January 17th, 2012
Today’s Skunky goes to Network Solutions (my ISP for erasmatazz.com) for their own internal FTP program. They recommend that you use a regular FTP program. I tried to use mine, but it refused to work, telling me that it couldn’t create the file when I tried to upload a file. I have used that FTP program (CyberDuck) before with no problems, so the upload problem was probably with Network Solutions. However, they have their own FTP program that can be run from inside a browser, so I decided to use that. By the way, all of this work is occasioned by my desire to get away from RapidWeaver, a Mac program for designing and editing websites that I foolishly migrated to some years ago. (I’m writing this using RapidWeaver). I have decided to migrate to WordPress, but in order to do that, I have to go through their “famous five minute install” procedure, which I’ve been working on for the last four hours now.
Anway, back to Network Solutions. The Famous Five Minute Install requires me to upload all this WordPress stuff to my site, so I tried to do so. WordPress insists that it all be at the root level. What’s the root level? I figured that it would be the highest level I have access to. However, when I attempted to upload the WordPress files to that, nothing happened. I went through all sorts of experiments, but it was just broken; nothing would upload.
But then my instinct for the idiocy of most programmers gave me an idea. I opened up the folder called “htdocs” and attempted to upload my files there. Lo and behold, it worked! The idiots at Network Solutions don’t want you uploading files to the true root level, so they block such moves. They don’t tell you why they’re blocking it, they don’t even tell you that they are blocking it. They just prevent it. If they were halfway competent, they’d have popped up a simple dialog box saying, “Sorry, but you’re not allowed to upload to this level. Besides, you don’t have any good reason for doing so. You probably want to upload to the “htdocs” folder. Open that up and you’ll be able to upload.” But that would be too competent, so here’s a Skunky to you, Network Solutions!