photoformulary

[rmolson]

what has happened to the photo formulary site? I went to check on some chemicals this morning and came up with a site with their name >Photoforumulary.com<for blue cross, adult porn and other junk on it. And a notice that their domain had expired. Loss of this site is a major disaster for those of use who buy chemicals from them. R Molson

 

[jstraw]

Oh my. I'm guessing they forgot to renew their domain registration.

 

[George Kara]

Did you perhaps mis-spell the address? It is spelled incorrectly on your post.

 

[ann]

i tried from the sponsor's site here on apug and got the same response.

i have been told, and heaven knows i don't know much about computers that there are times when a site may be busy and one gets directed elsewhere. i have had that happen once or twice myself.

have you tried calling them?

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

You could always call 1-800-922-5255 and ask. Don't speculate!
It indeed doesn't show up as a web site, but you can get to most of it through Google's cache.

- Thomas

 

[nworth]

I tried it this morning, and it worked properly. In the past, I have also been steered to the porn site a couple of times. There seems to be some hack going on that misdirects you when you enter the name manually, at least sometimes. I don't really understand it, but I'm pretty sure it's illegal. Keep trying, or go through one of the entries Google will give you. When you are successful, bookmark the site.

 

[jim appleyard]

I went there yesterday and just now, works fine. Incease of a spelling error:
http://www.photoformulary.com/DesktopDefault.aspx

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I just tried your link, Jim, but it comes up with some generic page and a "This domain expired June 3, 2007" message.

 

[Shawn Dougherty]

I went there yesterday and just now, works fine. Incease of a spelling error:
http://www.photoformulary.com/DesktopDefault.aspx

I got the same screwed up resonse this morning, I ended up ordering my Formulary Ansco 130 through Calumet who had it in stock. I just used your link Jim and it's not workings, says the domain has expired... I sure hope this is just a glitch!!!

 

[kraker]

Would this help? Or is "photoformulary" (which I have never heard of, but that may be my bad) a completely different store than "photographers' formulary"?

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Looks like they just forgot to renew their domain name. No big thing.

 

[fotch]

I needed something so I called them. They said the web site was attacked, nothing to do with renewal. They also offered to send a printed catalog which I didn't know they had. Glad to hear they are ok.

 

[jstraw]

I needed something so I called them. They said the web site was attacked, nothing to do with renewal. They also offered to send a printed catalog which I didn't know they had. Glad to hear they are ok.

It expired. They forgot. They're embarrassed and not admitting they screwed up.

Attacked, my a$$.

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/results.jsp?domain=photoformulary.com

 

[jim appleyard]

Not expired folks. I just tried my link and it works fine. Maybe gremlins only hit certain computers???

 

[Bob F.]

The domain is on Renewal Hold. They have until 14-Jul-2007 to renew it or they will lose it. It was registered by another company so it is they who probably messed up, especially when, somewhat worryingly, the website of the registrant is giving an ASP.NET error when you try to browse to it...

If anyone knows the Formulary people, it might be an idea to suggest they hurry: if the original registrant has gone AWOL, it may take some time to get the domain renewed (depends on how picky the registrar wants to be).

Cheers, Bob.

 

[jstraw]

Not expired folks. I just tried my link and it works fine. Maybe gremlins only hit certain computers???

The DNS you're using hasn't been updated so it's still forwarding requests for that domain to the right IP.

 

[srs5694]

Three different issues have come up in this thread. They're distinct, but some people seem to be confused about some of them, so I thought I'd elaborate. These issues can potentially apply to any domain (Web site, e-mail address, etc.):

• Attack/hijack -- Web sites can be attacked by miscreants (commonly referred to as "hackers," although that term has other more honorable meanings, so I prefer to avoid it). This involves the attacker breaking into the computer that hosts the site by exploiting any of many potential weaknesses and modifying the files on the site. The result could be corruption of the message on the site (APUG suddenly hosting a banner that says "abandon film!", for instance), files added to the site in a hidden way (for the purpose of illegal distribution of copyrighted material, for instance), changes to a site to infect users' computers with malware, or other things. This doesn't appear to be what's happened to Photo Formulary, despite their claims.
• Domain expiration -- Domain names (apug.org, photoformulary.com, etc.) are commonly said to be "owned" by somebody, but they're really just rented. The domain name must be renewed every now and then, and if the registrant forgets to do this, the domain goes away. Sometimes would-be users get a "domain not found" message, but other times other messages appear, perhaps put up by the domain registrar in an attempt to drum up business. In the worst-case scenario, a disreputable person might pick up the registration and then demand ridiculous sums of money to give it back to the original registrant. I believe there are policies and procedures in place to minimize this latter risk, but I've not looked into the matter in detail. It appears to me that Photo Formulary's registration has lapsed and the registrar is redirecting to a generic page. Evidence: The whois program, which is a standard part of many OSs, does a lookup on domain registration information. When applied to photoformulary.com, the output includes the message "This Domain Name has expired" (along with lots more information). Unless the domain name system itself has been attacked, this means that Photo Formulary simply let their domain name lapse. They aren't alone in this; even Microsoft once forgot to renew one of their domain names, IIRC.
• Mistyped domain names -- If you mistype a domain name, as in the original post's photoforumulary.com, you won't get the real domain. Sometimes squatters stake out obvious misspellings of common domain names. The goal can be to sell the misspelled domain name to the company whose name is misspelled, to earn advertising revenue on a site that redirects to the original (but you'll see the squatter's ads first), to do the same without bothering to redirect the user, to siphon business off to a competitor, to set up a bogus copy of a legitimate site (probably for a nefarious purpose, such as stealing passwords), or even to install malware on users' computers. Some of these activities are illegal, but others aren't. I haven't checked to see if there are any domain names similar to photoformulary.com, except for the above-mentioned photoforumulary.com -- it's not registered, as of 1:09 PM EST on June 5, 2007. Anybody who wants to do so could register it, though, and perhaps get a small number of visits from people who've mistyped "photoformulary.com".

