Move parlparse from decommissioning server to active one

[TomSteinberg]

The plan is to use Victory for parsing parliament data:

• [x] Configure parlparse cron jobs
• [x] Sanity check cron jobs are behaving as expected
• [x] Update TWFY cron jobs/update scripts to use data on victory
• [x] Stop rsync from old server
• [x] gh-pages branch for new static content
• [x] Make parser.theyworkforyou.com point to GitHub Pages
• [x] Update parlparse site front page as necessary
• [x] Write blog post (perhaps)
• [x] Investigate switching existing domain to redirect to parser.theyworkforyou.com
• [x] Confirm domain change with OKFN.
• [x] Disable cron jobs on dev host

[jacksonj04]

So, here's my battle plan, please shout up if you see any problems with it or horrific failings in my understanding of how things work.

• TWFY currently relies on there being a working checkout of parlparse within an accessible filesystem. This should probably continue to be the way it works.
• The location of this checkout is defined in the TWFY config (PWMEMBERS to be precise), and is currently updated via a svn -q update whenever scripts/dailyupdate (TWFY) runs, as per the crontab. These can happily be left alone and will continue to play nicely as it will pull down any updates made to the repository.
• parlparse itself needs a series of scripts to be run, most crucially morningupdate, dailyupdate, weeklyupdate and changewatcher. recesswatcher can be run, but since it emails people on hosts that won't exist this seems less essential.
• Since TWFY relies on parlparse being present as configured, I'll add the parlparse cron jobs to the TWFY crontab with the appropriate directory variable. These will then run happily (all being well) independently of the TWFY import jobs. The parlparse jobs also push their changes back to the repository, so that other users continue to get the data.
• dailyupdate (parlparse) includes a couple of explicit paths on :47 and :49 which I can't figure out a use for in the new order (they seem to relate to a static copy which is served), which can probably be safely removed.

Independently of this, there is the need for a new parlparse 'site' (currently hosted on the server which is going away) so that people can continue finding out what it's actually about, how to use it and so-on. This will be based on the content currently served at http://ukparse.kforge.net/.

• The simplest way to achieve this seems to be a new git repository containing just a few stubs of HTML. This could be served as a vhost, or even more simply using GitHub pages on the existing https://github.com/mysociety/parlparse repository (which does pave the way for a tidier move to GitHub in the future, at the cost of having GitHub reliability).
• In an ideal world, we can point ukparse.kforge.net at this site, but failing that it can live at a domain such as parlparse.theyworkforyou.com.

[dracos]

I'd go with parser.theyworkforyou.com I think, nicer to read.

[jacksonj04]

Francis replied saying that the KForge site may as well just be a redirect, it's less hassle than getting in touch with OKFN to request DNS changes.

[dracos]

ukparse.kforge.net points at seagrass's IP, so there presumably would have to be some sort of DNS change for that to continue working beyond Thursday... It stopping working temporarily doesn't prevent the move of the service, of course.

[jacksonj04]

The content currently held on KForge is now available at http://parser.theyworkforyou.com/ - email sent to OKFN sysadmins about redirecting the current domain.

[jacksonj04]

Tickets created for followup issues, closing as done.