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Category: Web Design

Knocking my site off line, Part 2 – It’s Back!!

God, 2 weeks have been a real problem for this site!

You may of noticed, I ‘ve had a lot of problems with this site, from Internal Server 500 errors (caused by running out of memory, not storage or bandwidth) to actually disappearing all together! I’ll explain.

I’m probably the oldest client on Cadence networks, this site is probably the oldest on their server and unfortunately, servers do have a limit to how long they can run before they give up. Thats the spoiler alert. So what happened?

Simple, it got old, but to get there, I had a number of problems.

Originally, I was trying to solve my Internal Server Error 500 as it was caused by this site getting a bit on the large side. It contains my previous WordPress account posts and media as well as modern stuff that shows off my abilities. Detailed in this post:

Knocking my site offline.

So, here I guess is part 2.

It worked for a week, very very well, I was keeping an eye on cPanel (which is the web hosting manager, basically controls my part of the site from a larger cluster with shared hosting) for the server information, made sure I wasn’t overloading it because – well it would be bad because if that happens, things break, unintentionally. Now I don’t know how many sites are on that server, but I guess there is a few and it is one server, known as whm0.

Now the last thing you want, is to knock not just your own site, but everyone else’s and you got to take some responsibility for that if it does, like I did. Set the PHP memory limit in WordPress to 128mb (I.e. allocate 128mb to this site for the sever side processing), checked, loaded up the site, checked, done. A week later… it broke – not just the site…

Oh no! Everything, the 3 sites I know of:

www.burgess.world (my dads site)

https://www.southdownsas.org.uk

And every other site now was suddenly offline. To make matters worse, cPanel also allows you to have a mailbox connected to your domain. Its not bad, its not the best and it doesn’t live up to what Zimbra can do, it works, it does the job. I still think Outlook is the best though. Now if you have my world email address, which is tied to the domain, you then realise that this email account is tied to the same inbox that is on the site, which means, no site = no emails = bliss – or stress!

So, an email later, site back online. It lasts just over 2 days and cuts out, again! Gets reset after a support email, cuts out 2 days later and then gradually gets shorter and shorter, until it cuts out on a weekend and offline for 2 days which was 10-12th August 2025.

In the meantime, I try everything to reduce the load, thinking that I was the problem, poured over the logs, got my dad to do the same, nothing out of the ordinary, but cPanel was moaning that the storage devices (not hot how they work, but still) was reporting errors. It was the “/” storage area to begin with as cPanel runs Linux, so drives look different in Linux. “/” is basically the root directory.

So, I did more and more diagnostics with the same outcome, now I am having nightmares and what was making matters worse is that Jetpack was adding to it. Random notifications at 05:35 for a start saying my site is offline.. ARRGHHH! It started giving me nightmares. So I went more and more nuclear, until I thought “lets do one last ditch effort, back everything up and delete everything, how long will it last?”

The nuclear option then proved something.

A day later, the server shut down again, but I didn’t report it, I had then discovered that we are not looking at a software fault, but now, a hardware fault. Then the next problem, “/mnt/backup” was showing errors! Yeah, the server was dying a slow and painful death. It got replaced this morning for something better. Plus they had issues with it for some time.

So, to qtp, thank you for your services, sadly though, its time to put you to bed. Good night.

In the meantime, they’ve upgraded me to a server with 2 extra cores, so it should be slightly quicker. However, I just can’t believe everything happened coincidently at the same time as I was sorting another issue out. I guess that is the irony of life. Hopefully, I’ll rest easier tonight – oh, I got to setup Jetpack on my tablet again, the Samsung Tablet anyway. I got a review coming up, involving it, but not as the main star. I went out shopping on payday for a new tablet, the cheapest one I could find on AliExpress without being too cheap. I couldn’t find any indepth reviews, so its time to put my thoughts on it. The reason is also slightly more interesting as I have a draft post and I plan to talk about it more in the future – I also need to update my CV with the new task.

