Laser Technik Ltd
Providing Internet services for over a quarter of a century
Having worked with the internet from even before it became commercialized in the early 1990s (and in IT before that), our MD at Laser Technik Ltd. possesses a wealth of experience.
That means that what may appear as an intractable problem to you is something he has encountered before and may be able to resolve in a matter of minutes.
If it’s an unfamiliar issue, his abundance of diagnostic skills and his determination to “solve the puzzle” will usually provide a way forward.
Below, you will find just a few examples of the numerous problems he has successfully resolved.
Web design company can't fix the problem
The IT company tasked with maintaining the client’s websites faced a problem they couldn’t solve. Our diagnostic revealed that a server software update had rendered the client’s website incompatible. To temporarily resolve the issue, the client was switched to a different web hosting provider (at a significant cost) and migrated the content, seemingly sucessfully.
However, a short while later a new problem was found – the user couldn’t add new items to the database. Despite the maintenance provider declaring the situation to be “impossible” we undertook to investigate. We don’t like to accept defeat and it took a lot of effort but eventually solved the problem by identifying an obscure configuration setting that needed changing.
This experience will help us provide faster resolutions for similar issues in the future. It also highlights the technical shortcomings of many web design agencies.
Web site designer gone missing!
The website was still running but the designer couldn’t be contacted. The client could not gain access to the webserver or the domain name as both were licensed to the missing web designer. The web host and domain name registrar was unwilling to engage with anyone other than their client, the original designer (annoying but to do otherwise would represent a serious security failing on their part).
Our client had no log-in credentials for the web server, they were only able to access individual database entries. The domain name and hosting were due to expire and critical data that had taken ten years to accumulate would be lost. The web site was a private stock control system only accessible to staff.
We used a program to fire thousands of enquiries at the database via the still active web site (that took a while!). We were then able to extract the data from the web page responses and recreate the database.
Next we built functional equivalents of the database look up programs and took the opportunity to incorporate the customer’s “wish list” of enhancements.
We also implemented a backup process such that the customer could take a complete copy of the live database to one of their own PCs.
Finally we provided complete documentation including details of hosting, domain registration and copies of all the web pages and program files such that they could be certain that the same situation should not arise in future.
This took weeks of effort and the cost was substantial but there was no other way to recover the data before the deletion deadline.
Sometimes it is possible to regain control of a domain name but in this case it was not essential, we simply registered a new domain name for the new version.
Web site full of errors
A £20 quick fix
A one-man business found that suddenly his home page was full of error messages. This was his livelihood and anyone going to the site and faced with just a load of error messages would probably just go somewhere else.
We were able to offer an immediate diagnosis and solution where others had failed. The underlying cause was simple but the effect cascaded throughout the web site. A small tweak was all it needed.
Just read what this happy guy wrote:
“Thanks for your advice, my web designer is pretty useless he couldn’t tell me any of this so it apparent you know more than him!! My hosting provider was no better. I emailed the designer with your solution & hey presto!! we are all fixed, no-one else could solve the problem! I can’t thank you enough, I had 4 other people try with no success, many thanks again. Kind regards, Andy”