passengers, we had a huge motor trade (Aston Martin, Rolls Royce, Jaguar, TVR, Bentley etc)and some of the best manufacturing and development in the world. Heck 100 years ago we owned most of the world. So what happened? I’ll tell you what. We got greedy. Instead of making things that were renowned the world over for having British build quality and style we tightened the purse strings and outsourced. In pretty much every area we cut corners and have been bought out by the rest of the world.

People are far too concerned with the easy way out. “I don’t want to work because it is easier to collect dole and watch Tricia.” Is that the kind of attitude that built us an empire? I am not saying for one minute that we start invading countries and colonising again. (We seem to be helping the Americans with that enough as it is) But lets try and make Britain Great again.

I realise now after spending 5 minutes of my time writing this that I sound like a middle aged man with a chip on my shoulder. However I am under mid 20’s and can remember the things that we used to be good at….

So lets stop looking for the easy road to fame and think a bit more about what we can all do to make this a better place again.

Spread this vid around! Hilarious stuff:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8762512180812934446

Rubbish…

As you may have noticed I’ve been fiddling around with the layout of the front page of the blog.

It now includes the avatars from our about us page and have been nicely blocked into a more almost “forum like” post style

Enjoy!
James.

Now don’t get me wrong - I’ve worked in Recruitment for many years and I’ve seen pretty much every trick in the book when it comes to candidates. From falsifying your CV (literally down to the date of birth being 20 years prior to that stated!!!), to not showing up for interviews, to changing the goalposts at the last minute - certain candidates never cease to amaze me.

I always take steps to insulate myself and my clients from this sort of behaviour: checking references, extensive questioning of candidates, getting verbal assurance from people that they will “pursue an opportunity to its fullest extent before making a decision”. It seems that many peoples “word” counts for very little these days. Worst of all I’m referring to professionals at all stages of their careers!

It seems to me that we now exist in a non-committal society where you can hide behind text messages and a hotmail account - never having to commit or face a confrontation. No one can stand confrontation but everyone seems quite happy to allow recruiters to have to face it! Sure, this is our job many will think - but have they considered the long term negative impact their indecisive actions could make for the recruiter’s relationship with the client? I think not. Being unable to make a decision and commit to a company and/or a job puts recruiters like myself in a very difficult position.

If you are the type of person who cannot make a decision to commit easily, I suggest you carefully assess your situation and requirements prior to working with a recruiter. Our service is free to candidates and we work very hard to secure work for you guys. We’ve all made wrong decisions in life and we want to prevent that from happening - especially if we’re thinking about something as important as full time employment - so once again, I would urge candidates to seriously assess what it is that motivates you and make this clear when you start speaking with a recruiter.

If a job is not right for you - then fine, no problem. There is no point us trying to force someone to take a job which would make them unhappy - so tell us this straight away! What frustrates us is when you review an advert, receive a briefing, review the spec and the client’s website, proceed through a gruelling interview process over a number of weeks only to turn down an offer of employment, which has been carefully negotiated, at the last minute shows an inability to make a firm decision and follow through with commitment. Oh, and probably best if you don’t apply for The Apprentice next year!

The BBC today has reported on a study from the University of Southampton outlining poor quality HTML code in government websites. Why not check your own site against the W3C guidelines here. Comtecs have been specialising in W3C compliance for some time and would be glad to help anyone bring their site up to speed. Contact us for more information.

Comtecs have come across another reliable hardware supplier with great prices. Click here for deal details. There are also other models available if you wanted higher spec or anything a bit different. Most machines come with at least a 15″ TFT flat screen FREE!