No, I’ve not left my job, I’m still working.

Go here: https://www.fishbourne-pc.gov.uk/the-parish-council/councillors/
See if you can spot me (hint, its easy if you look a the hair colour).

Yes, I’ve gone down the political route, actually, I’m Apolitical, in that I don’t support a political party of any shape or form – but representing my views at a local parish council about local issues. I’ve been “co-opted” for about a month, in that I am elected by the councillors and not the members of the public and I got elected in by a large majority that really shocked me.

I’ll be talking about that in time to come and what difference I have made as I plan to do something for the better. I should point out, being a councillor, I can’t act on my own, but I can act as a body for decisions, although there is things I will be bringing up and I have a notepad for that, this is also where the tablet comes in as I have a council email address and as my inbox is subject to FOIA and SAR which is similar to my current employer – I don’t want my personal data mixed in with public data and vice versa as for a start, you got a number of laws to consider, that being the Data Protection Act 1998/General Data Regulation Act 2016 (which pretty much replaces the DPA 1998, even though I find out we call it DPA 2018) as well as Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and Local Government Act 2000 or there abouts – I’m not 100% on this, but you get the idea where I am coming from. Considering FOIA needs to have a pretty good excuse for not having something, but at the same time, you have to adhere to GDPR/DPA which can be a fight between what’s right and wrong. You can’t just say “you don’t have it”, “why don’t you have it?”.

Hence my desire to review it and why I brought it. If you are wondering, I got a PriTom L8 tablet. 8 inch, £50 with savings, well was a little cheaper than that and so far, for the purpose I brought it for, its Ok. I’ll explain more and my concerns with it hopefully in the future. Lets say, it was a surprise in both ways. Particulary when I pitted it in an aquarium WebGL test with my Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 8.7.

12/08/2025
More website design.
This time, its not my own!

I mentioned a couple of days ago, I did another test, just to see how Instagram worked and mentioned it was for another site. You can see this site when it’s up on https://tymaran52.wordpress.com/

Well, I went to a pub and got my iPad out, I never thought about developing a site on the worlds smallest computer, but I did it and, create a basic barebones of a site. Its only four pages. Its also proves one other thing, what peoples intentions for sites are. Her’s is to promote her dog history with the Irish Red and White Setters. Now the question I had, how do I deal with what is more like a technophobe? I.e. someone has little interest in comparison to me about computers? Well, find the easiest site to manage (I recommended WordPress as it is easy), set up the plug-ins and create the lowest amount of pages. I also used a free account on WordPress, which looks exactly like what I use to manage this site (save for some discrepancy to work within the WordPress ecosystem. I didn’t have a plan sadly as that wasn’t revealed to me, so what I did was just produce a bare bones site to get them started, which consisted of:
- Home
- Blog
- Instagram
- Contact me
Then tested everything. One thing I will say, producing a site, this is what I recommend everyone starts with. For a design, ask yourself the question

WHY?

For me, the question to why was pretty obvious, I have a lot of Trainz content to promote and produce, so producing a site to come to, primarily to download my content is a good start, it has a purpose. The question then I ask, “are you regurgitating anything else on the web?” in that are you actually constantly copying everyone else’s material, then I’d wouldn’t go any further because of the issues of copyright. These days, its getting worse these days as there are a lot of companies that will happily pursue you for a copyright claim, my dad has found this out.

“Are you producing original content or promoting content you produce?”, this could be products and services. In my case, a product but its for free.

Professionally “how are you going to fund it?”, mines cheap, so its currently funded by my (limited) salary. Free sites exists if you don’t mind tons of advertising, but other than that, its a consideration. If you got lots of files, the killer is bandwidth, meaning the amount you transfer to and from your site to your audience. Storage is usually quite cheap these days.

