"Dynamic" web site, <http://www.acert.cornell.edu/>.

Project lead: Oliver.

Others:

  • Diane Patzer (<dep14> (local: dianec) Days: M, T, Th, after 10 or 11am.
  • Curt Dunnam <crd4>
  • Barry (for data and DB, and configuration)
  • Joanne (content)

Goal

CCMR's web service shuts down and Freed's web site continues to work correctly.

Project status

5/12/13: Jack signed off on this project.

NOTES: Required spooling up a new project to migrate CCMR's FTP service.

Strategy

1A) Attempt migration to a CIT service.

1B) To the degree CIT hosting service technology works for ACERT, align near- and long-term support from IWS (of CIT) <http://www.it.cornell.edu/about/atsus/iws/>. IWS needs to know our timelines to migrate the site.  Request to IWS is for an estimate to help with:

  • Migration coordination (to the degree needed)
  • Documentation (of the infrastructure, including installation configuration)
    • Outcome: Sue (CTI) spent 2 hours on the review of the site and documentation, so a total of $152.
  • On-going support, post-migration

2) Longer term, consider site re-write using contemporary tools and services. We may need to look harder into this if the above migration proves difficult.

  • Identify options for hosting, and characterize trade-offs, including costs and administrative overhead.
  • CIT's Academic Technologies (AT) group (Todd Maniscalco <tam42>) likely can provide free consultation, with free follow-up services. (CIT's IWS may also be able to do an initial consult for free, too.)

Project notes and efforts

Project completed.

Migration to CIT's LAMP service

5/1/13: Oliver asked Curt if project is completed so Jack can sign off on it.

To do's:

  • Confirm Dee (and Curt?) are registered with ATC as "having responsibility or access privileges for the web site http://www.acert.cornell.edu." This way they get emails on service updates and such. On 5/2/13, Barry emailed Dee to ask if she got an email from ATC which would indicate she's registered.
  • What is courses2 back-ups and recovery profile? Scenarios:
    • If systems crash, how recent a back-up?
    • If Dee wants a previous version of a file, what are her options and process?
      • Or, does she go through her own files instead? Other scenarios?

April 15, 2013, Monday: Oliver wrote to Curt requesting time estimate for cut-over, with link to above to-do's. And the work required if cut-over not for this week.

April 15, 2013,Monday: Pinged Curt re: CIT work closure.

4/5/13: The copy of web site is on CIT-hosted web server. All technologies seem to be working correctly on the new location, but must be further confirmed by Dee. Dee can connect and modify items in the new location.

To do's:

  • Dee to confirm functionality in new location.
  • Dee to true-up content in new site with content added recently to current site so there are no differences in data or structure between the two sites.
  • Curt and Dee to sign-off that new site looks and behaves like current site.
  • Barry, with CIT, to cut-over domain name. Thus, ACERT URL to web site changes from pointing to current web site to pointing to the new location. Users should not notice a difference.
  • Dee to continue verifying that new location is working as expected.
  • Curt and Dee to sign-off on migration's success.
  • Barry to turn off old web server.

April 5, 2013, Friday: Oliver sent Curt a copy of this project's current status and to-do's, asking for time-frames for to-do's leading up to the domain name change Barry will need to do. Requested time-frame estimates within a week or so.

April 5, 2013, Friday: Oliver sent Curt copy of CIT's 2-page documentation (from 4/1/13) of the new site's structure and connection info, based on CIT's "look-see".

April 4, 2013, Thursday: Dee and Barry. Over 2 hours? Barry helped Dee connect to new location and start to reconcile between new location and current (production) server.

March 20, 2013, Wednesday: Barry and Oliver. Over 2 hours. Fixed many problems with the copied data so it would work well.

March 6, 2013, Wednesday: Barry and Oliver. Over 2 hours. Migrated copy of web site to new location. Emailed Dee to request she connect to new location. Notified Dee to make changes to new site if changes made to production site so cut-over would lose no data.

3/7/13: Lining up CIT's IWS support. Oliver wrote to Curt and Jack:

Jack and Curt,

The estimate for CIT's Integrated Web Services (IWS) group to do the work I recommend is $152 – $228 ( 2-3 hours $76/hour).  As we’ve discussed, their work will produce documentation describing how the site is configured/installed, including database information, file structure, etc.

A significant positive outcome from this work is that when your staff needs IWS’s assistance with your web site, they will know the site’s framework when it was working correctly. This is thus also an investment to facilitate your staff’s access to IWS staff as a (fee) resource, if needed. In its new location, it obviously will not be under Barry’s support so this is an effort to line up this replacement support.

To be clear, this estimate does not cover IWS documenting Dee’s web design or PHP coding work.  If we wanted any more documentation (along the lines of what functionality there is, how the application is implemented, and/or how it works), then this would be additional time and an additional deliverable. I do not recommend this extra work. Instead, you can continue to depend on Dee, who will continue to be the “owner” responsible for the site’s code itself.

