Official site hacked?

[One, Two, Middlesboogie]

Either someone has hacked into the official Oddworld site, or (hopefully) they're just refurbishing it.

The site is in my Favourites list in my browser, but the bookmark links to the main frameset instead of the splash page. When I clicked on the bookmark, I got a 'this page does not exist' message.
'They must've changed some of the urls' I thought, and typed www.oddworld.com into my address bar. Got the splash page, no probs. Clicked on the logo, and the frameset loaded okay, but the menu on the left had been replaced with a 'this page doesn't exist' message.

I decided to do some poking around; I opened the directories to see if I could go directly to the pages without clicking on links. To my horror, most of the files and sub-directories had gone! I went back to the frameset, and clicked on a few links. Nothing! Some of the images on the page had also been replaced with the red-cross-in-white-box which denotes a picture that does not exist.

I've just checked again to be on the safe side. No improvement. I do hope nothing more sinister than a site revamp is going on.

[Doug]

I just got in there -- everything seems normal.

Maybe they were moving stuff and all the links weren't in place for the new locations? I can't say I really understand how all this stuff works, but your error messages sounded different from the ones you get when the server is down or inaccessible.

[One, Two, Middlesboogie]

Just tried again - no improvement. This is the error message I keep getting:

Can't Find Web Site
Did you click on a link?
The site may no longer exist or it may have moved. If you know the exact Web address, type it into the address box at the top of your screen.

Did you type a Web address?
Double-check for any misspellings, punctuation errors, or extra spaces. Or try including http://www. at the beginning (i.e., if the address you were given is aol.com, type http://www.aol.com/).

Still no luck?
Try one of these links: http://www.netcenter.com/ or http://www.digitalcity.com/. If these work, any problems probably lie with the site you were trying to visit. If they don't work, close all programs currently running. Restart your computer, sign back on, and try the site again.

I know it's nothing to do with the server being busy; I get different messages for those.

Maybe you're looking at it with the files in your cache and not as it is; maybe if you deleted all your cookies and temporary inernet files, and then tried to view the site you'd have the same problems.

[buckminster]

I just tried the site on three different machines using three different browsers (even one set to keep no cache, no history and to check for new versions of a page on every visit to that page) and I didn't have any problems accessing OWI's website.

The error message you're getting doesn't sound like a message from OWI's web server (why would they give suggestions for typing a url like http://www.aol.com?). Are you sure you aren't going through a proxy server?

[Doug]

Originally posted by One, Two, Middlesboogie
Maybe you're looking at it with the files in your cache and not as it is; maybe if you deleted all your cookies and temporary inernet files, and then tried to view the site you'd have the same problems.

I thought of that, so I told my brower to "refresh", so it should have loaded the latest version. Sometimes I get a cached page of the OW Forums directory, and refreshing always brings it up to date. buckminster seems to be getting in there as well. Maybe your ISP is having problems with the connection to that server?

Sometimes I have trouble accessing certain sites, and my ISP tells me that it doesn't recognize my userid/password when I'm trying to access e-mail sometimes as well. I always just try later and all the problems seem to be gone. I am betting that some router somewhere has puked on its shoes and that in a few hours or so you'll be able to get to the site.

[Xavier]

I tried and refreched some times...
no problems
evrything was fine and normal

[oddguy 999]

Are you using Netscape?

For the last few months whenever I have used Netscape to get on to the offical site I have had problems simular to yours... So I always fire up Explorer if I want to look around the site... it works fine enuff but I still enjoy Netscapes feel more.

[One, Two, Middlesboogie]

No, I'm using AOL.

I deleted all my cookies, temporary internet files and history files. The menu and some of the images still don't work, but now I can navigate the site by browsing the directories (it's actually quite fun; some of the files have weird names!).

Wonder what's going on? Why's my PC being an arse all of a sudden? (not that it wasn't an arse before...)

[Alf]

Hi there,
I've checked with our webmaster, Buddy the Mudokon and nothin has been moved. Unfortunately the site is not compatible to Netscape 6. Buddy sez, it'll be awhile.

Alf