Originally, my mum wanted to do something with instagram which I hope I don’t have to explain what it is as Meta products are in our lives on line in one way or another. Instagram however, is limited, it is for displaying content for content consumption, I.e. photos and videos, its not the appropriate use if you want to talk about in my mum’s case, history of the dogs, who is who and what the tree is like. (E.g. a family tree of the kennel name of Tymaran). This is what you have to think about, your target audience, your content and your interaction. Even if it is looking for work, then again, I’m not, but I put my CV and LinkedIn profile up to say if something comes along that I like, I’ll take it!

Once you have some ideas, don’t just go out and create something, it won’t work. Plan it, even if you have HTML WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get) and thrash out some ideas to get the overall look and feel of the site. You can even do it on pen and paper, that is how I started this site but I lost the origins. Don’t copy, but look at inspiration from other sites or even the world around you. For me, I like trains a lot, so a rail map was the biggest source of inspiration, this I decided had to be the navigation bar. (Idon’t know what to do with the header, so I just added a rendering (from another project of all things), so thats why I came up with what I had. This becomes a template and a lot of sites are built like this. In reality, your template can have content anywhere, some sides like mine have a navigation bar to the left, not seen it for the ones I’ve visited to the right yet, but a lot (possibly to make it more responsive) put the navigation at the top in menus.

Now you need a story board. What categories are you going to split your site into? Trial and error on this, However, you can have multiple layers, but there is one rule to consider – 3 clicks. “Can I get to most of my content in 3 clicks or less?”. If the answer is “Yes”, its a good design, otherwise no, remember, your audience is probably not going to stick around for long. Don’t make your pages too busy either. Can you find the text you want without burying it deep? No, make it clearer. (I’ve used an “accordion” plugin for this reason on my Models page and to keep loading times down).

From there, consider your mobile and desktop users. In fact, consider your mobile more than your desktop users, why? Because I guarantee that most of your traffic will be from mobile users. A site thats hard to read on a mobile phone or tablet will deter users from using your site.

Finally, accessibility. I’ve incorporated it in this site, but as a lot of users now considered to have a disability or those that don’t have a disability but find it hard to use your site, is a turn off. If you notice, I have (an otherwise annoying plugin – sorry) that aids with that. My eyes love small text, my mum can’t read as much as I can at higher resolutions on the same screen size and she isn’t disabled. Likewise, I find black on white more difficult than white on black.

Then test, test, test. Test with the oldest, test with the newest, test with a small item, test with a large item, test with all sorts of operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, Kindle, etc), or get others to test it for you. When it comes to testing, you can only do so much, so you’ll never have a 100% success rate.
Test the links, test to see everything loads, just test everything, create a test table if you have to. You may have to go live, but other than that, call it a day. You’re done. Well, for a static site. As soon as you go live, you are going to get a million problems. Its called Hacking, its called spam, you’ll have a lot of it. Enable 2FA authentication as a minimum and a strong password.

Now call it a day unless you want to connect a load of apps.

Talking of testing, I got my Kindle out, it works on the web and noticed that some of the items produced by WordPress doesn’t work.

And if you want to go really old, sadly my old laptop also doesn’t work 🙁
21/07/2025
Another test! With Instagram.

This is to just link my instagram account to my site… oh wait!

This actually might take some explaining. I’ve been producing my website for a month at the moment, so my mum came up with an idea “I want to put more on Instagram for Irish Red and White Setters”.

Here’s a better suggestion, how about a full on WordPress blog and site? Well, I started it and it doesn’t have to be WordPress, it can be anything. The only thing stopping you is either

A) Skills

B) Experience

C) Plug-ins unless you want to get your hands dirty.

