Smokes your problems, coughs fresh air.

Category: BigSmoke.US (Page 2 of 3)

About this domain.

Untangling WordPress’ core files from your local customizations

Since version 2.6, WordPress can be installed in its own directory, separate from your customizations and everthing. Needless to say, this makes upgrading a whole lot easier.

If, in the pre-2.6 days, you wanted to fetch your WordPress updates through SVN, the docs would advice you to do an svn checkout from the official WP SVN repo in your working dir and then do an svn update whenever you want to update WordPress. This works because svn update leaves local modifcations alone. However, this means that you’ll be unable to commit your local changes (configuration, themes, plugins, etc.) if you choose this route.

I used my own subversion repository for my blogs and thus had to upgrade the old fashioned way with each release (although I prefer diff/patch over rm/cp). (I could have used vendor branches, but, clearly, I hadn’t thought about that at the time.) This was pretty much a royal pain in the ass, so I was glad when I could move WordPress into a separate directory with its 2.6 release.

This process consisted of removing everything except wp-content/, wp-config.php, .htaccess. (I also kept robots.txt, favicon.ico and some other personal files.) Then, I added the current WordPress release as an svn:external.

svn propset svn:externals 'wp-factory http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.6.1' .

.htaccess changes

In the WordPress codex, it is then suggested to copy index.php to the root dir and to change it to require wp-factory/wp-blog-header.php instead of ./wp-blog-header.php. I preferred adding some mod_rewrite voodoo of my own to .htaccess, so I did:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
# This way I don't need directory indices
RewriteRule ^$ /wp-factory/index.php [L]
 
# This way WordPress can manage its own block without doing any harm
RewriteRule ^index.php /wp-factory/index.php [L]
 
# Allow easier access to /wp-factory/wp-admin/
RewriteRule ^wp-admin http://%{HTTP_HOST}/wp-factory/wp-admin/ [L,R=301]
</IfModule>

The middle rule performs most of the magic. It redirects all the requests to /index.php to the factory default index.php. This means that I can let WordPress pretend that index.php does live in the root, so I don’t have to modify the rewrite rules that are managed by WordPress itself:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress 

wp-config.php changes

In Giving WordPress Its Own Directory in the WordPress Codex, it is suggested to change the “siteurl” and “home” options through the administration panel. In my case they would have to be changed to “http://blog.bigsmoke.us/wp-factory/” and http://blog.bigsmoke.us“. I couldn’t do this because I override these with WP_SITEURL and WP_HOME in my wp-config.php. This is because I configured WordPress to support a development environment separate from the live production environment.

Ignoring the customizations for my development environment, these are the relevant settings in wp-config.php:

define('WP_HOME', 'http://blog.bigsmoke.us');
define('WP_SITEURL', WP_HOME . '/wp-factory');
 
define('WP_CONTENT_DIR', dirname(__FILE__) . '/wp-content');
define('WP_CONTENT_URL', WP_HOME . '/wp-content');

BTW: I really like it how WordPress disables the form controls for siteurl and home when you override these settings in wp-config.php. Kudos for that, devs!

Next time: git

In the end, this is all quite a bit of pain to compensate for what is essentially a version management problem. That’s why, on my newer projects, I’m now using git which makes forking and tracking an upstream repo absolutely trivial. 🙂

A few references

Moving my traditional website content over to my blog

Cool URLs don’t change, but the relevance of my content does (and it’s declining). www.bigsmoke.us consists of content that has mostly never been updated. That’s why I want to move it over to my blog here.

I think one of the advantages of a blog is that it’s quite clear what gets published when. You can add this information to the pages of a good old fashioned static website, but it’s just not quite the same. One of the reasons is that, on my blog, my guideline is that posts are not edited anymore after hitting the “Publish” button.

