Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

Minor technical difficulties around here. I haven’t been able to upload photos for nearly a week. Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that the cookie pics were hosted elsewhere (though I can’t imagine why anyone would have paid any attention to that).

I wrote a careful, detailed email to the support department at my web hosting company, explaining that I’d tried several ftp clients on different computers and even different networks, including their own ftp web client, and that I was perfectly able to upload text files, but not binary files. I even included a ftp session log demonstrating the successful upload of one and failure of the other. By doing my homework I eliminated the most common possible problems (password works, permissions work, not a local computer or network issue).

The reply:

Thank you for contacting Online Support. Please keep in mind that we do not restrict file types for uploading to your hosting account. However it does appear from your logs that you are attempting to upload the files in binary mode which then causes an error. Please make sure to upload your files in standard mode. We appreciate your understanding in this matter.

Er, say what???

I replied, politely, explaining that JPG files are binary files, and must be uploaded in binary mode or they won’t work. I also expressed my perplexity as to what this “standard mode” might be, and why their own ftp client, which presumably supports whatever mode they think I should use, also fails.

I wouldn’t mind at all to be told that I’m missing something stupid, because then I could fix it, but I’m doing exactly the same thing I’ve been doing for the last umpty years of running websites.

I hope that things get back to normal around here soon. I couldn’t do anything on my list of stringpage tasks to accomplish last week, since they all required photos.

Grumble, grumble…

Update:

Upon review, it appears that there is a known FTP issue at this time. We are currently working towards a resolution. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience.

Oh, right… a known FTP issue. Not helpful, but better than “standard mode”.