NoSupports.com was down for the last 9 days due to a single typo in my email address! It seems that when you register a new domain, ICANN requires that you confirm your email address within 15 days of registering the domain, or your registrar is required to aumotically suspend your domain. Some sort of antispam thing.
When you register a new domain through Amazon Route 53, there is a field for you to type in your email address. Makes sense. But if you have an AWS account already, then your email address is already on file with AWS. So why not then provide the choice of using an existing email address instead of typing yours in manually? I ask that because, when I typed my email address in, I fat-fingered it and missed a single character. So when the 15 day clock ran out, Amazon suspended my DNS and the blog went down. And I never got an email telling me DNS was suspended because…they had the wrong email on file (even though they also had my correct admin email on file through my AWS account).
To their credit Amazon does notify you in the Route53 console that your domain is suspended. If you go into one specific page, three levels deep from the main page. What follows, which I will not go into detail of, was a nightmare of Kafkaesque proportions as I navigated the Byzantine Empire that is AWS Tech supprt without the benefit of a paid support account.
The upside to this tale of woe is that I used the time to make some overall configuration improvements to the blog, which is deployed using the wonderful Hugo framework. I made numerous improvements to the opengraph metatags, reformatted the home page, and updated the pagination settings.
Another nice thing is the site now uses WEBP encoded images, which are much lighter than JPEGs. The upshot of that is the site loads lightning fast now, even if you’re on a ridiculously low bandwidth connection somewhere. I’ve spent enough time in the African bush, onboard expedition ships with slow satellite WIFI, or for that matter just most anywhere in T-Mobile’s coverage area, that I value a fast-loading website.
I also had time to spend on creating some more game organizers, which will be posted to the site soon. Next up will be an organizer for The Crew: The Quest For Planet Nine.
How To Support Me
Chances are, if you're here, you play tabletop games. So hopefully you'll like Waddle Waddle, a brand new penguin-themed tabletop game that I created using photos of penguins that I took while in Antarctica. If you printed one of my 3D designs, please check out Waddle Waddle. You can pre-order now for delivery in 2024.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. By purchasing the products that I recommend through affiliate links you directly support the creation of more great content at no cost to yourself. I only recommend products that I use myself. You can read more about it here: Affiliate disclosure.
I also earn a commission when you buy IIIDMAX filament using my referral code.
My designs are all designed to minimize filament usage, and that directly saves you MONEY, and many hours of print time. Most of these designs take two or three generations to perfect. You can show your thanks for me saving you money and many HOURS of your time making by a small donation to defray the cost of professional software licenses, printer wear and tear, and the filament I use to develop this content for you: