Working with DNS and Domains is kinda weird. If you're on this page, chances are you found this through Bluesky and got here through starrymic.xyz.

I recently purchased that domain through NameCheap, which has so far been quite a lovely service to work with! The domain tools have been fantastic so far and though I've run into a couple problems, the majority of the process has been quite smooth!

So why are you making a blog post then?

(and why is it named that way?)

Well... One of the problems I had to fix today was an issue affecting my ability to link to these posts in the first place. To understand what caused this problem, we need to talk about the structure of URLs.

When you set up a domain in Namecheap's domain management panel, it gives you the ability to add redirects. As of right now, that is the sole purpose of starrymic.xyz. When you go to that domain, it redirects you to my Neocities page.

When adding a redirect, I was supposed to add a '/' to the end of the url to allow for subdirectories to work with redirects, but I didn't.

That's it? That's the bug?

NOPE!

When Namecheap redirects you to a blog page here, it adds an "=" sign. This breaks my code for grabbing the file needed to load a blog page in my BlogGenerator.js file. Anything after the "?" in the URL is taken as the filename it should load from, even if it doesn't exist. If the file doesn't exist, it just tells the user to check the URL and to try again. Namecheap's redirects adding a "=" at the end of the redirected url was enough to break the code and cause it to read files that don't exist.

Thankfully it wasn't a huge bug and was quite easy to fix. Just needed to add a check to remove any "=" characters. I would expand this system to have more filters and foolproofing, but because I've got a naming scheme for my blog entries, and I'm the only one who can upload to this blog, it doesn't matter as much to have those in place.

That and I don't want to get into doing any more JS than I already did...

I hope you're having a good day!

I'll be honest, writing the self-help stuff every blog post is a bit tiring. That's not to say that I despise doing it, but I've been doing it after every post, and it's made it hard to say more than what I've already said.

But I don't want to leave the sendoff empty or without something uplifting. I feel it is good to thank God for whatever he has given you as of late. I want to give a list of what I'm grateful for as of writing this.

Hopefully my list can help you think about what you're thankful for in life.

I am thankful for...

• The family that surrounds me.
• The skills I've learned through the course of my life.
• My close friends, who feel as if they are beside me when I need them/
• My loving boyfriend, who is looking to try and transition soon.
• The chance to go to college and learn more about programming.
• The miniscule community that I have, even if I don't interact much with them.
• The teachers that I've got.
• The people who have helped me grow as a person.
• And you, for reading this post and listening to me yelling out into the void of the Internet.

Hope you have a great day. Take care! I'll see you soon.