So, here is my trial. Oh as I am using “JetPack”, highly recommended plugin by the way, I had to turn my account into a “professional” account. On the other hand, at least I can link posts to this website now. (Another good thing with JetPack is the editing feature that allows you to update your site from your phone or tablet through an App offline, there’s something rather nice to have)

Even more importantly, I forgot to mention why I suggested it. Well, Instagram is good but a bit limited with what you can do. WordPress is a better platform for conveying thoughts, my original posts prove that and the fact I talk about development for my objects, how I did it and what I’m doing at the time. Here is an example of that:

LEV 3/R3 Railbus

Embedding using plugins is easy, just download the plugin and link away. However, my hosting provider, which is thankfully rather cheap, only costs me £20 a year to host and I get some nice “Softalicous” plugins which I have used extensively on this site, plus it comes with Pagelayer Pro which I haven’t used yet. Considering the site was only meant to be used to convey my personal blog, I grew it into more than that for this reason. I like talking about life and challenges but not mental health, my ultimate aim is to inspire others to come up with weird, unique and wacky ideas.
Now with WordPress, I can do that by showing how things work in the background, but I got more mad ideas coming up if I have the time. A game based on Java or JavaScript? Now if you don’t know, I’m actually 39 and I thought of an idea, why not recreate a game from my past I used to play a lot on the BBC Micro Computer (non UK audience’s may not know what I am talking about) and let everyone else play with it while giving it a different twist? How about Airlift – depending on time?

19/07/2025
The site looks like its getting bigger

All through looking through my hard drive. I know a lot of people have been looking for my content for years and isn’t available anywhere anymore – this is what this site was suppose to address, but while clearing out my hard drive and putting what is left as there is a lot of duplicates on said NAS/Hard drive, I came across this folder from a previous site:

I had to edit some of the files out, but yes, that is a LOT I need to put up, in addition to what’s up already. This will take a long time to sort, so don’t expect anything to be instant (sorry). To add it and document everything, probably takes around 30 minutes an object – plus I need to validate and check it works on modern Trainz (TS2019+) which some items won’t. Pack it, etc.

I also found a reskin file for the Class 141, so that will be uploaded ASAP, so if anyone wants a fiddle, be my guest. It will be the second source item on the site (finally). Then there is the issue of space. I may run out. If that happens, I’ll start hotlinking everything off the site or talk nicely to the owner, but I got 5GB and still got some way to go. For those interested, the size so far of what’s in that folder is:

Ok, not as bad as I thought, but getting that way!

Look out for more to add of older releases in the future. For reference, if I remember correctly, this was put onto a self hosted server. Yes, I had one of those in days gone by, Internet Information System 6.0 tied to an IP address and on 24/7, I could do it all over again as I have the equipment. Its just the time and knowhow as I would use Linux these days, with a VPN server for more fun. A good way to use up your capacity. The connection is fast enough, around 2.5GB/s fibre, but then its limited to the port of the computer – which is 1GB/s as it is an old Lenovo.

Going off subject slightly, for those messing with PCs and have a network to yourself, I seriously recommend having a play around, but just for gods’ sakes! Isolate your computer! Its how you learn. Also remember, a new hole in the network is a new hole that introduces security risks.

09/07/2025
It’s show time!

So I’ve worked on this site long enough and I thought I’ll start publishing it. That was the hard part. Another plugin added to allow me to move over from the sub folder to the main site. First attempt didn’t work, so I had to erase it and start again. This time it did! And just exactly how I wanted it.

It has taken me EIGHT years to get to this point, from concept to final product. I had several tries, and a lot were unsuccessful.

I tried “Artisteer”, I went from WordPress to Joomla with no success for the templates, I tried other template builders and other web authoring tools (Dreamweaver, WYSIWYG, NetObjects) and all this in my spare time. I couldn’t even open up my old site in NOF and it was the same version.

All it took was a new site with an accidental discovery, I could do what I always wanted to do, create a template using WordPress and that was 3 weeks ago from memory. A static to a dynamic page. It took me a long time to get here but I f inally done it.

It is based on WordPress’s Twenty Twenty Five theme with a lot of customisations, so you will see some WordPress-like stuff in here and the side bar will disappear on some pages as templates – I’ll fix that in due course. As I was creating this one, I found another experimental WordPress site I started in 2016 that I forgot about, so I amalgamated all the posts over to this site which is why there is a gap between 2018 and 2023. Actually, this site was started because my mum suggested it with my mental health issues, to start blogging all over again and talk about it – anything previous to those doesn’t exist as it was on Joomla (which got deleted), I do have a “Live Jornual” out on the web somewhere which was from 2003 to 2008 when I got too busy.

