Technical info on my Websites

Added, 22/06/2011, Changed 20/04/2025, 15/04/2025

 Colebrook (Rail) Viaduct, which is very close to my home.

Website search

You can search each host separately, but it is not possible to search across all my hosts. 

Technical Stuff;

I used to have my website content on my PC, then used an HTML editor and FTP tools to upload to my website.  I now use a wiki.  This is what I have used;

CompuServe website editor.  CompuServe introduced internet access in about 1996, and I created the Website in the summer of 1997. 

After moving my website from CompuServe to BTinternet.com then later added Tiscali.co.uk web hosting.  I used to create webpages using;

Netscape 4.08 to 7.02, 7.1 and Mozilla 1.6 to 1.7.13, Seamonkey 1.1 or higher.  Some pages with FreshHTML.  I have used; KompoZer 0.7.10 or higher.  Currently, I am using Wiki site; sites.google.com and blogger.com

Uploaded with;  Ipswitch WS_FTP95Le or higher on Windows 3.1 & 98.

FileZilla, on Windows 2000, this was more robust and flexible than the free WS_FTP.

Audited using; http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

These websites I created a subdomain name for the host owned blogger.com domain blogspot.com, for example; http://andrewlohmann.blogspot.com and with wordpress.com domain home.blog, for example; https://andrewlohmann.home.blog/ 

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Host & Domain;

Google Sites and Google Blogger have been linked to Google Search Consol and analytics so that I can monitor visits, searches, buy and use a domain.  Additionally, I also use Google AdSense to allow and manage advertising and its revenue. 

Domain was register by me in August 2014; andrew-lohmann.me.uk

Email; contact@

Website; www. and subdomains; family. blog. and engineering.

Payment occurs by direct debit, annually for the domain, but the Google hosting is free. 

Note, the method I used will have changed now.

• The domain is provided by Freeola.com is UK based and provides a number of receive only pop email for this domain free plus one of the email addresses can be webmail.  I use one Gmail email account for each Freeola email name I have created.  I access those using Thunderbird from that Gmail account and have set up a reply-to email address the same as the one I have configured in Freeola similar to; contact@mydomain

  • Gmail webmail was set up to receive my Freeola mail similar to; contact@mydomain

  • www.freeola.com also use the name www.getdotted.com 

• The website is hosted by Google sites.  It is necessary to enter the subdomain and domain combination into Google sites next to the publish button for each website.  And in the settings - analytics, insert the code given and enable analytics.  

• It was necessary to verify the domain was owned by me using Google Analytics.  This is not straight forward.  Freeola was not listed by Google, so I needed to use a setting called "other" {Google list a lot more domain provides that will integrate, as well as a short list of partners for Google apps business users}.

• The domain is handled using the advanced method.  Freeola's simpler Domain forwarding method was not permitted for this google hosted site.  https://sites.google.com/view/an-engineers-perspective at first.  The Freeola standard forwarding method did not allow me to sign in to my Google host from my purchased domain, unsurprisingly.

Freeola website, CNAME method of authentication is only for subdomains, and you need to enter in this case the string; ghs.googlehosted.com (see google help).  That is; "www." is like a subdomain, but it is treated as an alias of the domain, though how it is used varies across the internet.  Freeola will, correctly therefore, not allow "www." to be defined as a subdomain. 

Whois.net can not be reached now, but who.is does the same thing.  This shows anyone that the domain is owned by me. 

Open Google Webmaster and add your new domain; andrew-lohmann.me.uk your subdomains will all be verified once the domain is authorised.  The method of verification was; Alternate, Domain provider, TXT method, Provider "Other".

To verify my domain ; andrew-lohmann.me.uk, I used the method called change DNS record (Freeola) [* Create/Modify TXT and SPF records (Advanced)] then pasted text provided by Google Webmaster, Domain Provider, TXT verify website.  This verified the domain and all subdomains I have or will create.  There is a delay between setting up the verification and the verification occurring (the delay can be a working day). 

Point the subdomains to the hosts;

I carried out this step after the next step.

In my Google sites website, click on the top right tools (any page); Manage Site, select; Web Address; You can add all your domains and subdomains here.  Note; Google will not let you add them until the site is verified.  When your Google sites website is verified that you are the owner of the domain, you can add more subdomains, for each google hosted website. 

Subdomains added to Google Search Console and therefore to Google Analytics, there is no further verification required. Webmaster tells you about searches for your website and Analytics tells you, if visitors allow it, about the visitor to your website.  Bing has a similar tool called Bing Webmaster you can have both, and you can authenticate your ownership of Google hosting and the authenticated domain automatically using Google Search Console from Bing Webmasters. 

There are Freeola Control Panel settings that will release your domain email to another host.  I avoided these settings, but generally things can be undone and restored easily.

The paid for domain; ???.andrew-lohmann.me.uk can be forwarded by Freeola to a single page hosted by Freeola.  Freeola provide on-line editing tools, I do not use this feature because it would conflict and so not work while I also have Google or any other hosting.

Bing webmasters can verify google hosting manually, but there is no reason to do this.  If you try this method, your domain won't be authenticated so https://www.andrew-lohmann.me.uk won't be monitored.

• • The automatic method connecting to google Search Consol authenticated the domain and all subdomains. 

  • The manual method required either Text placed in the top section of the first webpage Or a file placed on the host.  Neither of these are possible because I do not have access to those, now that I do not upload web pages from my PC any more.  But I use a Wiki, as I have said.

  • But I could use the CNAME manual method to verify each of my subdomains, which is no doubt what I had done previously and is why I could not monitor the main site https://www.andrew-lohmann.me.uk? 

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Another subdomain for Google Blogger;

Blogger works differently to sites, but that is fairly trivial.  More analytics type statistics are also provided in the blogger consol.  http://myname.blogger.com changes to my purchased domain URL a moment later in my browser. 

A blogging site is easier to manage;

A blogging site usually provides you a nice URL, so you do not need to do so much unless you want too to get started.  But the free editing, templates and layout in sites I found to be better at the time I switched to sites and better since the update of sites some years ago. 

That is, starting out by using one of the blogging wiki's is easier.  WordPress is good and is very similar.  But whatever I use I save the pages that I have edited to my PCs hard disk once a week, this works with Firefox or Edge and is better from Windows which collates all the files together better than Linux. 

Unfortunately, Blogger.com is not well maintained and can be very difficult to edit.  Sites by comparison is better maintained. 

My website hosting history; 

blog.andrew-lohmann.me.uk (January 2016 - present) Domain used with host; www.blogger.com, this is a Google product.

family.andrew-lohmann.me.uk (August 2014 - present) Domain used with host; sites.google.com

www.andrew-lohmann.me.uk (August 2014 - present) Domain used with host; sites.google.com

https://sites.google.com, (2011 - Present)

Tiscali.co.uk, Became Talk-Talk, and they were unwilling to delete this site until I closed my telephone account with them.

Btinternet.com (not available now, 1999? - 2013),

First created on CompuServe’s home page, summer 1997–2000?

I have briefly used Wiki sites; Pbworks.com (2009? - 2011?) and wordpress.com (2010? - 2015).

    PBworks is particularly good tool for a group who wish to organise an event or draft a document for example.

Checked with;

Find broken links on your site with Xenu’s Link Sleuth ™ http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html (does not work well with a wiki type website, which this is)

Website promoted and monitored using: 

• • https://search.google.com/search-console/ This monitors searches relevant to my websites. 

  • https://analytics.google.com This monitors visits to my websites.

  • http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster/  This looks almost identical to the Google Search Console, but the results are slightly different. 

  • https://ads.google.com/  This runs adverts for me, but I do not use this tool. 

  • https://www.google.com/adsense/  This monitors and reports the types and income from adverts I chose to allow to be placed automatically on my websites. 

There are other google tools that overlap with these.  I rarely look at these tools, they require a lot of time.