I have two questions about the wireless router problem.

Is WEP or other security enabled?

Do you have access to the wireless router? IT might need a reset.

Is WEP or other security enabled?

Yes. I think it's WAP or something.

Do you have access to the wireless router? IT might need a reset.

Yes. We'll try that. Thanks.

Hey guys; I have a client who's rebuilding his website. He had hired someone else to rebuild it, we'll call this guy A. A told the client that he was going to build the website using dotnetnuke and to choose and buy a skin from snowcovered.com. Well, A was less than reliable and the client dumped him; now the client's come to me for design and content-- the public face of the site--and another guy, B, for the mechanics and database end of things. The website will require multiple log-ins with multiple levels of security to pull data. The old website pulled data from the client's system where the database was built in Access. Now, B is going to rebuild the database in .Net and do all the hooking up of the security and multiple users, etc.

However, the client still wants a dotnetnuke skin. I'd never run into dotnetnuke before and I'm learning about it as fast as I can, but is that really what he needs to do? He just likes them because they look pretty, but he wants me to take the skin and change it to fit his content and redesign the flash presentation that comes with it. I'm concerned that:
1. using a pre-made skin will lock him into a format he won't want, at least not without a lot of tweaking. 2. installing dotnetnuke on his server may conflict with whatever guy B is doing.

Am I crazy? Is he?

Deena, using a premade skin will force him into a format that may not fit his needs, plus it looks like dotnetnuke is designed to replace a designer and programmer. It seems to me it's kind of an either-or situation. Also, there is the chance that his site will look exactly like other sites.

While we're talking about crazy clients, I have a question. I am implementing a design on giant website that was created by an agency. They're looking at the (thank god nearly final) version and object to links that take you "abruptly" out of a section. What those are are things like in the "Your Home" section, I have a link to "Residential Rates," which are with all the rates in the "Your Account" section. Isn't that kind of crosslinking what the web is for? It's not like they're going to get whiplash. The design is the same; just the headers and navigation changes. Or should I take their approach, which is the "if they can't find what they want in our lovely design, fuck 'em."

Ginger, tell 'em that if they really want you to, you could make the pages load reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaallllllly slow, and then it wouldn't be so abrupt.

Thanks, Ginger.

Do they want a middle page? You could talk to them about drill down rates, and clicks per site... as in, "it's well-documented that web users prefer not to click more than twice to get any piece of information on a website. Drill down below three levels is not recommended for optimal site stickiness. You know, confuse them.

If it says it's acquiring the network address, I assume that it's seeing the network and has made contact with the server, and there is some hiccup in getting the router to assign an address to the network card.

You know, I think I'll install a packet sniffer on my laptop so I can see where it's failing - if the router is not responding for the request for an address or not. I also didn't mention that I tried telling his laptop to not use DHCP, and then I gave it a valid IP address and gateway for the router. Then his laptop seemed to be fine (said it was connected, no errors), except still no network access (still couldn't ping the router).

So what's a good packet sniffer? OS X, preferably, but I also have XP and Linux (Fedora) on my MacBook. I'd prefer one that's GUI so its easier to filter, etc....

Is the XP laptop running SP1 or SP2? Some wireless security protocols won't work without SP2.

Is the XP laptop running SP1 or SP2? Some wireless security protocols won't work without SP2.

Good question. I don't know.

His laptop was working with a different wireless router (and a different security protocol). But that router sucks (it needs to be reset about once an hour) so his sister (who lives with him) bought a new router. Hmmm... maybe I should set up the new one exactly how the old one is.

I'm tempted to tell him his laptop sucks and he should get a new one (it's about three years old, I think, and rather sluggish). Anyway, I'll pass on all this info to him, and/or try to help him with it some more....

I've tried to organize this thing in a logical manner, but it's inevitable that some pages could go in two or three sections, but I don't want to repeat the same pages three times. I don't see any virtue in saying, "Nyahh, nyahh, the thing that might logically be here isn't and you have to guess again."