Why blog posts shouldn’t change what they say

Once a post is published, it can be commented on below the post or from within elsewhere on the world wide web. If, after publication, a post changes significantly, it becomes very unclear what is being cited / commented on. Of course, simple formatting changes or grammar/spelling corrections are not considered significant changes, but changing the meaning of what is being said is.

(Because blog posts are so temporal it is habitual that if you do have to commit corrections which change the meaning of the text, you notify the readers of your post of this by adding an Update notification at the top or the bottom of your post. Examples of this are abound on the web. Here’s one example.)

New theme

After upgrading to WordPress 2.5.x, I had to fall back on a stock theme because my old customization of the Sandbox theme no longer worked with the upgrade. But, then, it was time to redo my theme anyway. So here you’re looking at the first version of my new theme. I might have let it stabilize some more before putting it on-line, but who cares? My reader maybe? Let’s just hope he or she doesn’t use IE. 😉

Screencap of my new WP theme Screencap of my new WP theme Screencap of my new WP theme Screencap of my new WP theme Screencap of my new WP theme

Vertical navigation

Ever since the first time that I saw a blog which featured vertical navigation instead of the typical columns, I’ve wanted to implement this for myself. Well, finally…

Site-wide elements use the complete width of the page. The page content is centered in the middle at 87.5%. The identity stuff in the header and the navigation in the footer sits against a back blackground while the content area has the proven black on white for easy reading. I hope that the strong color-contrast as well as the clear difference in with between site-wide elements and page content makes it easy to keep focused on either reading or navigating without distractions.

… and a talkative footer

With this theme, I didn’t want another footer which consist of the odd logo and some loose copyright statements. I wanted a footer which you can actually read, even understand. And who cares if it takes up a little space? It’s at the bottom of the page.

Related posts

I’ve written an (unpublished, unpolished) plug-in which can generate a list of posts that are chronologically related. Traditionally, most blogs have a next/previous post link at the top and bottom of each post. This works very well if you limit your blog to one subject (which is really a very good idea anyway), but if, like mine, your blog is a little bit messy, you could say that someone who stumbled here searching for an article about Subversion is not necessarily interested in the next post if this is a photo of my baby niece.

Hence the chronologically related posts plugin. With this plugin I can say wether I want a link to the first, previous and next post in the blog, within the same category, or matching a given number of tags. (The tag matching isn’t implemented yet, though. Also, matching on meta fields would be a kick-ass ass way to support explicit sequences.)

I put the list generated by this plug-in on top of a blue background besides the various context links of the post.

Issues left

I hope to have the first major revision of my theme ready soon. Here’s a list of some issues that I might address:

  • The CSS renders a bit psychedelically in MSIE 6 (only version I tested) at the moment. Sigh… Let’s just hope that IE 7 will give better results. Then I’ll gladly drop the IE 6 support.
  • When viewing a category, the tag cloud in the navigation panel at the bottom only shows tags for that category. This has to do with the use with me calling the st_tag_cloud() from within the category template.
  • Some of the elements that I just showed to you don’t really look that good and most elements that I didn’t can be said to be … hideously ugly. 😕 Some highlights: the header (should really be a few cool images), the comment form, and the Next/Previous Page links.

Comment!

I’d almost forget all about the clean, new look of the comment list. And, if you register a Gravatar, your comments will be accompanied by your avatar. Try it. Please!

The joys of being well-known to Google

The “Places” system in the new Firefox 3 is great. I’m still getting more effective usage out of just the location bar every day. But, sometimes I’m on a different computer, or I haven’t been to one of my web pages for a very long time.

How cool is it then that I can just Control+K to my Google search box and enter: bypassing smart completion to get my own page on the top of the result list?

Since my blog is literally a log that I mostly use to keep track of what I think and do while problem-solving, it’s great that I can rely on Google to find my way through memory lane.

Upgraded WordPress from 2.1 to 2.3.1

I’m now on WordPress 2.3.1. It was about time too; I was still on 2.1.

