fenics team mailing list archive

[Harish Narayanan <harish.mlists@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 10/1/10 12:54 AM, Anders Logg wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 04:26:22PM +0200, Anders Logg wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 08:06:36PM -0700, Ridgway Scott wrote:
>>> The web address for the FEniCS Project has moved to
>>>  http://www.fenicsproject.org
>>> Please change your links to reflect the new address as soon
>>> as possible.
>>>
>>> The old address will redirect to the new address for a transition
>>> period until 30 March 2011, but after that it will no longer be valid.
>>>
>>> The reason for the change is to avoid any possible confusion
>>> between the FEniCS Project and a financial software product with
>>> the trademark "fenics" (see fenics.com). Ownership of the old web
>>> address will transfer to this company in April, 2011.
>>
>> A redirect from fenics.org --> fenicsproject.org will be implemented
>> later today.
>>
>> Too bad we couldn't keep our own address, especially since it has been
>> used for a long time and appears in many journal papers and links.
>>
>> But I think we will be happy at our new home fenicsproject.org.
> 
> The redirect is now in place. Please help me check that everything
> works as expected.
> 
> Everyone needs to help out with updating all incoming links so that we
> can maintain a good ranking with search engines.

I am not sure the current approach is the best way of doing this. I
suggest the following instead.

1. Create a .htaccess file in the root of the old domain that looks like
the following:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.fenicsproject.org/$1 [R=301,L]

which redirects every old link to the corresponding new one. This way
the old slepc download link, for example, should not break.

2. Add a conditional check to the php of the Wiki in the new domain to
check if a person is redirecting from www.fenics.org, and if so, present
a small message on top to update their links along with serving regular
content.

I will try this if there are no objections. 301 redirects will tell
search engines things have permanently been moved, and that should help
with maintaining good ranking. (The current redirect page will hurt
things considerably.)

Harish