[NCUC-EC] New NCUC Website Launch

[Olga Kyryliuk]

Dear All!

In anticipation of our today's meeting I want to share an update on website redesign. The website itself has been ready a month ago but there have been some questions around how to operationalize it that we've discussed with Ben and Tapani. As time is passing, I would like us jointly to take a final decision how to move forward and to finalize this task.

The newly designed website is available at test.dukes.in.rs

All content was transferred to the new website. I fixed some very obvious outdated places. However, the website was not updated with new content for the last few years. Therefore, I would suggest releasing the new website as soon as possible and simultaneously start a call for volunteers (or as I recall we already got some interest during the last two ICANN meetings) to work on content. Another crucial point is to assign a dedicated person as web admin to be in charge of website updates and upgrades, otherwise this whole exercise with redesigning website will be pointless. Someone needs to preserve a memory of what changes have been made and keep an eye to timely upgrade plugins. This can be someone from EC or any community member who is ready to dedicate at least few years to supporting NCUC with this. It shouldn't be very time consuming but it is important that someone takes care of this.

Recently at EuroDIG, I had a chance to meet in person with Tapani and Dusan Stojicevic, who helped us with website upgrade, and we came to a conclusion that we have two options to move forward with operationalizing newly designed website:

1. Buy new Virtual Private Server to locate new website
NCUC's VPS is presently running Ubuntu 20.04, which only has php 7.4. The new website was created  to run with latest PHP 8.1 or 8.2. If we do not upgrade it’s just a matter of very short time until the website cracks down again. So, consider efforts wasted. Upgrading current VPS is a bit complicated as it also hosts NCUC mailing list that is using mailman. Tapani said that mailman is using PHP 7.4, so it would be costly (or even impossible) to upgrade mailman and website to new PHP versions. That is the reason behind new VPS. And he said the price is 5 USD per month for another VPS. It will also take some time to set up.

2. Divide hosting, keeping mailing list with Tapani and leaving website with another hosting provider that currently has the test version. We can make website live instantly. In this way we will also secure proper compatibility with plugins. The price is 4320 RSD (Serbian dinar) with VAT, without VAT 3600 RSD - around 36 USD per year.

I leave it open for discussion but time- and technically-wise second option is more preferable.

On a different note, it would be good to proceed with the payment for website redesign in the amount of 1,500 USD. Do we have any specific invoice template or Dusan can submit it in any form? Do we need anything else apart from invoice to process the payment?

That has been indeed a lot of work as all content had to be transferred manually, there have been a lot of errors, absolute links, and incompatible plugins, which significantly complicated the process. This is why now when technically things are fixed, I want us to take website support with proper seriousness and dedicate efforts to its tech upgrade and contents update.

Looking forward to hearing your opinions during our call!

Best,
Olga





 
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