Tim Roe

Called Chris from IT Conference Room around 2:30 Friday, November 5th.

Here we go:

Remove webSnap on test first to ensure no DLLs are referenced

With Umbraco …

any pg= or websnap page then websnap dll took over

umbraco = .net 3.5

websnap = .net 1.1

not supposed to run both in same pool

umbraco pages – dynamic

static pages – students

asp pages

should not interfere with Umbraco

load balancing –

.net 3.5 on iis 6 was a factor

iis 7.5 handles requests differently

handlers are integrated in

os 2003 – 2008 rs w/ iis 7.x

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/default.aspx

orig used san shared urc location

load balancing … copy the orig to multiple locations

connection issues between servers — timeouts due to security timeouts?

example: bufiles timeouts when we tried storing files there

2003  – 2008 (bufiles) talking between two an issue according to craig

system watcher/monitor would timeout when on bufiles OR toad (not as bad)

even with beefed up server, still need to allow for load balancing

4 servers minimum – load bal two that sync content on defined time interval

one on the backend for publishing

toad behind firewall as your content box, allow people publish their content

still will pub to sql live, then let robocop run and monitor changes to system and then syncs with additional servers.  no admin on front end boxes.

distinquish content from applications, uploaded files to buconnection would ul to front end servers but not to back, would wipe out update on next sync

step 1 = move stuff to test server

long term move content portion to server, move apps to diff server

examples: boa, etc. (apps.butler.edu)

umbraco app pool no longer needed

file copy umbraco first, then patch for upgrade

web extensibility needs to be plugged in

umbraco in classic mode on iis 6

default upgrade will be “integrated mode”

ii7 = url rewriting embedded in, even to different domains

apps on diff server then create redirects for del content through proxy

caching levels more granular

4.6 Umbraco

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting a guy named Wade Wingler.  Wade is the Director of Assistive Technology for INDATA.  The INDATA project is a program of the Easter Seals Crossroads that offers services and knowledge to the community with the goal of making technology available to those with disabilities.

Web Services, and Butler in general, has been quite cognizant of our need to make our websites (and other information channels) accessible to those with visual, auditory and other types of impairments.  Rob Hartman, an IT staff member who splits his time with Student Disability Services, has been instrumental in helping us all stay aware of and compliant with the various challenges that ADA, Section 508 and WAI create for us.  Rob coordinated Wade’s visit as well.

Although I did make an audio recording of the session, I am yet to get it exported from my iPhone in a useful format to post here.  I hope to do that soon.  Meanwhile, I did want to mention that Wade found few issues with Butler’s current top-level pages.  Most of the issues he found are quick fixes.

There is a Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool called WAVE that I think all of us on Web Services should install in our Firefox browsers.  We are missing an H1 tag on our home page and the search box is unlabeled, but many of the important coding practices have been followed.  So, when he stepped through our site using JAWS for Windows, the screen-reading software worked quite well and enabled him to effectively traverse our site as a blind person.

We will always have things to learn in this area and will constantly be challenged to provide the next level of assistive support for our website consumers (closed captioned video, e.g.), but due to our early stance on this issue and our adoption of key Web standards, we have made great strides in making our content accessible to all who seek it.

Regarding academic blogs as well as student organization blogs and some other non-academic use.

Nate has WordPress structured into 2 separate “zones.”  One zone is blogs.butler.edu and lives on a server called MALLARD.  Although we have a case for unique blogs every so often, most blog requests are for academic (classroom) use and are benign.  As long as the client agrees that search engine indexing can remain off, there should be minimal barriers to receiving a blog for these purposes.  Examples of non-academic blogs that are in the other zone are blogs such as booth.butler.edu and thebutlercollegian.com websites.  So, essentially, we can do blogs by DIRECTORY name OR DOMAIN name.

Nate mentioned something about one solution and EPICS, CAESAR, but I have no idea what that meant???  There was a discussion of bringing “external” blogs in.  There was also a strong idea of generating some sort of “showcase” for the default location (blogs.butler.edu) to show some of the best blogs being run on our install.  A listing of all blogs at least, but preferably something a little more visual and engaging to demonstrate what people are doing with their blogs.

During one planning meeting, a list of concerns/issues was generated that needed thought, options, decisions, policy, documentation, etc.

• patching
• backups
• testing
• restoring
• upgrading
• templates (this is an urgent one because we really need something to give everyone)
• errors
• policy (academic vs. other)
• governance
• security
• process (requests)
• maintenance (hardware/software)
• user support (service level)
• space usage monitoring
• performance monitoring
• training

Could the Help Desk be folded into this equation somehow?  Could they offer any type of end-user support for WP blogs in the long run?

This just in, an article concerning WordPress security.  Sent to me by Dan Shaffer.

The following statements and questions are merely random thoughts that came up during postmortem discussions about our efforts to support March Madness traffic.  These represent the questions I took with me to HighEdWeb 2010 and will be questions we continually revisit as we plan for March 2011.  I just wanted to capture these ideas somewhere I could find them again.  Also, by posting them here, I thought perhaps a comment thread may emerge, sparking new ideas.

We are talking about scaling our website, servers, content, etc.  Ideally, we need to break the entire puzzle into generic pieces, but how?  What is the structure of this particular problem?  Content?  Servers?  How do we define “flexibility” and “scalability?”  Is there a way to define the problem, and its pieces, in a generic fashion so that we can see how those pieces fit … regardless of specific technologies?  An “agnostic” method of looking at this issue.  VMware limits us to scalability.  A mainframe would be bigger.  What is best way to deal with THIS type of traffic?  We need to DEFINE the bottleneck.  We don’t have the money to scale everything.  Nor do we really WANT to scale EVERYTHING.  So, which pieces are PRIORITY for scalability?  Internal vs. external?  Architectures?  And, what about REAL TIME analytics?  Are there business types w/ similar business piques/spikes?  ANY event could trigger a spike in traffic?

Do we need a more detailed Visio diagram of network architecture to evaluate?  Are there infrastructure analysis tools?  Open source load analysis tools?  How did webSnap affect the overall picture?  We had URL rewrite scripts in place that had to of affected processing, etc.

Next Steps:

• Brain dump with Chris (What is REALLY happening on TOAD?) – David/Chris/Tim
• Upgrade TOAD – David/Chris/Tim
• Load balancing tools – Nate
• Walk David through presentation???

Google Enterprise Search – relevant, easy search for intranets and websites.

Here is my #heweb10 wrap-up: Hilton Netherlands sucks … period, got cool conference swag (which I am giving to Lisa), iOS workshop rocked (can’t wait to begin building iPhone apps), received free 2GB USB key, “March Madness” presentation went well but not well attended (1/3 of attendees received door prizes), great snacks, Mountain Dew this year (!!!), Steve Krug is crazy but fun, great weather, walking around Cincinnati was exhilarating, Skyline rocked, Graeter’s ice cream was delicious (TWICE!), Nada’s spicy Mexican food was AWESOME, Scotti’s Italian was just scary, got a few website scaling tips, feel much more informed about HTML5 and verified we’ve done a nice job with our Google Mini XSLT. Whew! Time to return to my routine, digest the new info and try out what I learned. 🙂

Interesting new insights into the brains of introverts and extroverts.

Brains of Introverts Reveal Why They Prefer Being Alone | Extroverts Pay More Attention to Human Faces | LiveScience.