I hope this helps clarify what probably is (and is not) going on with Photo Formulary. Given that they've been told of the problem, chances are they're taking the necessary steps to get back online, even if their customer service representatives either don't understand the issue or are deliberately saying they were attacked rather than that they forgot to renew their domain registration.

 

[srs5694]

Not expired folks. I just tried my link and it works fine. Maybe gremlins only hit certain computers???

This is most probably a Domain Name System (DNS) issue. Computers are identified by IP addresses, such as 72.32.121.187. Rather than enter a URL such as http://72.32.121.187, though, we use names, such as (there was a url link here which no longer exists). DNS translates between the two, so when you enter (there was a url link here which no longer exists) in your browser, it contacts 72.32.121.187. (In fact, if you try entering http://72.32.121.187 directly, it won't get you APUG, since HTTP, the Web protocol, embeds the name you entered in the request. This enables one computer to host more than one Web site, but it also means that entering the IP address directly often won't work.)

DNS uses a distributed database system -- many computers on the Internet host DNS records, and when you enter a hostname, your local DNS server (probably maintained by your ISP) caches the results for a period, so that it doesn't need to contact other DNS servers for subsequent lookups of the same address. This local cache typically lasts between a few minutes and a few days, so that sites can change IP addresses, when required. When you or another user of the same DNS server asks for the same address within the cache time, the DNS server retrieves the result from its local cache rather than perform a full DNS lookup. The result is that when changes are made to DNS -- such as when a Web site changes its physical hosting site, when a domain is first registered, or when a domain registration lapses -- the DNS changes don't appear simultaneously for all users. Local DNS servers cache old results for varying periods, depending on the last access of the hostname and DNS configuration settings.

What's happening here is that either your local DNS is still caching the old IP address (which is presumably still connected to the Internet), so your request is getting through to the original Photo Formulary computer; or the domain has already been renewed and your local DNS server didn't have the address in memory and so did a lookup on the just-renewed domain, but others' DNS servers are still working from the cache of what was returned by the domain registrar to the lapsed domain name. My guess is that the former would be more likely, since I'd expect the registrar to put a short DNS cache time on lapsed domains' lookups, but I've not checked this detail in this particular case.

 

[kjsphoto]

Who cares, as long as they are still in business that is all that matters. I just placed an order and business as usual. Time for me to go make more prints.

 

[KenM]

Folks, enough speculation. The domain is expired, as jstraw pointed out above. That's it, that's the end of it:

Creation Date: 05-Jun-1998
Expiration Date: 04-Jun-2007​

This same thing happened to Hotmail a few years back. It happened on a weekend, so people couldn't get their email. Quite embarrassing for Microsoft. A Hotmail user ended up using his Visa to pay for the registration, and Microsoft thanked him (cursed him?) by giving him a copy of their development tool set...

So, it can happen to anybody.

 

[BruceN]

I think the only speculation going on at this point has to do with why some folks can still see the site while others can't, and even that appears to be more explanation than speculation. As to that being the end of it - you've been here long enough to know better.

 

[jstraw]

I've got to learn to use a lot more text. Apparently my one and two sentence explanations required six or eight paragraphs of elaboration. :rolleyes:

 

[Sean]

A message from Bud

"We are still alive and well and doing business as normal by phone. 800-922-5255. We appreciate your concerns and will be up and running on our web site ASAP. We also appreciate all of the APUG members that do business with us and will continue to give that great service and reliability we are known for. Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks Bud Wilson"

 

[rshepard]

I just called up there. They're changing providers and were supposed to have the new site up today. They're aware that it's not available, and working to figure out why.

They'll be back on line as soon as they get the bugs out of the new server/provider or html/css.

Rich

 

[Dana Sullivan]

I just saw this post, after I tried to visit the Formulary website and came up with that Cyber Squatter page. This is exactly the reason why I have our website(s) registered through Network Solutions, and set to auto-renew our domains when the expire.

I hope Bud is able to get the domain name back from whoever snagged it from them.