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Webmasters! Again, the late ufologist needs you!

15:11 / 23.02.06

I'm out of my depth again.

I'm trying to help the widow of the late Bob Pratt turn her husband's website over to new owners.

He'd set the thing up -- it's www.bobpratt.org, by the way -- using Yahoo's small business service.

What we'd like to do is take it off yahoo and give the whole thing to MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network. They have their own servers, no subscription fees, and they're eager to keep Bob's research out where people could read it. Yahoo is being really recalcitrant. The MUFON web people are pulling their hair out.

So Bob's widow called me and asked if I could help. We have access to the back end of the site, more or less -- using Bob's ID, I was (as previously noted on Barbelith) able to get a password and post his obituary. MUFON now has all his files -- they can recreate the site. The problem is, Bob had quite a following (especially in Brazil) who know Bobpratt.org as the place to go. We want that name to point to the MUFON site so the good widow Pratt won't have to worry with Yahoo ever again.

What's the best way to do that?

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

15:24 / 23.02.06

USing a simple redirect on the yahoo page would make it so when anyone loaded it it would point to any other site you wanted.

I would post the code myself but barbelith would try to parse it.

Go here for sample code you can place at the old site so that when a user opens it it will send them to the new one.

hope that helps.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

15:29 / 23.02.06

Sorry, on a conference call when I posted that. the link has details on how it works and all that, but the gist is:

Add the code at the site I linked to bobpratt.org, changing it so it points to where you want it to go, you can also put content on the site, so it can say "Bob Pratt's page is now being hosted by MUFON, you will be redirected in 5 seconds"

I go to bobpratt.org, see the message, and 5 seconds later MUFON starts loading.

Everyone is overjoyed with this marvel of technology and my name goes into the history books, oddly enough, for something totally unrelated.

15:30 / 23.02.06

Ah - that'd work. I think part of what we want, though, is to stop paying hosting fees to Yahoo once the subscription runs out (which I think is later this month). We want to seize back the domain name.

I'll definitely bring the referrer up as a thing, though.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

15:44 / 23.02.06

Ahh, ok

if you want the domain name back you need to find out where he reserved the name at (Godaddy.com and others).

If he went through yahoo to reserve the domain name as well then there should be a domain management area where you can change the DNS server the domain points to, and make it point to MUFON's servers.

Basically (I don't know how much web stuff you know) When you plug in www.bobpratt.org into a browser the internet routing gods know that you REALLY want to see the content currently on NS8.SAN.YAHOO.COM, what you need to do is find where in Yahoo's hosting are you can change that so the address points to MUFON's DNS routing server.

If the domain was registered via godaddy or another third party restrar this will be simple once you get access to the account, if it was registered through Yahoo it might be tougher.

15:46 / 23.02.06

I believe it's registered with Network Services, but it was done through Yahoo. Thus, tougher.

Hmph. I'll have to check this once I get home tonight.

Thanks for that redirect thing, though. That's pretty cool.