I rejigged my error pages and site access rules a bit. If you find yourself locked out from any page on this site, let me know - apparently lots of people were being blocked for no reason a few days ago.
The reason I think most of this is happening is because people have very strict firewalls and adblocking software that blocks HTTP referrer headers. Most of my site relies on the referrer being sent (especially for images), so please check any programs you might have for such settings. I know for a fact that ZoneAlarm Pro and Norton Personal Firewall/Norton Internet Security love to block a load of stuff thinking it's ads, or that your privacy will be breached. Rest assured that there are no ads on this site and I'm not about to spam you or steal your personal information. I better things to do, to be honest.
I've got most of my computer back now, by the way. Still upset at losing over 500 photos though - nothing could bring them back. Karl very kindly lent me a file recovery program (recovers deleted files off a drive), but unfortunately that couldn't get them back either :( Oh well.
Oh, and I know why Windows crashed the other day - because of Norton AntiVirus. Seriously, I have been screwed over too many times by that program. I was into the 7th month of my 4th version of the thing - all previous 3 versions having either crashed Windows/my computer or simply stopped working. One version (Norton Internet Security 2005 - DO NOT GO NEAR NIS, IT IS SUCH A BAD PRODUCT!) told me one day that I needed to buy 106 years' worth of subscriptions because it decided that it had expired in 1899. No amount of reinstalling would fix that, and Symantec, creators of the software were as unhelpful as usual, claiming they no longer supported the software and that I had to purchase the 2006 version. Let me tell you that this happened every time - I contacted Symantec saying something had gone wrong with a product I bought from them and they told me they didn't support it any more and that I had to buy the next version. RARGH! Anyway, I'm sick of them. Jem's been telling me to get rid of that stupid program for ages now and I've finally listened and gone for a better (and free!) solution that is so far working out great. Yah boo to you, Symantec. Greedy money-guzzlers... I could rant about them for ages, I really could.
Hmmm, how ironic that I titled this "just quickly" when this is the longest entry I've written for a while. :P
Edit: Is anyone else getting errors when they try to post a comment and/or manage their comment subscriptions? I get it on and off and I'm trying to work out what's causing it. It says something like: duplicate column in table
... If you could let me know if and when you get it, that would be great. :)
comment_subscribed enum('Y','N')
Jamie
11/08/2006 at 6:23
Oooh I use Norton Systemworks Premier 2006 I think and haven't had many problems but I am interested in the free solution you found. Do share =)
Belinda
11/08/2006 at 6:35
Eek, I have Nortan Antivurs, too, and it slows down my computer a lot. Just wondering, what's the free alternative you bought? I would love to switch programs, too.
Yay on getting your laptop fixed, at least :D
Amelie
11/08/2006 at 7:07
The free solution is Avast!, from http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html . So far it's been great for me, uses very little in system resources and costs nothing. :) Caught a couple of viruses trying to find their way into my system already, without completely slowing my computer down like Norton used to when it found something. The whole thing would grind to a halt while Norton decided to bring up its big colourful boxes full of complicated graphics and stuff. Yuk.
There's also a free version of AVG (sorry no link handy, but I'm sure you can Google it :P ) which does things just as well. I would have used that, but it wouldn't install for some reason :\
Carolynne
13/08/2006 at 23:44
I might have to try that avast program. I am looking for something new. All I have is Macafee and it sucks. Ah. I lost everything on my hard drive not too long ago and it killed me :( Sucks huh?! Don't worry, be happy.
Adastra
14/08/2006 at 7:48
Norton is very bad indeed - thankfully I never had it on my own PC. Right now I'm using AVG Free, which is pretty good - definitely better than AntiVir.