More Serious Geek Stuff

OK, Killjoy and a.maria, don't even try this. You'll seriously sprain something.

Here is the story folks:

Let's just get this out of the way from the get-go: OddTodd is the shit. And by "the shit" I mean that in a good way (or I would have said "A shit"). He runs his site and has the funniest Flash cartoons on the net, very "Office Space"-like. He's been on TV, has a book, and has pretty much become an Internet phenom/icon.

I noticed a week ago that he is now using the same Zoom search engine I recently blogged about and wrote him about it. But it seems he had some trouble since his site is so big and the free version of Zoom limits his searches. He gets an error and when he wrote Wren, they pointed him to a help file that talked about .htaccess files and php.ini files. They pretty much lost him right there.

Even though I knew nothing about these, I offered any help I could and set off to do some research. Here is what I came up with,

(WARNING: SERIOUS GEEKNESS TO FOLLOW)

Todd,

I did a little research on this and here is some scoop.

From what I can tell (and vaguely remember from my IT degree), whenever you name a file with a period in front of it, it’s hidden. I couldn’t find mine either but I think there is a reason for that. You have to create one IF you need it, which it looks like you might.

With that said, I also figured out that this “.htaccess” file is a file you create. It’s like they set default settings for your webpage and if you want it to act differently, you create and add this file of special instructions (don’t worry, it’s not all codity code-code stuff, it’s a simple text file) and it checks it when loading pages and then obeys anything different than the standard setup that MOST people are cool with. Here is a little something about making the file.

“How do I create a .htaccess file?

You can use any text editor to create a .htaccess file. Do not use Microsoft Word or Wordpad for this as they are not strictly text editors. Create a file and save it as "htaccess.txt". After you have uploaded it to the directory you wish to use it in, rename it to be ".htaccess". You can now populate your file as you require.”

Here is another little tidbit for general understanding:

“php.ini is to php what .htaccess is to the Apache web server. Just like an .htaccess file allows you to control certain behaviors of the web server, a custom php.ini file allows you to control many aspects of the way php works for your site.

Your customized version of the file should be placed in your /htdocs directory.”

OK, so, what Wren is saying is that their PHP files are set too low and IF they let you customize the php.ini file, open it and change it. All you would have to do is find it, open it in Notepad, find that setting, and change it.

Alternately, you can create the .htaccess file. I did this for you so let’s try this:

- Upload the file I’m sending you to your main directory on your site.
- Rename it by taking off the .txt extension
- See if that works
- Tell Jason he’s the coolest ever on your webpage

If that doesn’t work, we can try upping the limit. And if that don’t work, we’ll try to tackle the php.ini file somehow.

-- Jason

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If any of this is way off, let me know.