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Crag & Route Beta

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www.sydneyclimbing.com going offline


pmonks

17-Oct-2011
10:15:45 AM

After 14 years online (11 of them public), I'm pulling the plug on www.sydneyclimbing.com. The Sydney Rockies online route database already has all of the route info (and more) and having stale data visible online doesn't do anyone any favours.

The DNS entry will expire in the next month or so, though the hosting for the site itself is paid up through June of 2012 (so it'll still be accessible if you know the IP address and how to fake hostnames).

mikllaw

17-Oct-2011
10:36:04 AM

it was very useful in its day, thanks
when are you back next?
mikl


nmonteith

17-Oct-2011
11:58:36 AM

Can you re-direct the URL to the new Sydney Rockies guide? I'm sure they could pay for the domain for a year or so in the transition period.

Thanks again for making that original guide - it certainly gave me many days of fun climbing!


garbie

17-Oct-2011
1:44:04 PM

Yeh thanks Peter, was really useful, shame to see it go but agree the less duplication the better.


ajfclark

17-Oct-2011
2:16:59 PM

On 17/10/2011 nmonteith wrote:
>Can you re-direct the URL to the new Sydney Rockies guide? I'm sure they could pay for the domain for a year or so in the transition period.

If the rockies want to do this but can't because Stu's away and can't set up the apache config on the server let me know and I'll sort something out.


kuu

17-Oct-2011
2:22:55 PM

On 17/10/2011 nmonteith wrote:
>Can you re-direct the URL to the new Sydney Rockies guide? I'm sure they
>could pay for the domain for a year or so in the transition period.
>
As well as working collaboratively with Peter on transferring his information across to the Club's online guide, the Sydney Rockies have for some time now met the cost of maintaining the "Sun, Surf and Sandstone" domain. With the emphasis seemingly moving more towards an open access world, and the Rockies' guide embracing this approach, it is hard to see a need to keep the SS&S domain 'afloat' much beyond the current term.


nmonteith

17-Oct-2011
3:33:34 PM

On 17/10/2011 kuu wrote:
>As well as working collaboratively with Peter on transferring his information
>across to the Club's online guide, the Sydney Rockies have for some time
>now met the cost of maintaining the "Sun, Surf and Sandstone" domain. With
>the emphasis seemingly moving more towards an open access world, and the
>Rockies' guide embracing this approach, it is hard to see a need to keep
>the SS&S domain 'afloat' much beyond the current term.

Type Sydney Climbing into google and it's the #1 hit - so you might as well direct this traffic to the Rockies Guide. It will also let people know who have used the old guide where this info has gone. Not everyone reads Chockstone and knows about the new Rockies guide.


rodw

17-Oct-2011
3:59:10 PM

Considering all you have to pay for is domain, ie about $10 Us/yr and redirect it to the same server...ongoing costs wouldn't be much to save you loosing the traffic...though since you pay the bills its your call.


nmonteith

17-Oct-2011
4:11:31 PM

p.s. its a great domain name anyway!


kuu

17-Oct-2011
4:29:20 PM

Neil, and Rod,

Get involved and interact with the Sydney Rockies. It would be good to see your expertise and enthusiasm having an effect in this way. ;-)


rodw

17-Oct-2011
4:46:09 PM

On 17/10/2011 kuu wrote:
>expertise and enthusiasm

Never heard it called that before.


kuu

17-Oct-2011
4:55:29 PM

On 17/10/2011 rodw wrote:
>On 17/10/2011 kuu wrote:
>>expertise and enthusiasm
>
>Never heard it called that before.

Don't sell yourself short Rod. ;-)


nmonteith

17-Oct-2011
5:45:55 PM

On 17/10/2011 kuu wrote:
>Neil, and Rod,
>
>Get involved and interact with the Sydney Rockies.

I've done quite a bit of work on your online Sydney guidebook - and continue to do so.


kuu

17-Oct-2011
5:57:56 PM

On 17/10/2011 nmonteith wrote:
>On 17/10/2011 kuu wrote:
>>Neil, and Rod,
>>
>>Get involved and interact with the Sydney Rockies.
>
>I've done quite a bit of work on your online Sydney guidebook - and continue
>to do so.