Importing the tags from Ultimate Tag Warrior worked fine. Before upgrading and importing, I quickly patched my local version of WP with a little help from Subversion:

$ svn diff http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.1/ http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.3.1/ > wp.diff
$ blog.bigsmoke.us
$ patch --remove-empty-files -p0 < ../wp.diff
$ svn revert wp-config.php
$ svn add `svn status|grep '^?'|sed -e 's/\?//'`
$ svn rm `svn status|grep '^!'|sed -e 's/!//'`

Then, after a few changes to my template files to play nice with WP’s new built-in tagging system, everything was running again.

BigSmoke.US is no longer mine

Since my three previous posts [1, 2, 3], I’ve made over 7 phone calls to the US, alternating between Wild West Domains and NeuStar. And it turned out that, no, I’m not allowed to have a dot-US domain. So I gave it away.

My father has a great cousin, Roel, who has been a US citizen for the greatest part of his life. Having spent his career wiring mainframes for IBM, he can also be called computer literate. I gave my domain to him and he was kind enough to allow me to keep using it for my websites.

It was the first phone call with NeuStar when I was told that I would, under no circumstances, be allowed to own a .US domain myself. I was also told that this could easily be emended if I could find a US representative for myself to whom I could transfer the domain if I would be lucky enough that the domain wasn’t locked.

That led me to my father’s cousin Roel from Maryland. He’s an absolutely great guy who’s always friendly and willing to help. He accepted ownership of what was then still my domain.

Naively, I tried to transfer my domain using Wild West Domains (WWD). Because it had previously been locked on authority of NeuStar, I tried to unlock it but nothing happened. A call with WWD quickly revealed the cause: NeuStar had put a hold on my domain, meaning that nothing could be done to it until NeuStar removed the hold.

When explaining my situation during my next call with NeuStar, I was first being told that transferring my domain wasn’t allowed. When I brought into recollection that I had been told that it was a proposed solution, my friendly helper disappeared from the phone to talk to other support workers. The outcome was that they would remove the hold if I would fax them a statement of my intend to transfer along with a copy of Roel’s driver’s license to once and for all settle the problem of American citizenship.

Roel went to all the trouble of installing an unused scanner of his to send me his license and I faxed the documents to NeuStar and went to bed. It was AM already.

July 26. The next afternoon, I noticed that, when I tried to unlock the domain, it would again remain stuck in the pending unlock state.

Willy at NeuStar told me that, yes, they had received the papers and, yes, they would remove the hold. (Or they had already removed it; it wasn’t quite clear to me which it was.) Back to WWD: Had I someone screwed up the process by trying to unlock before knowing for sure if the hold had been released? They didn’t know, but they thought it wise to wait a few hours for eventual delays and then see if it still hadn’t been released.

More than a few hours later, I got back to WWD because the unlock was still pending. They couldn’t make sense of it so the issue got reported to technical support and they passed it on to advanced technical support.

A day or so later, the issue still wasn’t resolved, so I made another call. They were working at it and I would be notified as soon as it was resolved. Of course, a few days later I harassed them again to be sure this issue wasn’t somehow forgotten.

Finally, the issue was resolved on August 1:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Our advanced tech support has reviewed the domain bigsmoke.us. We have made the necessary updates to ensure this domain is active and resolving correctly. Please let us know if we can assist you further.

Regards,
David S.
Advanced Technical Support

I quickly updated all the contacts for what is now no longer my domain. Thanks for letting me use your new domain, cousin Roel!

Can NeuStar be trusted to keep networks together?

Trusted to bring networks together, beams NeuStar‘s corporate slogan. After my previous two posts, I’m still hoping that they can be trusted to keep networks together too.

NeuStar slogan
(Get the GIMP working file if you want to play with the slogan a bit. (I didn’t have a 2.3 version available with which I could have adjusted the letter-spacing of the subslogan. (Without the reduced letter-spacing, setting it in 14pt Arial looked ugly.)))