If you agree with this investment, I can connect Curt  (and his account number) with IWS so they can move forwards. In moving forward, I am available to Curt to assist regarding timing and any other facilitation. For example,  the timing will need to be coordinated with Barry and Dee’s current efforts, both of whom I have cc:ed on this message. I have also cc:ed Joanne since she is a significant stake-holder of this web site.

Please let me know if you’d prefer we do something else, or if I have missed addressing a concern. Thank you, -Oliver.

3/6/13: Barry copied the MySQL and files (PHP, etc) from the current production (old) web server to the new (staging) web server. This is Barry's summary of what has been done and what needs to be done.

  • On the courseware site Barry has:
  • Imported a snapshot of the acert_db mysql database from our server into the acert_vhdb1727 mysql database on the courseware host.
  • Grabbed a snapshot of the web root directory on our server and copied it into the web root of the new server.
  • Edited ACERT_PHPs/settings.php to change the database name, user, and password to the ones provided by ATS.
  • Edited the index_files/about_acert.php so that all the PHP open tags were <?php instead of <?. On the new server, one can no longer use the shortcut <? to designate the start of a PHP section in a file. There are lots of instances of this in the site code.
  • Sent a request to ATS to create collab, browser, and possibly acert_admin database users for the acert_vhdb1727 database. The first two are limited users, the last could be simply changed to the jhf3db user if all references could be found.
  • It looks like the index_files/images and index_files/Images file names that differ in case only will not be a problem for the underlying file system.

2/14/13: Oliver gave Jack a status update.

2/14/13: CIT's IWS had not heard back from Barry. Tried again.

2/6/13: CIT's IWS made a contact request to Barry, per my request. As part of developing a quote for us.

1/29/13: CIT's IWS contacted me, from my request to them from 1/17 (with their apologies!). I spoke to them 1/30 (Thur), and hope for a follow-up discussion early in the week of 2/4.

1/17/13: CIT provisioned LAMP web hosting for us.

  • Until the site has been launched, you can access it via the temporary URL – http://staging.acert.cornell.edu/
  • Must have Barry and Dee move a copy of the current site, and test it.

1/11/113: Confirmed that CIT AT can host the web site for free, <http://atcsupport.cit.cornell.edu/itrequest/main.cfm?cmd=4>.

1/8/13: Oliver put in a request for service to CIT's Academic Technologies (AT) group (Todd Maniscalco <tam42>). They will determine if this is a "fit" for their (free) service offerings.Ticket ID: 38530. Case number: INC000000770987.

Oliver learned of a peer research group that can host this LAMP-based web server in a shared hosting environment for "cheap". Before pursuing that further, Oliver will see if another part of CIT can host this service for free.

12/17/12 (Mon): Oliver submitted request to <webservices@cornell.edu>. Since been confirmed that just exploring this option will cost a VM hosting fee as part of using CIT's otherwise-free LAMP service.

The required VM costs $105.00/mo. <http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/managed_servers/fees.cfm>.

Michael Hint had CU's hostmaster change the <acert.cornell.edu> domain name in CU's DNSDB so it can accept changes from CRCF staff (12/18/12). Before this, the only person listed was former CCMR IT lead, who had left quite a while ago

Other notes

  • Can Barry provide info about the personal pages, such as (1) which personal pages have data, (2) when was the last time site updated (last write-access)? and (3) last visit of a personal page by person-driven browsing (usage stats).
    If not, who should contact Keith Earl to determine if he is using or needs the data from a personal page? Anyone else?
  • Oddly, <http://acert.cornell.edu> does not resolve. Must have preceding "www" for some reason. Domain name tweak would be good to do!
  • Purpose of PHP and MySQL:
    • Provide consistent header/ footer/ left-bar navigation.
    • Dynamically create (auto-generate) pages based on metadata. Ex: Publications. Uses Admin pages to edit/ add data and metadata.
    • For a service request page, but that is rarely used. JavaScript investment could improve formatting of resulting email. Get's the right data from user, but could replace by telling user the data required.
      • Never functioning, but had hoped for: Service request residing with DB for query by staff (for work flow).

        Options/ Ideas

CIT offers a web development service.

AWP: Used by EMC2 for their web site. They would recommend them.

Oliver's meeting notes, 11/28/12's mtg

Barry: PHP/ MySQL-based.

Diane works part-time.

Ideas discussed at the meeting

There may be some personal pages. Such as for Keith Earl.

Decision at meeting:

None recorded by me.

Past email threads, pre-meeting

Barry, 11/20/12, 2:34 PM

N/A.

Peter, 11/20/12, 12:51 PM

ACERT web site (as well as ftp) could be hosted by Chemistry Department and managed by its Webmaster.

Oliver, 11/20/12, 10:23 AM

(5) Web site hosting currently provided by CCMR for the Freed group.

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