URL

[ahamay.livejournal.com]

Anyone else wince as much as I do every time you have to explain where the customer should type "www.domainname.com"? Inevitably they are typing the damn thing into a search engine (WTF). And then when you try to explain they should be typing that into the Address Bar you get met with confused silence. "What you mean the google bar?" NO I DON'T MEAN THE GOOGLE BAR!!!

And God help you if the URL you are trying to point them to has something other than "www" in front of it. No stupid customer... "www" does not mean anything anymore. Every freaking website name does not need to start with it all the time. Jesus...

Comments

[azurelunatic]

It BURNS. "No, sir, there's no need to put a 'www' in front of 'email.coolexample.com', just 'email.coolexample.com'..."

In fact, when I'm giving them an address that doesn't have 'www', I tell them, "No need to put in 'www', just 'email.coolexample.com'; yes, sir, 'email' instead of 'www', that's right..."

(Also, hello, neighbor! I'm in Gilbert.)

[ahamay.livejournal.com]

yep "email.domainname.com" was the exact example that I was thinking of! I probably have that argument with people at least 10 times a day.

[greatblondino.livejournal.com]

The real fun is when you tell them it's a https:// site. Our Outlook Web Access server is https://exchange.company.com/owa. Make sure you have the 'S' in https. No, not www.https://exchange... No, not http://https://www.exchange... No, not https://www.https.exchange...

And so it goes. I hate having to include http:// when I tell people addresses, but Internet Explorer's idiot behaviour necessitates it. With any other browser you can just enter 'servername:8080' and it will default to HTTP and work fine. IE says 'Huh? I have nfc what this weird port means, so unless you tell me I'm gonna error out.' So, yes, you have to enter http://servername:8080 (invariably after trying it the 'every other browser' way once and then getting annoyed when you remember IE is a moron).

Sorry for the mini-rant ¬.¬

[shadedspriter.livejournal.com]

My mum did this exact thing last night when I was helping her register a domain...

[kenbrody.livejournal.com]

Which is why I've seen registrars use something like:

Enter the domain you want to register:
www.__________.com

[usekh.livejournal.com]

I remember a customer getting all pissy with me because in an email I said go to mail.mycompany.com and he went to www.mail.mycompany.com and it didn't work

"Well you didn't tell me not to type www in front of it" I also didn't tell him to print out the url and shove it up his arse either :P

[greatblondino.livejournal.com]

Back when we used a third-party mail server, I was constantly getting calls from people working from home unable to check their e-mail. They demanded that I fix the problems, said I was crap at my job, ('I have no control over our mail server - let me find out what's happening and I'll get back to you asap'), insisted everything should be sorted (without it costing anything) because it was very concerning for the organisation, etc.

Yes, they were typing in 'www.webmail.company.com' and no, it wasn't working.

[darkmattr.livejournal.com]

start/run iexplore google.com

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

I once rang an ISP to enquire about their prices (in 2002)

"And we support all the current browsers"

"What, Mozilla? Opera? Lynx?"

"No. Yahoo, Google, Altavista..."

*facepalm*

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

I was told today by a moron in PC World that the eeePC has "the Linux processor".

[nem0.livejournal.com]

Agh, my mom does that. She's otherwise an intelligent woman who can do more with computers than she thinks she can, but goddamn if it didn't take me a month to grind into her, "GOOGLE IS NOT THE ADDRESS BAR. IF YOUR WEBSITE DOESN'T SHOW UP IN THE SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS, IT DOESN'T MEAN YOUR WEBSITE IS DOWN."

[greatblondino.livejournal.com]

Where I used to work, the IT manager (in charge of four of us techies) had a semi-decent understanding of Windows/networking, and had worked for years as a web/graphical designer. He was pretty new to the sysadmin job, but there's no defence: whenever he wanted to visit a website, he would ALWAYS enter www.google.com into the address bar and then type in www.website.com into Google, clicking on the top link. I just don't understand it.

[udoswald.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I hate that. I've also noticed a lot of our users want to put ".com" at the very end even if there's already a .com in there. For example, I'll tell them to go to www.example.com/webpage and they'll ask if they should put ".com" after webpage.

[4ti3k4t35.livejournal.com]

It's even worse when somehow they've gotten into fullscreen mode or have the address bar actually disabled or unchecked or whatever in their browser and so they literally don't know what the heck you're talking about and it makes me cryyyyyyyyy.