Here’s Andrea’s reply to my latest helpless message:

“.US Nexus” <nexus-compliance@neustar.us>
To: Rowan Rodrik van der Molen <rowan@bigsmoke.us>
Cc: “cctldhelp@godaddy.com” <cctldhelp@godaddy.com>
Date: Jul 23, 2007 9:46 PM
Subject: RE: {Registry#542-209} .US NEXUS COMPLIANCE BIGSMOKE.US

Rowan,

Please note the information below for Nexus category 3.

Nexus Category 3
A foreign entity or organization that has a bona fide presence in the United Stated of America or any of its possessions or territories.
Applicant must state country of citizenship
Applicant must also (1) regularly engage in lawful activities (sales of goods or services or other business, commercial or non-commercial including not-for-profit activities) in the United States; or (2) maintain an office or other property within the United States.

Though you are running a personal website which may have several visitors from the United States, this does not meet the Nexus requirements as stated above. Please provide documents that prove you meet the Nexus under category 3 as listed above.

Kind Regards
Andrea
.US Customer Support

O.k. So she knows the rules. I’m hoping she understands them too. 😐 It would be especially nice and good (and pleasant too) if she understands them so well that she can explain them to me, because, by now, I still haven’t grown any the wiser about what these requirement entail. I decided to ask her another time:

Dear Andrea,

That’s clear then. Is see I must regularly engage in lawful activities. Apparently, writing articles for Americans is not a lawful non-for-profit activity. I’m not quite sure what, then, besides selling goods or services, are other “lawful, commercial or non-commercial including not-for-profit activities.” Still, I hope my understanding of this phraseology is not completely off as that might mean that, indeed, I wouldn’t have qualified to purchase a .US domain. (Not that I think that this would make it a good idea to break a piece of the web by withdrawing my domain from me after having let me use it to build my American readership over the course of 2 years.)

Anyway, to keep my share of the web intact and to satisfy your rules (which I still don’t know how to interpret correctly), I could consider transferring my domain to one of my American relatives who may be kind enough to let me keep using the same subdomains for my websites so that I won’t have to break any links. Then I could change the category of the domain to C12 again. Is changing the Registrant of the domain acceptable? I’m sure one of my family members wouldn’t mind owning a domain to keep my piece of the web working for everyone.

Thank you once again for your time and patience,
Rowan

Changed the Nexus agreement for BigSmoke.US

My usage of the BigSmoke.US domain didn’t get approved yet. I was hoping for a little advice to come my way by submitting an Ask Slashdot this morning, but the story didn’t get past the firehose. After realizing that I should have submitted the story to my /. journal as that would allow Slashdotters to comment without the story having to make it, I just added a journal entry. I want all the exposure and feedback that I can get.

In the mean time, I’ve updated the Nexus agreement for my domain:

BigSmoke.US Nexus agreement - C12 to C31

I’m still puzzled why I landed in Category 1. I distinctly remember that in March 2005, when I registered the domain, I knew I was in Category 3. Either I didn’t get a category selection then or they simply didn’t store it correctly. Has anyone else who registered a .US domain at Wild West Domains during that time had a similar experience?

After my failure to get any answers from the Slashdot crowd, I picked up on my exchange with Andrea from NeuStar again. (On an aside: since her last message I had gotten two forwards of said message from Go Daddy. I’m crossing my fingers that they’re not going to bill me for every mail that Andrea carbon copies to them, especially if they’re going to forward each such mail twice!)

Rowan Rodrik van der Molen <rowan@bigsmoke.us>
To: “.US Nexus” <nexus-compliance@neustar.us>
Date: Jul 21, 2007 11:06 PM
Subject: Re: {Registry#542-209} .US NEXUS COMPLIANCE BIGSMOKE.US

Dear Andrea,

I’ve updated my domain information to reflect the actual category which applies to me (C31). The changes should be visible in WHOIS lookups soon. When I registered the domain I was aware of which category I was in, but at the time (over 2 years ago) there either mustn’t have been an option to select the category or the selection simply wasn’t saved. I would never have consciously stated that “I’m a US citizen,” because it’s simply not true.

