Dixon's Forum

And what a week it’s been!   The mystery of the disappeared images is solved:   the site security setting “Block Image Hotlinking” won’t let one page reference an image from another page, even in the same domain, alas!

Hotlinking is good because too many images will hog space and slow down your site.   But, Webling parasites can hotlink your imagery to display on their pages, slowing your site even more by communications with the parasites’ sites.

I didn’t realize mine were hotlinked.   It never occurred to me that copy-pasting would just produce a pointer, not a second image, but I guess it makes sense — it’s way cheaper to transmit a short character string than a multimegabyte image, if that makes any sense.

My images are down in the kilobytes.  Naomi’s painting with no name is biggest of all, and it’s less than a megabyte, so if my site is slow, it’s not because of images.    click here to see it.

Once the site security was set up and halfway understood, I moved on to the tip jar and ran into complications, what else?.   At first I thought the most sensible way to create a website was to get everything working — layouts, links, security, analytics, search engine optimization, antispam, tip jar — and then go live, or, “publish”, in Webling lingo, and I tried that first, what a flub.

It turns out the rest of the world publishes first, then sets up the functionalities.   My way so confused the secure transaction management company, or payment gateway, that they suspended my account for having no “underlying piece of digital content” (like a blog isn’t digital), and referenced their Restricted Businesses List (businesses that need written permission to use their services).   They are so confused, they have warned me my account is about to be suspended, after it already is!   All while they’re saying it’s under review.   But also already about to be suspended.

Content Related Gifts and Tips is the first Restricted Business on their list, so, I must be up to no good here.  They keep emailing me for more information about my business, and I kept re-repeating the same Additional Information form and saying dixonsforum.com is not a business, it’s a creative works and entertainment showcase with a tip jar.   (It’s really much more, but that’s all they need to know; wouldn’t want to confuse them even more.)

Other activities that need special written permission include a dozen-and-a-half disparate financial services, THC-less CBD (the fun kind of cannabis is on their Prohibited list), booze, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and telemedicine, half-a-dozen non-fiat currencies like crypto, airline miles, and gift cards, pyramid schemes, and all kinds of fundraising.   Mighty rapscallious set of cohorts, eh?   I should fit right in.

For now, I’m putting the tip jar   on hold, and hammering out the privacy policy   .   It’s a thrill a minute here at Dixon’s Forum.

Click here to see the second installment of my rememberly story entitled, “Unentitled” , or here    for the first installment, in case you missed it, or here    for the home page of the first installment, if you want the whole experience.

Next Week:   the next section of the script for my oral story, “That’s my Way”, which has left us hanging off a cliff.