A few days ago I began getting deluged with spam comments to this blog. Over 100 spam comments to delete from my e-mail inbox, delete from my e-mail trash, AND delete from the moderation que on this blog. (I receive notification by e-mail when a comment is submitted.) Three actions for every spam comment. 3 x 100 = ___. Ugh. Triple ugh.

Scott recently added a feature to help reduce spam comments. Now people need to answer a question before a comment may be submitted. Spam bots won’t be able to answer the question and their crud won’t go through.

The part that really tickles me, though, is that the anti-spam question isn’t just a “read the funny letters” question. It is a MATH question!! Something like, “Sum of 3 + 4?” How appropriate for The MATH Worksheet Site’s blog!!

Maybe you’re rolling your eyes and thinking, “Denise obviously isn’t getting enough sleep, if such small things delight her so much.” But hey, I like it!

–Denise

We finally got FTP access last night and were able to move The Math Worksheet Site to a new hosting company. This new server is very fast! I’m thrilled!

We still have a few details to wrap up, and probably much to learn about running our own virtual private server (VPS). But at least we’re more in control and not as dependent on other people. Afer our recent frustrations, this is really appealing.

Domain Name System servers are still propagating our new IP address. A few people are still accessing the site at the old location. Those who try to subscribe and run into an error that says, “Can’t locate Email/Valid.pm in @INC” are looking at the old location. By 10 pm Mountain Time Friday night, everyone should be accessing The Math Worksheet Site at its new location, and everything is fully functional there.

(Of course, since I’m connected to the updated site right now, the people who are getting that error aren’t going to be seeing this message for a day or two!)

I feel like we should have an open house, put up party decorations, and lay out trays of food, but that’s perhaps kinda silly for a web site. I really feel like we’re in a new HOME.

Thanks for rejoicing with me!

–Denise

I’m very sorry for the technical troubles many people have been experiencing with The Math Worksheet Site over the past few days. Scott’s e-mail was down for a day. Our host is having troubles with the server we’re on. Even though the site itself is back up at the moment (Wednesday noon, Mountain Time), we can’t accept subscriptions because our host hasn’t re-installed a Perl module that checks to see if new subscribers’ e-mail addresses look like e-mail addresses. Right now we don’t even have FTP access to our account, so we can’t make a workaround to cope without that missing Perl module. (Can you say FRUSTRATION!!??)

Without FTP access, we also can’t change the home page to publish this message more obviously.

After a month of intermittent troubles, we’re moving to a bigger, more reliable hosting company. The move will begin today, Wednesday (thankfully!).

Our address at TheMathWorksheetSite.com will remain the same. It may take up to 48 hours for Domain Name System servers around the world to receive the news that the address of TheMathWorksheetSite.com is at our new host. It may look to you like we’re down for a little more time (ugh).

We don’t yet know everything involved in our move, as we’re moving to a very different kind of hosting plan and we’ll be learning as we’re going.

For those who care about the details, we’re moving to a managed Virtual Private Server, or VPS. This is one step down from a dedicated server, but a huge step up from the shared hosting plan we’d been on.

Thanks for your patience. As soon as our move is complete, our plan is that our technical troubles should be over, and we should have the 100% up-time that is our goal.

–Denise

Hi everyone,

Scott has added a handful of new worksheets this week to the subscribers area. But if your browser draws from its cache, you won’t see the updated subscribers area home page. Therefore you won’t even know about the new worksheet titles. The same is true of selection pages you visit frequently. We recently added memo lines to all but 4 titles, and are slowly adding Spanish and French language options to more worksheets.

I suggest that every now and then frequent users of The Math Worksheet Site should click “refresh” or “reload.” Perhaps we added something since the last time your browser got a fresh copy from the server. If we added it, I want you to be able to see it!

–Denise

I’m delighted to report that the memo line project is nearly finished. Almost every selection page in the subscribers area now include a box for you to type text that will be printed on the lower left corner of the worksheet. As usual, the project took longer to complete than I thought it would. (I guess I’m an optimist?)

The four Canadian money worksheets are the only ones that don’t currently have a memo line option. We haven’t figured out yet what to do with the disclaimer on those worksheets. The disclaimer is required by the Bank of Canada when using their graphics. It is in that same lower left-hand corner where the memo line ’should’ go. We’ll be giving that some thought. I welcome your suggestions, too.

A friend is really pleased about the usefulness of the memo line. She prints math worksheets for 8 of her children for the entire week all at one sitting. She says it will be great help to her to be able to put a child’s name on each worksheet as she’s printing the week’s math practice.

If you’re not seeing the memo line option on each selection page, please click Refresh/Reload to get a fresh copy from the server.

I’m glad to add yet another aspect of usefulness to The Math Worksheet Site to serve our subscribers better.

–Denise