Now you apparently need some information from me before NeuStar can approve my use of the BigSmoke.US domain. I’m afraid I’m going to need a little help on this as I’m not very familiar with the legalities of .US domain regulations. I can tell you that my website is a resource for a US demographic and that it’s hosted in the US. I can easily prove that my website is hosted in the US. Would that be sufficient?

I’ve pointed to the statistics which say that most of my visitors are US citizens. Also, various pages on my website are bookmarked by hundreds of people using an American social bookmark manager [http://del.icio.us/bigsmoke/www.bigsmoke.us]. Apparently, the fact that my website is of great use to Americans is of no import? Or is it just that I need to deliver more useful information about this?

Sorry for my ignorance and thank you for you time so far,
Rowan

Crackdown on my .US infiltration attempt

Wether it has something to do with the current Terror Alert level or with a renewed surge of isolationism I don’t know, but my foreign ass no longer seems to be welcome below the Dot-US TLD. Never mind that almost all of my visitors are American. Or that my dot-US websites are hosted at US-based NearlyFreeSpeech. Or are my ties to the states sufficient that I just need to deliver the proof?

www.bigsmoke.us - awstats - Visitors by country

So, what happened? Yesterday, I got a mail from .US Nexus, forwarded by GoDaddy. It wasn’t the worst that GoDaddy billed me $9.95 for … forwarding a mail to me. What was bad was the mail that they forwarded:

From: “cctldhelp@godaddy.com” <cctldhelp@godaddy.com>
To: bigsmoke@gmail.com
Date: Jul 19, 2007 5:16 PM
Subject: [FWD: {Registry#542-209} .US NEXUS COMPLIANCE BIGSMOKE.US]

Dear Rowan Rodrik van der Molen,

Please see the Nexus Compliance Notice below from Neustar.

Regards,

Domain Services

Subject: {Registry#542-209} .US NEXUS COMPLIANCE BIGSMOKE.US From: “.US Nexus” <nexus-compliance@neustar.us>
Date: Wed, July 18, 2007 3:46 pm
To: “cctldhelp@godaddy.com” <cctldhelp@godaddy.com>

Dear Go Daddy,

Please send the following verbiage to your customer.

Thank-You
Andrea
Neustar Registries

Dear Rowan,

As you may be aware, in November 2001, the United States Department of Commerce (“DOC”) selected NeuStar, Inc. (“NeuStar”) to be the Administrator of the .US top-level domain (“usTLD”), the official top-level domain for the United States of America. As Administrator of the usTLD, NeuStar has agreed to perform random “spot checks” on registrations in the usTLD to endure that they comply with the usTLD Nexus Requirements which can be found at http://www.neustar.us/policies/docs/ustld_nexus_requirements.pdf (“Nexus Requirements”).

Our records indicate that you are the registrant of the domain name BIGSMOKE.US.

On July 18, 2007, this domain name was selected for Nexus revalidation and confirmation. According to the information you provided with your registration of these Domain Names, you indicated that you qualify under:

Category 1 – You are a US citizen or permanent resident

As part of our verification process, we ask that you provide to us by no later than ten (10) days after the date set forth above, a written response describing how you qualify under the above Nexus category.

In addition, please verify that the name-servers that you have selected to use are also physically located within the United States as required by the Nexus Requirements.

In some instances, we may request additional documentary evidence from you to demonstrate that you meet the Nexus requirements.

