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#1 2010-03-08 22:21:09
- tjallen
- New Member
- Registered: 2007-02-12
- Posts: 8
Textpattern and previewdns.com (Go Daddy, Wild West Domains)
Hi,
A number of website hosts use “previewdns.com” to allow you to preview websites before the domain name is pointed to the site, including GoDaddy, Wild West Domains, and others.
In my experience, all versions of textpattern after 4.06 fail on previewdns – the left menu items on a Write page will not work.
What I have been doing is using 4.06 to create and manage the site before the domain name is pointed there. I enter “sitename.com.previewdns.com” as the site url on the admin page, and everything works fine.
Later, when my domain name is pointed to the site, I convert from 4.06 to the newest (4.2) and then there are always problems to fix. These are merely standard upgrade problems, and resolvable.
My question is, is this what everyone else does with previewdns.com ?
Thanks
By the way, I have about 15 textpattern-based websites (none are blogs) – I love textpattern, been using it since 4.04 and rarely have any problems.
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Re: Textpattern and previewdns.com (Go Daddy, Wild West Domains)
Hi
I’ve only used previewdns once with Godaddy. It does mean you can start development quickly if you need to.
However speed is rarely so important that I can’t wait 24/48 hours until the DNS point to the site. This process does seem to be faster than it used to be.
I also have a domain that I use solely as a development site.
If you already own number of sites you could set up a sub-domain as a development area?
I use mem_templates to transfer pages and forms.
It would be interesting to find out why recent versions of txp don’t work correctly in these locations. A strange error too?
Last edited by geoff777 (2010-03-10 18:01:53)
There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
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#3 2010-03-11 07:57:18
- tjallen
- New Member
- Registered: 2007-02-12
- Posts: 8
Re: Textpattern and previewdns.com (Go Daddy, Wild West Domains)
Hi,
Thanks for responding. I can give some responses to what you’ve said, and maybe others might join in, too. GoDaddy has millions of sites, so there must be others experiencing this issue.
First, I might have sites in development and reachable only by previewdns.com for months at a time. Typically, a client’s domain name is pointing at their current site, while I am building their new site. So ‘thiscompany.com’ is busy, pointing to the current site, and I end up using ‘thiscompany.com.previewdns.com’ to reach the new site, while in development. Many clients are slow in sending website content, so the new site sits half-developed in textpattern, waiting for more content, for weeks at least, sometimes much longer, reachable only by previewdns.com
Second, previewdns.com works by appending javascripts and css to the end of every html file These scripts rewrite all the internal links, in the new format ‘yourname.com.previewdns.com’ and then the dns points you to their servers at previewdns.com – and somewhere in the process, parts of textpattern beyond 4.06 fail. I’m not sure what changed from 4.06 to 4.08, exactly, but the left menu items on the Write and Edit pages (Textile Help, Advanced Options, Recent Articles) just ceased working in previewdns. Also in the right column, the “More” stopped working, too. You click the link, but nothing happens.
Godaddy warns you that previewdns breaks some javascripts, so that is what I suspect happens. I also wonder exactly what, but this gets the discussion closer.
One thing you mentioned is a possible solution, in a practical sense: I do have some extra domain names which I could use as development names, and thus avoid previewdns altogether. That might be the way to go, on my next one.
Thanks for the inspiration, I know sometimes it helps just to talk to someone.
:-)
tjallen
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