ubcbotanicalgarden.org -> botanicalgarden.ubc.ca

As part of becoming consistent with other University of British Columbia web sites and the University's Common Look and Feel, and in particular, being listed in the default UBC.ca search engine, we are moving domain names from botanicalgarden.ubc.ca to botanicalgarden.ubc.ca

This will almost certainly result in you being logged out and having to log in again to reset your cookies to the new domain.

All botanicalgarden.ubc.ca addresses, bookmarks and links will continue to work, but going forward, you should use botanicalgarden.ubc.ca

 

When is this going to happen, Daniel?

 

It is happening now...unfortunately, no advance warning because we need to try and get botanicalgarden.ubc.ca indexed by Google in preparation for the launch of the redesigned site (the search functionality for most pages, with the exception of the forums, is all pushed to the main UBC search engine)

 

Confirm, I had to log in just now.

 

Note that if you manage cookies individually you will have to allow the new domain ubc.ca

 

Cookies are set to .botanicalgarden.ubc.ca (if that makes a difference)

 

What about the intra-forum links that have been embedded in forum postings? Will they be modified to reference the new domain?

 

No -- I was mentioning that to the Garden's marketing manager -- those are essentially the only ones I can't do in a bulk manner (and no way that they'll be changed post by post). Well, actually... hmm.. there might be a way, but it involves doing a search and replace directly in the database.

I'll have to look into it.

 

Should be as simple as this: change URL posted in post

But, since there is potential for messing up, I'll have to do it at work after backing up the database tomorrow.

 

Excellent. It sure makes things easier when someone else has faced the same problem and was nice enough to post the solution.

 

Done, and seems to have been successful on the few threads I checked so far.

 

Goggle located a few stragglers. In the Botany Photo of the Day pages, the author's name (you) is still referencing the old domain. Example: http://www.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/potd/2007/05/ornithogalum_nutans.php. There may be others in less traveled areas.

 

That's fixed, thanks (the fix should "take" in about an hour or so -- these are template-generated pages, and every little change means the whole thing needs to rebuild which takes a while). That URL was associated with my BPotD software profile.

 

Anyone else finding the site exceedingly slow since the move? About 10 seconds before a link starts to load, a few more to finish loading, and then another 10 seconds wait before you can start to scroll down to the end of the page (before that is up, the scroll wheel does nothing).

Edit: Oh, and a 20 second wait for this post to be posted (timed it!).

Edit 2: A full 3 minutes 10 seconds for the first edit to load.

 

Seems normal here.

 

The exceedingly slow times have to do with me making changes to Botany Photo of the Day templates -- every time I make a small change to a template, I have to rebuild all of the pages, and the server prioritizes processing those over serving pages.

I'm also doing all small changes in duplicate, once on the current site, once on the new site, so I don't forget something in the templates when we make the switchover.

Fortunately, the latest version of the software running BPotD seems to be less resource-intensive for making these updates, so I expect things to get better.

(I had also put in another request to the director for more RAM / more CPU, but we're going to attempt to optimize the server and the various bits of software for performance before going that route. As an example, caching is something that can greatly improve performance ... but its enemy is "changes in templates", so while we sort out getting all of the templates settled, we can't address performance)

 

Thanks!

A lot better this morning.

 

But very slow again this evening

 

Yes, I think the dev was working on the site then, which included rebuilding the templates for BPotD