You should be aware that if you either (i) do not respond within the ten (10) days, or (ii) are unable to adequately explain or demonstrate through documentary evidence that you meet any of the Nexus Requirements, NeuStar may issue a finding that your entity or organization has failed to meet the Nexus Requirements. Upon such a finding, you will then be given a total of ten (10) days to cure the US Nexus deficiency. If you are able to demonstrate within ten (10) days that your entity or organization has remedied such deficiency, you will be allowed to keep the domain name. If, however, you either (i) do not respond within the ten (10) days of such a finding of noncompliance, or (ii) are unable to proffer evidence demonstration compliance with the Nexus Requirements, the domain name registration will be deleted from the registry database without refund, and the domain name will be placed into the list of available domain names.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Kind Regards
Andrea
.US Customer Support
___________________________________________

NeuStar
.US America’s Internet Address

Email: support.us@neustar.us
Address: Loudoun Tech Center
46000 Center Oak Plaza
Sterling, VA 20166 USA
Web Site: www.neustar.us
___________________________________________

This transmission (the e-mail and all attachments) is confidential and intended solely for the use of the addressee(s). If you have received this transmission in error, please notify the sender by reply and delete this transmission immediately. Any unauthorized distribution, or copying of this transmission, or misuse or wrongful disclosure of information contained in it, is strictly prohibited. The information contained in this document is provided on an as-is basis and does not constitute a binding legal contract or receipt for services. While this information is believed to be substantially correct, it is not intended to be substituted for appropriate legal counsel.

If you have any questions related to intellectual property rights, copyrights, service marks, whether in common use or legally registered, please contact your legal counsel. No statement made, printed, or otherwise disseminated by NeuStar or any of its employees, contractors, sub-contractors, web site, or interactive voice response system should be considered in any way legal or other advice.

I was left a little confused and hoped that, maybe, Andrea could shed some light on my ignorance.

From: Rowan Rodrik van der Molen <rowan@bigsmoke.us>
To: nexus-compliance@neustar.us
Date: Jul 19, 2007 6:40 PM
Subject: Re: [FWD: {Registry#542-209} .US NEXUS COMPLIANCE BIGSMOKE.US]

Dear Andrea,

When registering my bigsmoke.us domain, I actually did so because I qualify according to Category 3, not Category 1. I qualify because my .US websites are hosted at a US hosting provider (NearlyFreeSpeech) and donations to my website are processed by a US company (Paypal). Also, advertisements are served by Google inc.

Most of my visitors are US residents because my websites are targeted at an American audience. (Detailed statistics about this can be obtained from http://www.bigsmoke.us/awstats.cgi) I’d like to note that my website is a valuable resource to many American web developers, database developers and system administrators. Because most of my visitors are American, it would be Americans which would be harmed most if I where to loose my dot-us domain.

As can be inferred from the Whois info, the nameservers for my domain are located at the same US hosting company as where my .us websites are hosted.

If you require any additional information, I’d be more than willing to send it to you. I wouldn’t have registered this domain if I hadn’t been convinced of the legality of such an action.

Thank you for your time,
Rowan

Today, I got a friendly reply from Andrea:

From: “.US Nexus” <nexus-compliance@neustar.us>
To: Rowan Rodrik van der Molen <rowan@bigsmoke.us>
Cc: “cctldhelp@godaddy.com” <cctldhelp@godaddy.com>
Date: Jul 20, 2007 6:31 AM
Subject: RE: {Registry#542-209} .US NEXUS COMPLIANCE BIGSMOKE.US

Rowan,

Your domain information in WHOIS shows you are a Category 1. That would indicate that you are a United States citizen. You will need to provide your current US drivers license to prove how you meet the .US Nexus guideline.

If you are doing legitimate business within the United States you will need to correct your domain information to reflect the .US WHOIS.

Below are two categories of which you may fall into.

C31: A foreign entity or organization that has a bona fide presence in the United States of America or any of its insular areas who regularly engages in lawful activities (e.g., sales of goods or services or other business, commercial or non-commercial, including not-for-profit relations in the United States).

C32: Entity has an office or other facility in the United States

If you claim C31, you will need to provide to us documentation in the form of a certificate of corporation or the ability to provide not only the sales of goods but to prove those sales are with United States residents/companies.

