Subject: [TOOLS-DEVELOPMENT] IETF Website Cutover Completed

From: Glen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 2009 22:17:36 -0700

All -

To avoid crossposting and reply problems, I'm addressing this email to
several points of contact via BCC.  My apologies if you receive multiple
copies.

As of the time of this message, I'm pleased to report that the cutover
to the new website has been completed!  The new site is up at
http://www.ietf.org/ and appears to be functioning properly at this
stage.  Needless to say, testing will continue on an ongoing basis, but
indications are good at this point.  Please be reminded that update
access to the new site is via Contribute only; FTP access to both old
and new sites has been terminated.  The site freeze announced previously
is now lifted, and updates may now be made at will by all Contribute users.

Much surgery was required to make this cutover occur.  Thanks to the
suggestion of Iljitsch, the cutover was much less painful than it
otherwise would have been; however, a wide variety of script and
environment work was needed.  Again, testing will continue on an ongoing
basis, but, fortunately (also thanks to Iljitsch's suggestion) the old
site remains online at http://www4.ietf.org/ just in case.  We will take
that site down at some point in the near future.  In the meantime,
please be reminded that the old site is no longer being updated:  As of
this time, AMS staff will only post updates to the new site, and dynamic
update scripts will only run on the new site.  All updates to the old
site have been terminated.

The cutover provided the opportunity to clean up a number of "messes"
left over from the original transition.  Internal directories were
streamlined and restructured to make the site more modular, and
manageable.  The cutover also necessitated the modification of various
scripts and tools in order to make those tools work with the new
website.  The most prominent example of this is the I-D submission tool,
which, along with the related scripts and tools (including the
secretariat Perl and ColdFusion tools) had to be modified to "know" that
the old website was now no longer the place to which newly-uploaded
drafts should be sent.  Uploads are currently blocked; however, when
uploads reopen, we will need to test to make sure that drafts upload
correctly.  We ask that everyone test their other tools as they can, and
report any problems directly to me.  I will get your problems resolved
as soon as possible.

The cutover also means that some URLs have changed, and are no longer
available.  Thanks to Henrik's suggestion, I have deployed an
intelligent 404 handler which I wrote from scratch for us.  This handler
displays a typical 404 message, but it goes beyond that and actually
checks the old site to see if the URL would have resolved there.  If so,
it informs the user of this fact, and offers them a link to the old page
on the old site, complete with the caveat message that the information
may be outdated.  The handler also logs the instance in a log file for
secretariat review.  To see the 404 handler in action, go here:
	http://www.ietf.org/spamcontrol.html
You can also see what happens when a target URL did not exist on the old
site, by going to, for example:
	http://www.ietf.org/thispageneverexisted.html

As with any large project, we expect that some unforeseen problems, and
previously-unexposed bugs in old scripts, WILL OCCUR.  Remain calm,
there is no need to panic.  Both Matt and I will be online all weekend,
and we will be available online during the upcoming meeting, to address
any dire emergencies.  However, with the sole exception of possible
problems with the ID submission tool, which we will test when uploads
reopen, NO dire emergencies are expected as a result of the cutover.
Instead, problems should be restricted to people complaining about
missing links and/or files... which we will address in a calm fashion,
on an ongoing basis.  The emergency server was not impacted or touched
by this cutover; however, I remind you that it is for true emergencies
only.  Error messages and related issues should be sent to me via email,
please, at [email-masked] .

My thanks to all of you who participated in the development and design
of the new website.  These are the fruits of YOUR labor, and you should
be proud.  Special thanks go to Cindy Morgan, who did all of the initial
layout, all of the reorganization and analysis, and all of the grunge
work to integrate all the pages into our new template.  Thanks also go
to all those on the website team, as well as to Priyanka Narkar, the AMS
software engineer assigned to the IETF, for doing all of the script
rewrites and cleanup to ensure that dynamic data remained available to
the users on the new website.

I am sure there will be questions, and problem reports.  For now, for
fastest service, please direct those to me, via email.  Sending them to
me via email ensures that they will receive a front-of-the-line pass and
my personal attention.  If you send them to ietf-action, or elsewhere,
they will be processed first-come-first-serve along with everything else
we receive.  As always, if you have any questions or problems, please
feel free to contact me.

Other than that, enjoy your new website!

Glen Barney
IT Director
Association Management Solutions (IETF Secretariat)