Frequently Asked Questions

For the time beeing the faq will only appear in English, if you have problems with this, please let me know.

At which provider did you register your domain

Some history because it took me over half a year to find a provider. I have had an account with Hobbiton.org (not sure if the link still exists) since 5/2000 that was free of charge. It was possible to run perl scripts, something I had been looking for a long while also. But because the server was free there was no money to have the hardware geared to the use - the built in limit of Linux, 64 users, had even to be modified - that was made of it. By the heavy use more than once harddiscs were failing and the server then was gone for a month or so. Another problem was that there was no money for a reliable DSL service provider. Although the speed inproved considerably when they moved from ISDN to DSL the reliability (up time) was poor. Approx one out of 4 times the server was unreachable. To come back to the hardware some day I found out that when data was written to disc the file appeared to be just empty. And soon after that Hobbiton came to a grinding hold and the administrators found that it was impossible to continue. Afterwards it has been in the air for a month or so and everybody could retrieve the data that was still there.
From March 1997 till May 2000 I have been using the counter from icount.com but they were taken over by somebody else and from May 2000 till July 2001 I have been using Hobbiton.org. After a crash at Planet Internet their counter stopped in March 2001 and you won't believe it but they still did not fix it while they still say they offer this feature. Until November 2001 I had no counter and then http://www.dietmonday.com came with one of the administrators (Don Heap) of Hobbiton. Because I was so happy with Hobbiton I have immediately signed up with Dietmonday. Not free ($5/month) but for that price there is an excellent service. Questions to the helpdesk are always answered the next time I log on so Don gives my the feeling as if I am the only user. Extra services I just get like "your wish is my command". But Dietmonday cannot register domain names so I had to find a registrant that would point to Dietmonday's DNS server - I did not like the idea of having a redirect service -. I have tried http://www.verisign.com and http://www.godaddy.com but ran into problems with signing up. I have also tried providers in the Netherlands but I think they were asking a really unfair price for it (about $60 / year).
But one day (Jan 2002) I ran into http://www.digipark.com. I have done the registration here within 5 minutes for a cost of $35 / 2 years. Not so expansive and exactly what I wanted.
The speed of a site oversees is not real excellent but for that I still have a provider where I can do everything I can dream of to mention a few: chat server, chopping carts and a service like Zap Zone Network runs. The subscription with Planet Internet was running until 2 / 2003 and at least until that time there were two sites. But to continue with the hosting providers. Dietmonday stopped their services mid 2002. Via www I have found d-hosting and have used this provider until end of December 2004. The reliability was good but when there were problems they responded promptly but doing something about it was a total different story. At last I was so fed up with it that I have moved the site to Digipark. Because the server is situated in the US the speed is lower but for the rest I have absolutely no complaints. I have here a good working version of horde and an own php project, a kind of merge between an agenda and a webmail program, where the email is pasted into the agenda.

Do you have MxStream / ADSL

I have no MxStream but ISDN where I am very happy about.

The big advantage is that you can make phonecalls with 2 phones at the same time. Also you can for instance still use the phone when you expect an important phone call. And of course you can still internet or use the phone when somebody else makes a very long phone call (over an hour is not a real exception).

And as far as the computer concerns it is something like 6 kB/sec or 15 kB/sec / 1 MB/min when you use two lines. What I use at the moment is 20 % discount on KPN phone basic and a cost of € 3.95 per month at Het Net. You get a seperate bill and know exactly how much you spend on internetting. Everybody here had to get used to the fact that calling Het Net does not go as smooth as with Planet Internet but for the rest everything is fine.
Furthermore I have HccNet on which I still want to investigate the possibilities.

We now write 2/2005 and I have ADSL for quite a while now. The usage of the ISDN got so high that it was cheaper to ADSL. We started with 256 kbit down - and 64 kbit upload which is graduately increased and now 1600 kbit down and 512 kbit up.

What tools do you use to create the homepage

I am using Webber32. This a simple editor like notepad. To preview the webpages you can assign a browser to the program which will evaluate the pages. There is a good html syntax checker in the program which goes up to html 3.2. What I like very much on the program is the help. It is context sensitive and it is very easy to find the various topics. To have a full function program you have to pay a fee, which I did. Expertelligence has also more advanced tools, please check out their website To download the editor (4.3 MB) click here

Do you write the JavaScript yourself

Most is written by myself. First there is the navigaton software which is object oriented using JavaScript 1.3. For instance the left frame and the site map are totally generated by JavaScript when you use the Internet Explorer 5.0 or better.
Secondly the search engine is written in JavaScript which contains a database with links. The links page with the categories uses the same database. The software of these pages dates back to February 1998 (then Netscape 3.0 was needed) and is now the oldest on the homepage. I am still playing with the idea to make a server side solution but when I can realize that I don't know. It also requires a server which allows to run scripts and does not disappear.
Since 11/99 the total contence of the database is available in a html file to have Netmechanic check the links. In the mean time they stopped doing this and there are propably more dead links than I want to know of. You can understand that it is a huge task to verify over 600 links manually. It is somewhat lower on my priority list (nobody complains) but when I come across a cheap way to do that I want to put that in place.

The JavaScript to deal with cookies and in the Guestbook come from elsewhere.

To make myself familiar with JavaScript I read the book The JavaScript Handbook by Danny Goodman. It is translated to Dutch and the translation is not to good. But on the other hand it is very complete with a lot of examples. The book I have is written in 1996 and goes up to JavaScript 1.1.
Then I also have two PDF files from Netscape written in 1999 which are very well written and handle JavaScript up to version 1.3.

What are the cookies in your homepage used for

In the first place to change the picture on the start page everytime this page is reloaded / refreshed. Try clicking the button Home and you will see the effect.
Second to find people which visit the homepage very often. They will get a reminder to fill out the guestbook. When the guestbook is filled out the reminders stop (of course).
Cookies are also used to track the session and to make the visits counter advance only 1 per visit. Session must be active to add a link to the FFALPS page. But the session vars on the server will track that only 1 link is added per session. All this is done to discourage automated additions to the FFALPS page.