This scam is not new. In fact, it has been going on for years even after the courts have stepped in. If you receive the letter below from the Domain Registry of America, toss it. It is misleading and gives the false impression that your domain name will not be renewed.
This letter states that this particular domain name (grayed out) will expire on April 22, 2010. In fact, the domain name will not expire since it is set up on an automatic renewal with GoDaddy.
Domain Registry of America calls this a renewal. The wording is misleading and I consistently get calls from my clients. What the Domain Registry of America is doing is, in fact, a domain name transfer. The FTC has stepped in and filed this injunction.
Perhaps this letter now satisfies the legal aspects. However, it does not change the situation that they want you to pay more for your domain name than necessary. Domain names currently cost about $10 a year through GoDaddy/NameCheap…
Okay, don’t let the title scare you! This is a problem EVERY one will face eventually when they work with websites.
I recently worked with a client who had an error that prevented him from posting new information to his website. The error said: “XML-RPC Response Parsing Failed: Operation could not be completed. Extra content at the end of the document”
This client was using MarsEdit. An excellent blogging software for the Mac.
We spent some time trying to find this “extra content.” However, when looking at the code, we could not find it. It was hidden very well. This person copied text from PowerPoint and pasted it into MarsEdit. Why would that cause a problem? Enter Microsoft… 😀
This is not another one of those blog posts which disses Microsoft Office. It is an indispensible software package, but it is known to create issues when copying and pasting into websites. The reason is, Microsoft Word (and its siblings) uses hidden code to send documents to a printer. If you have ever copied a paragraph from Word and pasted it directly into a website, you may see a bunch of code that misbehaves. Sometimes, this code is elusive and you cannot see it.
If you get this error or your newly published content to a site is scrambled, hidden or simply messing up your page, then you need to refrain from copying and pasting directly from a Microsoft product.
How do you overcome these errors?
You can either retype the material directly into the website editing program. Or, if the material is too long, then copy the material and paste it into a program like Notepad (Windows users) or TextMate for Mac users. Once pasted into Notepad/TextMate, copy it once again and paste into your website.
Or, you need to upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007. I have tried to replicate these errors using Office 2007 and it appears that Microsoft has “cleaned up” the extra code issue.
Why does this help?
Text editors do not bloat the code of your document with margins and printer codes. When you paste Microsoft material into one of these editors, all of this extraneous code is stripped away. Note that you will lose your bolding and italic.
Conclusion
When you publish a page on your website and you notice that the page simply will not behave. Understand that the problem may be related to copying and pasting from an older Microsoft product.
