Website not available

[iimog]

I just realized, that the opentraits website is not available. It looks like the domain name expired and was recently re-registered. Hopefully by someone from our community? However, name server settings are not configured correctly. So I see this:

If we lost control over the opentraits.org domain we can still remove the CNAME file and use the github provided url: https://open-traits-network.github.io/

[jhpoelen]

@iimog nice catch!

I do not own the domain, and I am not aware of anyone re-registering it. The joys of internet real estate. Perhaps @rachaelgallagher knows who setup the website originally.

And yes, for the time being, I'd vote for re-activating https://open-traits-network.github.io . And, perhaps we should reconsider periodically publishing the OTN via Zenodo or other ways to keep the data copies around and plug into the DOI schemes to make specific versions of the registry citable.

[bmaitner]

@benquist owns (owned?) the domain and I've emailed him about it. Unfortunately I can't check on this directly as I have access to the passwords and usernames necessary, but the two-factor authentication points to someone else's cell phone.

[jhpoelen]

@bmaitner the plot thickens! Curious to see how this is going to develop. . .

[jhpoelen]

while we wait until we (hopefully) recover the opentraits.org domain, I registered opentraits.net and will switch to that for now.

Also, I'd like to understand how to avoid this domain name business in the future. Curious to hear your thoughts.

[jhpoelen]

Until opentraits.net dns entries propagate, or we recover opentraits.org, I've disabled the custom domain so that:

https://open-traits-network.github.io

provides access to the registry.

[jhpoelen]

opentraits.net is now active (at least from where I am standing)

please allow some time for the https to be activated.

I thought it was kind of neat that @iimog cared enough about OTN to notice that the website was not available!

Now, the question is: how do we transfer the opentraits.net to a shared account which we all pitch in 2 cents to pay for DNS services. . .

And another question: what happened to opentraits.org . . . will it start hosting medical marijuana ads just like https://github.com/globalbioticinteractions/globalbioticinteractions/issues/614#issuecomment-789941981 ? Another great example of link rot and content drift . . . a real challenge in keeping digital datasets available:

MJ Elliott, JH Poelen, JAB Fortes (2020). Toward Reliable Biodiversity Dataset References. Ecological Informatics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2020.101132

@iimog et al. curious to hear your thoughts . . .

[benquist]

Hello all, the domain reactivation of opentraits.org was successful earlier today. We should be good to go now.

[iimog]

Wow, thanks @jhpoelen for coming up with this solution so quickly. And thanks to @bmaitner and @benquist for reactivating the original domain.

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any good procedure how to jointly and sustainably manage a resource like a domain name as a community. Particularly, if the community is loosely organized and not a legal entity (like a non-profit organization). The way domain registration works some legal entity has to regularly pay for this resource. I'd be happy to contribute to covering the costs of our domain name(s). I'm just not sure how to manage this. A random thought: maybe the GitHub sponsors program could be a way. Not sure whether we are eligible and what consequences e.g. for tax paying that would have.

I'm excited to discuss this further and hopefully hear better ideas :slightly_smiling_face:

[jhpoelen]

@benquist @bmaitner great to hear that the opentraits.org domain has been reactivated. Please let me know if you have any questions on how to revert the changes I made and move the site back from opentraits.net to opentraits.org.

@iimog I was thinking to make clear who owns the domain on the website and create a big timedown counter for when the domain expires and be transparent about how much it costs.

For instance, my little dns safari costs about one or two hour of my time (including communication, excluding loss of focus to work on other (paid) stuff), as well as ~$10-15 to register the opentraits.net domain for a year.

[iimog]

Yeah, I'm all for transparency and having this information on the website. The countdown timer is a neat idea to make clear that maintenance of our website is associated with recurring costs. Also, you are right to include your voluntary work hours into the cost calculation. Too many times these are neglected and so the actual cost is largely underestimated because of the deceivingly low nominal registration costs.

[jhpoelen]

@benquist @bmaitner Hey Brian's - I am assume you'll know how to re-configure the gitpages site to point back to https://opentraits.org again. If not, please let me know and we can schedule some time. I am hesitant to work on something that involves a domain name of which the DNS config I do not have access to. Hope all is well!

[bmaitner]

@ojalaquellueva @benquist I don't have access to the DNS config either (two factor issues when I try to log in). Can one of you help with this? If not, if we can get my access set up I can give it a shot.

[jhpoelen]

@bmaitner thanks for responding and for being patient as we figure this out. I hope that the end result will be a domain registration that many folks can access, instead of a single volunteer that may or may not be available when needed.

[jhpoelen]

I am still not clear who actually owns the domain. Does anybody know?

[benquist]

It’s registered under bien and I just paid for extending the domain name

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I am still not clear who actually owns the domain. Does anybody know?

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[jhpoelen]

@benquist good to know! Would you mind adding BIEN as the organization that maintains the opentraits.org domain somewhere in the footer of the opentraits website? (see #174 )

@bmaitner do you have all the information you need to revert the changes and make opentraits.org operational again?

[jhpoelen]

Also, please let me know if I can chip in for the domain registration somehow.

[ojalaquellueva]

@jhpoelen The registration for opentraits.org is held by BIEN and is active. I did not set it up. It has a rather odd configuration. Four A Records across a block of IPs (185.199.108.153, 185.199.109.153, 185.199.110.153, 185.199.1118.153) and a CNAME Record for "open-traits-network.github.io](http://open-traits-network.github.io/)" (host=www). No redirects.

I have no idea what those IP addresses are doing. The CNAME record should be sufficient. If there is a special configuration you have in mind, let me know, otherwise I will start by deleting the A Records.

[jhpoelen]

Hey @ojalaquellueva - thanks for sharing. I believe the four A records are for the Github pages config, so you might want to keep them around. See https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/9645/2208/how-do-i-link-my-domain-to-github-pages/ .

[jhpoelen]

What would be a good admin contact to list for the BIEN admins ?

[ojalaquellueva]

@jhpoelen That would be me (for now). Also Maitner and Enquist as backups.

[jhpoelen]

@ojalaquellueva thanks! Please let me know if you need help to add this information to the opentraits.org footer.

[ojalaquellueva]

@jhpoelen Have you added a CNAME record to this site pointing to www.opentraits.org?

[jhpoelen]

@ojalaquellueva I temporarily pointed it to opentraits.net , please free to update to opentraits.org .

[jhpoelen]

see https://github.com/open-traits-network/open-traits-network.github.io/blob/master/CNAME

[ojalaquellueva]

Done

[ojalaquellueva]

@jhpoelen Where does the footer code live? I had a look around but couldn't find it.

[jhpoelen]

@ojalaquellueva good question! Perhaps easiest to add the info to https://github.com/open-traits-network/open-traits-network.github.io/blob/master/editors.md for now, and we can figure out the footer stuff later as part of #174

[jhpoelen]

Thanks to @benquist @bmaitner and @ojalaquellueva opentraits.org is back in action!

@iimog please confirm by closing this issue

Whahoo!

[iimog]

Yes, I can confirm the issue is solved and opentraits.org is back! Thank you all very much! :hugs: