BI wanted to display a custom "Page not found" message on the siberia site if a user entered a non-existent password. I put a
ErrorDocument 404 http://web.uvic.ca:/site/nosuchpage.htm
line into the .htaccess in the root of his copy of the development site (www-dev/siberia/isitt) and created the page.
March 30, 2010
JJ informed me that someone had created the URL http://ow.ly/1mNDE which points to http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/imap/htdocs/ and wondered if we could prevent this. Did a google link: search and found that no pages indexed by google used that URL, and that it was 14 days old. We could try to block such URLs but it's a losing game. I don't see how she is violating any agreements with the providers of the map if someone else creates a URL pointing to her material.
JJ reports that pages which make calls to the eXist db are only partially appearing. I confirmed that behaviour. We did not get a server failure or other error message, just the page stopped rendering. It appears the page was waiting for a response from the server which never came. With Greg, checked and the db and framework seemed to be working fine. Then checked the site again and it seemed to be working perfectly. Looks like something on the server was very busy for a while, denying service to the eXist requests.
MF asked what would be involved in moving the mysteryquests from their current location on a commercial provider to accounts with UVic and then changing the domain name pointers to the instance on the UVic servers. I will get the new account and the files moved, Greg will deal with the modifications to the domain name servers. I've downloaded the site from the commercial provider, got the new uvic account and am uploading the files to that account. When that's done I'll let Greg know.
The department of philosophy's site has been ported into php versions of the templates provided by the University. We've also updated the php and javascript code that controls the display of course offerings making that display more useful and user-friendly.
Got report that page allowing teachers to sign in to restricted access material or apply for a password was failing. Couldn't reproduce the problem and the code on the page all checked out OK. Also looked up a couple of people's passwords for them.
Met with AS of dean's office to ensure all was in order with the renovation costs, the money expected from Dal for a server we've bought and the money transferred from an old conference account.
Put in for 3 bookable computers and 1 netbook for the annual Academic Equipment request, after consulting with Greg and Martin and getting specs and prices.
Sat down with BI and carved off boilerplate chunks of files for Siberia site. Put those into include files and then put an include call in the appropriate places in the host php files. Explained to BI how the relative location calls work.
Met with JP of history and a drupal admin he knows. He wants to create an online home for the field of Asian-Canadian studies and thought a Drupal instance would be a good framework. Talked for an hour about the capabilities he wanted and the implications of running an instance of drupal php code.
Emailed sys-admins to see if they had any problems with user installing drupal instance, they said no, but would provide no support for it. Also no problem getting the necessary mysql db backend account.
Also enquired about university service for accepting payment online - they're still running UVicPay.
Forwarded information on to JP. Asked if he wanted me to put in request for new unix account and new sql server account. No confirmation yet.