Star-Bulletin Website Down?

[pzarquon]

No way. Is anyone else pulling up a "this domain is expired" message at starbulletin.com? Rookie mistake! Not that I haven't lost track of a bill or two in my time... now I try to keep all my domain name expiration dates in my PDA.

Hmm. WHOIS reports: "Record expires on 04-Mar-2007"

On second thought, I think the mistake might have been working with NetEnterprise.

[kimo55]

Re: Star-Bulletin Website Down?

No way. Is anyone else pulling up a "this domain is expired" message at starbulletin.com? Rookie mistake! Not that I haven't lost track of a bill or two in my time... now I try to keep all my domain name expiration dates in my PDA.

Hmm. WHOIS reports: "Record expires on 04-Mar-2007"

On second thought, I think the mistake might have been working with NetEnterprise.

nope. works well both ways for me.

[pzarquon]

Re: Star-Bulletin Website Down?

Interesting.

Now, starbulletin.com brings up the 'domain expired' note, but www.starbulletin.com brings up the correct site. But, since the correct site seems to pull some of its content from the starbulletin.com domain name (i.e. no 'www'), the front page has the 'domain expired' page popping up in all those spots (inline frames?).

Here's what it looks like to me:

[pzarquon]

Re: Star-Bulletin Website Down?

Here's what it looks like to me:

Hmm. And probably just me. I checked it through DNS servers on the mainland and using UH's system, and it looks fine. Apparently, the DNS server I'm using has apparently, and temporarily, lost track of the record. How strange.

False alarm. Nothing to see here, you looky-loos!

[zztype]

Re: Star-Bulletin Website Down?

Prophet,

Take a look at your screen shot... The ads are served by another company and added as an "include" to the SB pages. The ad server was MIA in DNS. Starbulletin.com was OK, but the advertising company forgot to renew their domain name.

Appears fixed now.

Blaine

[pzarquon]

Re: Star-Bulletin Website Down?

Take a look at your screen shot... The ads are served by another company and added as an "include" to the SB pages.

Did you see the same thing?

I thought it was a third-party server outage, but when I went to starbulletin.com (no 'www'), I got just the 'this domain has expired' note. Further, while I could see the front page (albeit with the weird inline frames), whenever I tried to click through to a story (which are linked internally without the 'www' prefixed to the starbulletin.com domain), again I just saw the 'expired' page.

I'm pretty sure it's my DNS that's lost track of the no-www domain name. But it does make me wonder... why does the Star-Bulletin site use both 'www.starbulletin.com' and 'starbulletin.com'? At the core level, networks can treat the two differently (hence the Honolulu Advertiser's use of the clever 'the' subdomain).

[zztype]

Re: Star-Bulletin Website Down?

It's standard DNS setup to list the domain name, starbulletin.com, as the domain, with a server alias to www.starbulletin.com. They are one and the same. In most domain name addresses, the "www" is assumed to be active, though in practicality, www is about like an extra thumb. There is no reason to type it, in most cases.

At Kamehameha, they do it differently. www.ksbe.edu refers to a specific server IP address. ksbe.edu returns nothing. (No server alias.) There are dozens of subdomains, such as kapalama.ksbe.edu refers to a specific IP address. In fact, that same "kapalama" server hosts about 30 subdomains. But the "kapalama" server does NOT answer to www.kapalama.ksbe.edu as there is no dns entry for that subdomain.

I heard back from S-B Webmaster Ken Andrade who said this about the MIA ad DNS:

Haven't been able to replicate that, 'www' or no. The AMS runs off of starbulletin.com, so if the domain were down/expired there would have been no SB front page at all, not just missing ads. I'm guessing the 3rd-party company serving up the ads let something expire briefly? Wouldn't be the first time. Washington Post did it some months back.