Still, feedback is welcome and here is a screenshot of the current site together with the old WIP site and the test page from 2017. I hope it will look more like it in the future. Also somewhere, I have an open office drawing somewhere and that is the original concept.

Comments? Please let me know. I’ll update my CV in due course with the web addresses and the rest of the pages.

06/07/2025
More site development – the side bar

And I worked from home today, spending quite a bit of time on it.

This must have been the most frustrating aspects of creating a WordPress site, but I cracked it finally. The good news is once I create it as a template part, that’s it, it all automatically updates when it refers to that template part…. That was the easy bit!

The hard bit? I did some settings changes and I wanted a load of images to represent stops on a route map, so I created a load of images (the LinkedIn, Facebook logo and donate button come from their respective owners and added to the site that way, reduced to fit the side bar).

Previous for a few days, I created a navigation bar with just links to pages, seen in the below screenshot, it may disappear by the time you look at the page.

(Lost the image)

But… that’s where the fun changes, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the images to accept a link, until I looked at the top bar where I made a UI change in the settings… oh…!
Now it works. Next task, to get it to change colour when you hover, it will look slightly weird but I’ll try and keep the affect down, the plan is to go orange.

It took me YEARS to work out how WordPress works and now I am learning it in less than 7 days. As for the links to the LinkedIn and Facebook profile, I have customised it in that I used a HTML modification and good job I remembered good old <a href=””> </a> tags! <img src=””> is another one, <p></p>, <list><li></list>, I think I got the basic ones covered.
The most ironic part is, how WordPress is driven, its basically a giant database with some PHP coding to pull and push data, so a simple query of “SELECT aboutme FROM pages” in the background. I think I got the syntax right for SQL, someone comment if I am right or wrong.

But anyway, all the links and HTML files are actually stored in a database and then spat out and shown on your display. The images aren’t, they are just linked to an area on the site.

If you are wondering “can I do this in another database like Access?” In theory, you could, but it won’t be web capable and in fact, most computers couldn’t access your site. However, if you wrote a VB program, you could output the data to a VB file and have it display locally.

(Oh as for the file I used, here is the raw unedited file I used to create the bar with. Its mostly all standardised and I turned on the layers and and when required).

EDIT: Oh the buttons, if you want the PSD files, you can down them by clicking this text.

30/06/2025
Finding an old site.

I thought with WordPress, this would be my only site, turns out I forgotten one! Oops. I had a wordpress.com account with a blog that I was planning to turn into a full site and mess with WordPress, then transfer things over, its not the first time I’ve done that, I created a few internal WordPress sites (they didn’t work – surprise surprise) and get used to new features and create the site I’d like to see. I’m closer now than I have ever been.

So, to complete everything including posts from 2016 (when I was actually Train Presentation), I’ve exported them and included them into this blog. You can see how slowly or quickly things have developed. However, as I write this, I am in the process of shutting down the site – this one provides the purpose. Also there is a long gap between posts. I gave up for a while but then my mum suggested as my mental health keeps collapsing (and inspired by someone who I now blocked who is a social media influencer with her ADHD problems) to actually create my own blog and you will find a few reoccurring theme with my life problems, women and not talked about but still an issue – jobs.

From memory, I started that one as my site (not the first time, I’ll get on to that) got blocked. It got blocked because my account got compromised when it ran Joomla and someone kept sending spam emails from my account. This was in 2013. So I tried to get it unblocked unsuccessfully until around 2018, I managed it by submitting a ticket. It all stayed relatively stable, it was mainly used as a file dump, but I had a WIP site built with Netobjects Fusion from about 2019 while I try to mess with Content Management Systems with no success. I also uploaded a few tools and things people will be interested in… until…

It got blocked again in 2024, you’ll never believe the reason – and I was off to a Wetherspoons in Petersfield, so it was the last thing on my mind when that flashed up.