If you claim C32, you will need to provide documentation that proves you have and office or facility in the United States.

The information that you have provided in your e-mail is not sufficient enough to prove you meet the Nexus requirements.

Kind Regards,
Andrea
.US Customer Support
___________________________________________

NeuStar
.US America’s Internet Address

Email: support.us@neustar.us
Address: Loudoun Tech Center
46000 Center Oak Plaza
Sterling, VA 20166 USA
Web Site: www.neustar.us
___________________________________________

[The same interesting legalese as in the previous mail from .US Nexus …]

All good and well, but all I can extract from this communication is that I need to change the category at GoDaddy. I still don’t understand if I’m eligible to have an dot-US domain (which I recently extended (with US dollars), by the way). Based on the usTLD Nexus Requirements I’d assume that I qualify for a dot-US domain under Category 3, A foreign entity or organization that has a bona fide presence in the United States of America or any of its possessions or territories. In full, the requirements for Category 3 are as follows:

Nexus Category 3

A foreign entity or organization that has a bona fide presence in the United States of America or any of its possessions or territories.

  • Applicant must state country of citizenship.
  • Applicant must also (1) regularly engage in lawful activities (sales of goods or services or other business, commercial or non-commercial including not-for-profit activities) in the United States; or (2) maintain an office or other property within the United States.

Category 3 Nexus Certification

Prospective Registrants will certify compliance with Category 3 Nexus based upon substantial lawful contacts with, or lawful activities in, the United States.

Factors that should be considered in determining whether an entity or organization has a bona fide presence in the United States shall include, without limitation, whether such prospective usTLD domain name Registrant:

  • Regularly performs lawful activities within the United States related to the purposes for which the entity or organization is constituted (e.g., selling goods or providing services to customers, conducting regular training activities, attending conferences), provided such activities are not conducted solely or primarily to permit it to register for a usTLD domain name and are lawful under the laws and regulations of the United States and satisfy policies for the usTLD, including policies approved and/or mandated by the DoC;
  • Maintains an office or other facility in the United States for a lawful business, noncommercial, educational or governmental purpose, and not solely or primarily to permit it to register for a usTLD domain name.

Apart from the fact that these days The Netherlands can be considered American territory, you’d think I neatly fit the requirements for C31, since I perform the following lawful activities in the United States:

  • I regularly pay my US hosting provider, NearlyFreeSpeech.Net, US dollars to host my US website.
  • I pay my US domain registar (Wild West Hosting / Go Daddy) in US dollars for my domain.
  • These and other services are paid for using Paypal, which, last time I checked, was still a US company.
  • Advertisements on my regular website are served by Google, which, also, is a US company. This also means I get income from … a US company.
  • Almost all my visitors are American as I write for an English speaking audience.

I’m not sure if any of this is lawful. Perhaps, being active in America in any other way than singing the national anthem and waving a flag is illegal these days. But, I’d say that an English resource which is heavily linked to and visited by thousands (mostly Americans) should somehow be able to fit these requirements. After all, how are the interests of the American people served if a .US website is taken off-line because it’s run by a foreigner from overseas? Are my American visitors supposed to be happy if their links stop working and the top search results for some of their searches suddenly disappear?

I guess that’s not the point and I’m hoping that one of my visitors can help me figure out what I should send to Andrea to make her happy to let me keep the domain for which I’ve paid good USD.

Allowing dots in WordPress post slugs

I was once again annoyed by the fact that WordPress doesn’t allow dots in post slugs. Luckily, this time I hadn’t published the post with a botched URL yet. (I don’t like changing permalinks because they’re meant to be permanent; cool URLs don’t change.) A quick googling pointed me to a post in the WordPress support forum with a reference to the Periods in Titles WordPress plugin.

The plugin works great and allowed me to post http:///2007/05/30/jeroen-dekker.com with dots and without problems.

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