Exciting New Changes for Dynamic Web Content

By Shannon Eric Peevey, UNT Central Web Support

Beginning with...

This has been an amazingly busy season for all of us here at Central Web Support, and I want to give you an idea of some of the exciting changes that have taken place since we discussed such things last semester.

First, we have migrated the ColdFusion server to another Compaq server. The migration that I told you to expect has taken place, and for all intents and purposes, it went very smoothly! :) We have had a few threads that are still being tied up as we speak, but otherwise, we had very little trouble.

This new machine gives us two processors, at 1 Ghz, and a gig of ram, so your ColdFusion applications should see an increase in performance. We have also moved our troubled Web server platform away from IIS to Win32/Apache/mod_ssl, and I am excited about this, as it takes our server out of the Code Red/Nimda virus loop that is effecting the win32 Web server platforms, and gives us the ability to configure the server to do what we wish, instead of the what Microsoft would like us to do.

This new server is called web2.unt.edu, and the secure server, which is running as a virtual server, is called osprey.unt.edu. This means that, unless you specifically ask for a site, or page, to be redirected to the secure server, it will be at http://web2.unt.edu/your_site_name, but if you want your pages to be protected by an encrypted connection then your site/page will be at https://osprey.unt.edu/your_site_name.

Then there is ...

Because of the new State and Federal guidelines, we are going to be asking you to contact us about putting your pages that accept any private information about students, or employees, on the secure server. This will not be cause you much extra work, beyond the fact that you will need to contact me, because most of the work will be done by the Web server, which will rewrite the URL to reflect the name change, and change the protocol from http to https. So... if any of your pages gather information that is protected under FERPA, please contact me at the email that you will find at the bottom of this page.

A significant change in authentication methods is now in place. Before, you logged in using your EUID and social security number, but now you will log into web2, as well as osprey, with your EUID and your EagleMail password. If you need to activate your EagleMail account, or have forgotten your password, you may do so by going to http://eaglemail.unt.edu.

Finally

Another significant change in the way in which you publish pages to the server, is through the addition of the WebDAV protocol to the Web server. This is supposed to be great way to move files from your local machine to the server, but, because we are moving dynamic content from one machine to the next, DAV is having problems. It is a known problem with DAV and Microsoft Web folders, in which the Web folders are asking for a Last Modified Header, and the cfm files are not returning it, causing an error. Also, Dreamweaver DAV clients are not able to speak across a secure connection, meaning you will not be able to publish, or modify your files on https sites using a Dreamweaver DAV client. I am looking into some alternate configurations, but FrontPage still seems to be the best way of publishing to the ColdFusion server.

I thank you for your patience during this migration, and welcome any comments that you have about our service, or about the server. Please E-mail them to speeves@unt.edu, and I will respond as promptly as I can.

Take care!!