Yep, a file that has been on the site for 6 – 7 years, apparently having Malware. Don’t panic, I got the original source somewhere, it was written in Visual BASIC 6 – but what I have also done, is scanned it with online scanners and it came out clear. When I move the WIP stuff to here, you will find a program file missing, I’m sorry, see above. I’m not risking my site again! I am not blaming my hosting provider either, they explained it was a third party that contacted them to tell them about it.

So “webmasters” on your personal sites, just watch out! Seriously, some people will try anything to knock your site off.

29/06/2025
WordPress sometimes

So an entry of (another?) gripe about how WordPress works. Its a bit alien to me, its a bit troublesome to me, but I wanted to replace my WIP site with a site that’s got a CMS system, since its easier to update and everywhere else is going CMS. Plus for mobile use, its rather flexible.

So I came up with a few ideas and the original one was to use a single WordPress site, then I messed with template, then I struggled to deal with templates. I used Joomla! before and that was OK – until I had no access to my site and thought I’ll start from scratch. It was all over blue, so the new idea is to have blue bands top and left.

Kind of like my first example:

Still online, but may not be for much longer, although I don’t know for how much longer as it comes to the big problem of time. Splitting my time up dealing with IT issues at home, developing, gaming (I don’t do much of that these days), work, travelling and being a carer. This is is why I started rebuilding the site it as the original site which ironically is on its own folder I guess you could call it, looks like this:

Also, it was made with NetObjects Fusion and I can’t open the original file in the latest version, so I can no longer update it. Great! Its one of these WYSIWYG and if I am totally honest, like back in the day, I could of done the whole site from scratch with just HTML coding and a little Javascript here and there – its not hard if I am brutally honest.

So, I tried many plugins (I love WP plugins!), many ways and if I am honest, I am not sold on the “Blocks” idea as I am looking at freeform – as in the page is a drawing board. But many items of software to develop the site and the templates and I got to a point where I was going to use my static webpage as a site. However, I also wanted to split off my WIP entries and my personal entries for a good reason, firstly I keep getting HTTP 500 error on this site, the second is to make it easier to find. So I opened another WordPress blog for that purpose.

I was going to amalgamate both into one site with folders that are addressed from a static webpage. It looked like a good idea until you realise that it doesn’t look right (the tool is my dads suggestion by the way):

(Through a remote connection)
The trouble with the blogs is that the separate page, you would have to scroll down horizontal pages – from a user perspective, this is not good. Its awful in fact! It would certainty not look very professional, but does my site do anyway? Then there is the issue of accessibility, this is going to be a bigger concern going forward. Unless I create static pages for every single condition, its not going to work, so hopefully, WordPress has a plugin for that. Normally, I use really small text size which a lot of people can’t read, its just what my eyes are used to, then someone goes “I can’t see it, its too small”.

The argument shouldn’t be “Well change your monitor settings”, it should be “how do I make the site work for them?” A temporary increase in text in the site, would work, along with being able to accommodate those who are colour blind.

Then came the next idea after messing around on my WIP site, still a lot to do and I’m working an hour at a time figuring things out.

Ok, its a little more advanced than that, but this version has different plug-ins installed which this blog doesn’t have. Why couldn’t I have access to them earlier?
Anyway, theres a LOT of work to do, considering I’m spending less than an hour a day on it, mostly as I write this, the train to London and back (hence why one is over an RDP connection). There also will be a HTML site and that will be my CV, I’m working out how to produce a HTML version and link it to my LinkedIn profile for future employers – which I don’t think it will be that popular. Also on that site, the email form (surprise surprise) doesn’t work yet and I am looking into why

I’d love to hear what everyone thinks and if you can add a comment, please do. Is it too blue? I might also try and add a button for dark mode as I don’t like black on white, but white on black instead.

27/06/2025