Two pages of potato measurement action

Iteration 2 is compete. I am no longer totally ashamed of how the thing looks, plus I (and my test users) are starting to get the feel of how this might actually work.

Corrupted password file

I first bought hosting back in 2000 I think. On the recommendation of a friend, I chose Nexpoint, and bought their shared server package which was based on a Cobalt RAQ server. This has worked fine ever since, and on the few occasions that I've needed support (password reset and PHP reconfiguration) they have been helpful and efficient. On Wednesday I thought I'd try to upload the howbigismypotato files to my webspace, to try it out as a possible hosting option. I couldn't log in through FTP or SSH using any user I could remember, so with a sigh I submitted a support request to have the passwords reset. I was surprised to get this message in response:

The password file on your server has recently been corrupted. The server you are on is a cobalt linux server and cobalt no longer provides support for their servers.

Oh dear. How often does this sort of thing happen? I've never heard of it happening at work. It must be quite a nightmare in a shared hosting environment like the one nexpoint run. Amusingly all my web pages, including the dynamic stuff, was still working fine without me having looked at it for years. If I'd never tried to log in at the host level, I would never have known there was a problem.
Thankfully Nexpoint provided a good solution - moving all my files onto a newer server, and effectively setting me up a whole new hosting package. It all went through smoothly and I remain very happy with their service. Now it's time to get on with something more productive.

Rounded corners

Drawing a rectangle is pretty easy, even if you are stuck using Powerpoint. Drawing rounded corners that are arcs rather than eliptical arcs turned out a little harder. Here's my first attempt at a credit card outline, based on the ISO dimensions. Seems OK apart from the small artifacts on the right-hand side. Maybe I should use slightly heavier lines. Maybe I should write "Bank of Potato" on it.

Spelling mistake

Somehow I spelt "building" wrong in the URL for this blog. It's fixed now. The QA department will be sacked.

Baby steps with a slider

Iteration 1 is complete. Small GIF grows and shrinks when you use the slider. I found the slider at Web FX, and it seems pretty clean. The page itself is just on my laptop for now; hosting not sorted out yet.

Got the domain

It's not 1999 anymore, but even now you haven't started your .com adventure until you've bought the domain. I bought mine, with a little help from Claire, last night. So now we are showing the UK2 holding page. Why did I choose UK2? Because I've used them before, when I thought they were quite cheap, and they did the job just fine. I'm amazed that their pages don't appear to have changed in 5 years. I guess they must work.

The beginning

was actually a few weeks ago. Full story to follow. In the mean time I'm starting this blog about building a silly website. Let's see how silly it gets.