That, and nobody can spell. Even if you spell out the URL, they'll add extra letters and www's and .com's and I sometimes wish I could choke some people over the phone.

[greatblondino.livejournal.com]

If only 'www' wasn't such a mouthful when you're trying to say it, too...

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

I used to serve as a liason between the web guys and the clients. One big-wig real estate tycoon not only INSISTED that the search bar was where the address went, he even admitted that he taught a class where he TAUGHT OTHER PEOPLE THE SAME THING.

Cue Daffy...

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

i feel your pain

[kastinkerbell.livejournal.com]

Yup.
I once had a guy unable to get to our (super super simple) Web site for this exact reason. At one point he said he was there (victory!, I think). To verify, I ask, "Do you see a picture of [current picture on page]?" He tells me no, he sees a picture of his wife. Talk about burning stupidity. I mean, just how did he think that worked? And I'm positive this guy had more than a doctorate education...

[devilish69angel.livejournal.com]

i hate when customers do this, it makes me want to hit them in the head. kinda like those v-8 juice commercials that have been running lately.

[rwarner.livejournal.com]

Search bars in browser windows make Baby Jebus cry.

Addendum to that, all those fsking TOOLBARS that every new program these days seems to come with. And each toolbar comes with it's own search bar. I once remoted into a pc that had 7 toolbars in their IE window. Customer's complaint? "My internet is running slow!!11!!"

No, dolt, IE is not "the internet"

[greatblondino.livejournal.com]

Practically every time something is 'broken' here, it starts off with someone asking me 'Is something wrong with Outlook?' or 'The internet?', whether it's Adobe Acrobat asking them what printer to use or them accidentally deleting a desktop shortcut. And yes, of course I have a very expensive server dedicated to monitoring everyone's Microsoft Outlook.

[pacotelic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, hate it when contractors put silt fence UPHILL of their site. Or citizens demand WIDER ROADS because they think it will make pedestrians safer. Ore wonder why moving to the countryside often smells like manure and fertilizer with their morning coffee.

You deal in esoterica, get used to it

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Ore wonder why moving to the countryside often smells like manure and fertilizer with their morning coffee.

Or get offended because someone is skinning a deer hanging off a tree in their front yard....

[crm17.livejournal.com]

One of the phrases I have to say most often, is "nothing before it, nothing after it".

But that does not work either so now we go step by step:

click in address bar so all is selected (finding said bar will be 90% of the time spent)
press backspace
type the word "firstword"
type ".nextword"
type ".lastword"
press enter

[karyn-rocks.livejournal.com]

I get that at least fifteen times a day.

[syberghost.livejournal.com]

At least with the "typing the url into the search engine bar instead of the address bar", they'll usually get the right site as the first hit. You can then just go with the flow and tell them what to click. And rejoice in the secret knowledge that they'll probably do this EVERY TIME in the future.

[ahamay.livejournal.com]

AH this only works when they are going to a site that has been established for a while. They are shit out of luck if say...they just built their website. lol

[pne.livejournal.com]

"www" does not mean anything anymore.

Heh. I remember when MIT's main web server was at http://web.mit.edu/. I think http://www.mit.edu/ (the Student Union's web server) came later.

So "www" hasn't even always "meant something".

(Though that's the only example I know of "major site not using 'www' as the first component of their main web site's domain name".)

[vadra.livejournal.com]

Ahh... remember the times when you had to explain to someone why they had to put the "random www" in front of URLs?

I'm not sure which is worse. Then.. or now...

And a slash is a slash! You don't have to call it forward slash! IT'S ALWAYS BEEN A SLASH! YOU NEVER USED A BACKSLASH! SO WHY ARE YOU HAVING TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THEM NOW!???

[floatingpencil.livejournal.com]

The scariest example of this for me is when I was explaining to a couple of colleagues how to access their work email from home via our nice shiny new webmail. They both came in the next day saying "Was it down last night? Because www.mail.companyname.com didn't work!"

That's because there IS no www in front of the address, muppets. And to think these people work in tech support...

[emerald-embers.livejournal.com]

I've become something of an expert with google-fu at finding webpages I need customers to go to purely because I KNOW they're going to type into the google bar instead of the search bar.

*sigh*

[emerald-embers.livejournal.com]

* address bar.

*curses own typing skills, or lack thereof*