We have re-enabled CodeOfIsis as a working web site. Note that new user registrations are no longer permitted. If you wish to get a user account, you will need to email AJ directly. This is done by contacting him via the "register' link at the www.iamawitch.com site and then letting him know you want a CodeOfIsis account... We deleted useless submissions from some fly-by-night loan company and it just adds fuel to the fire that proves that allowing unrestricted account creation leads to abuses from idiots... We'll detail more on this in future articles...

We will be modifying this site extensively in the near future, but for now, it's just good to be back!

I'm guilty of it myself... Not taking care of I site I built! In this case, it was to leave to take care of family in a medical emergency, and dropping the care of my site for a number of months.

And that is how a site dies... So what can be done to protect your pagan web when, as life so often throws at us, intrudes and prevents you from taking full care of your web?

NOTE: On January 20'th, this site was upgraded as a direct response to the comment spammer attacks that caused serious damage to the site.

Comment spam will now be much more difficult for a spammer to attempt to perpetrate on this web. For more details, please feel free to visit our new forums section.

What is comment spam? It is the posting, usually through help from a dedicated program, of links to sites of dubious quality and content through the use of form or CGI based variable inputs to a receiver program (in our case, the comment posting portion of the site).

Comment spam depends on the site administrator to not take actions to prevent the spam in the first place. In the case of our abuse, the spammer used an injection program to place hundreds of spam messages on the site and to cause our upgrade and add-on technology to defeat his efforts to fail on first try.

It turns out that the answer to all of this was to download the entire database and manually snip out all of the comments and then re-upload the database back to the site. On doing this, we we re able to bring the site back to full functionality.

In addition, we enabled a spam filtering utility that blocks out the messages by keyword lists, ip address, and other methods.

We also changed the site to force registration and to also manually approve new accounts to the site so as to scrutinize each new site applicant. We may relax these policies later when we have more experience with the spam prevention software, but for now, we'll be patrollling the site with more than an eye on the who/what/why of things.

Other News

We will be switching the look/feel of the site to a new header and new template set due to the upgrade. Please excuse any problems or gross errors noted during this switchover. Post any noted errors in the forums area for us - Thanks!

One of the more requested scripts that I've received letters about is how to determine the start of each of the seasons and how to display that on your site.

To this end, I discovered precious few resources to draw on, except for one lucky find at the following website:

http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/js-date0.htm#Sea

This site contained a number of core pieces of JavaScript logic that were immediately adaptable to our purposes of:

1. Adding an image display on the basis of the season.

2. Adding some simple text display formatting.

You can view our script in action on the left side of every page, since I've turned it into a block to display the season in the northern hemisphere.

If you are as big of a fan of the moon as I am, then you have probably scoured the web high and low for great scripts to compute lunar phases.

I have a large collection of scripts of my own, acquired over years of my travels across the web. The best scripts are the ones you can share with people and we have a script to share with you that you can adapt for text-only lunar displays on your web for your visitors to use.

This first script is quite simple to integrate into your site, simple to modify, which we will be doing in later articles (mainly to add graphics) and will bring people to your site again and again.

If you have read a couple of our first articles on this web, you know the importance of planning out your website. While planning, you should also begin the process of selecting a web host who will be able to meet your needs and provide you with the services and support you will need for your web site.

This is not rocket science, but it can be fraught with hidden traps and surprises. Most often, one finds hosts whose technical and help support staff, to put it bluntly, could care less about your questions or needs. They operate at such low profit margins, it isn't worth their time to deal with you after you sign. I've got a couple I can recommend, and warnings about special situations you may encounter.

Hosting providers give the potential customer a list of the following services:

1. A domain name and registration for your web.
2. Web space to host the web. Often 1 or 2 gb.
3. CGI script and/or PHP or Perl languages.
4. Sometimes free email for the domain.
5. Database access, usually MySQL.
6. Bandwidth allocations and limits, usually way more than needed.

I have been asked how I managed to get the snowflake effect on the IAmAWitch.Com website by more than one Witch, and so I'll detail how it was done...

Frankly, it was so simple as to be almost an afterthought! I like DHTML scripts and ready-made offerings that come from many lands, and the dynamicdrive.com website had just the thing I was looking for in a snow effect

You know, it may just be me, but with my work as a professional web designer placing me in contact with the outcome of the new Sarbanes-Oxley laws that guarantee to break and destroy productivity in most U.S. based information systems shops, and watching the articifical introduction of slowdowns of technological systems, ranging from Microsoft XP being detuned for mysterious reasons, one gets the impression there are more things at work here...

My comments are purely speculative, but after watching government, industry, and management for many years now, I know that sometimes we can work faster by working slower.

Building a web page isn't for sissies... It takes a certain gutsy personality to make a web site spring to life, and there are right and wrong ways to go about it...

In many cases, the authors are filled with the spirit of joy at having discovered their Craft and have a collection of books and music that have marked your new direction... They are bursting at the seams to share this, and they decide to build a web site on the spur of a moment's thought...

Only then, does the discerning (and budding) designer ask the obvious question: "How?"

I can see it now... You've been in the Craft for either a few months, or perhaps for many years, and you own a computer.

Naturally, the idea of creating a web site occurs at some point, and the beauty and tragedy in it all is that this act is all too easy.

All too often we come across web sites that should have never been built. Worse yet, they often started with a good idea, but something went wrong in the translation.

Some budding webmasters lost interest. Others hit barriers of technology or creativity and just stopped there, others just... well... are bad designs that need to be mercifully deleted, and others are nearly good, but just need artistic work and sensibilities to cap them with the stamp of excellence.

Mind you, I'm not discouraging you, but this article is a frank discussion of the reality of building a web site. The trick is that web sites are more than a one time event... They require tender loving care, planning, and an appreciation of artistic sensibilities and technology.