Yes, I'm aware of that. Would be good to have you involved more at a 'grassroots' level too ;-)


pmonks

18-Oct-2011
5:54:25 AM

On 17/10/2011 nmonteith wrote:
>Can you re-direct the URL to the new Sydney Rockies guide?

You raise a good point re organic search etc., so I just renewed the hostname for 1 more year and put a permanent (301) redirect to the Sydney page in the Sydney Rockies Route site. The redirect should work no matter which page you hit in the old sydneyclimbing.com site - even invalid ones.

Note that the hosting will still run out in June of next year, so the Rockies have 8 months to decide whether they want to keep the sydneyclimbing.com domain name or let it lapse (with a 6 month period after June where the hostname remains valid but doesn't point anywhere i.e it won't work at all).

Google and friends should start honouring the redirect the next time they start crawling the site, so any pagerank sydneyclimbing.com has accumulated should transfer over to routes.sydneyrockies.org.au pretty quickly.


pmonks

18-Oct-2011
6:59:22 AM

And thanks everyone for the thanks. It's a tired old saying but putting together a guidebook is a lot more work than it appears - I spent ~~the best decades of my life with you and all I've got is fat, bald and impotent, and there's a pack of dirty little brats running around ruining my stuff~~ hmmm......wrong rant....

Seriously though - putting together a guidebook (even a dodgy online one like "Sun, Surf and Sandstone") is a lot of work, and those who do it "for real" have my utmost respect.

[EDIT] Thanks also to the Rockies for subsidising the site, and the amazing number of people who contributed information over the years. Chockstone regulars kuu, wm and mikl all deserve extra special thanks either for information, data entry services, or both.


sbm

18-Oct-2011
12:41:42 PM

On 18/10/2011 pmonks wrote:
>And thanks everyone for the thanks. It's a tired old saying but putting
>together a guidebook is a lot more work than it appears - I spent ~~the~~
>best decades of my life with you and all I've got is fat, bald and impotent,
>and there's a pack of dirty little brats running around ruining my stuff
>hmmm......wrong rant....
>
>Seriously though - putting together a guidebook (even a dodgy online one
>like "Sun, Surf and Sandstone") is a lot of work, and those who do it "for
>real" have my utmost respect.
>
>[EDIT] Thanks also to the Rockies for subsidising the site, and the amazing
>number of people who contributed information over the years. Chockstone
>regulars kuu, wm and mikl all deserve extra special thanks either for information,
>data entry services, or both.

The sydneyclimbing.com guide was fantastic and I want to chip in and say thanks for the work. Had a lot of fun using it and the Balint guide over the past several years discovering all the climbing around where I live.


Superstu

19-Oct-2011
7:32:45 AM

the rockies would definitely like to keep the domain name! what do we need to do to keep it?

sun surf and sandstone was an awesome resource! the rockies online sydney guide started as a copy of sss that people could update online so kudos to peter for supporting the transition without hesitation. i now just need to keep my end of the bargain and spin out the long awaited print and smartphone versions


tnd

19-Oct-2011
8:52:02 AM

My thanks as well Peter for your vision and work putting the guide together when you did. It really was a resource ahead of its time.


pmonks

19-Oct-2011
11:29:14 AM

On 19/10/2011 superstu wrote:
>the rockies would definitely like to keep the domain name! what do we need
>to do to keep it?

In the near term (by June) I need to change the IP address that sydneyclimbing.com resolves to to the same IP address as routes.sydneyrockies.org.au (173.255.219.179, from the looks of it - can you confirm that that's the right one?). It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to double check that Confluence doesn't barf if it's accessed via multiple domain names. In fact it'd be ideal if it were possible to configure Confluence so that sydneyclimbing.com goes directly to the Sydney routes pages (as the redirect is currently doing) rather than the general landing page - saves everyone a couple of clicks.

Longer term (after December of next year, when the domain name next comes up for renewal) we'll need to figure out how to transfer ownership of the domain name over to the Rockies. I don't think this is a big deal, though you may want to change registrars at the same time (I have it registered through MelbourneIT who have become bloody expensive - it's about $50 / year at the moment).

The upshot is that there's no immediate hurry - we've got until May of next year before we need to do anything at all. How about you email me when you have some breathing room and we can take it from there? You know how reliable and responsive I am on email! ;-)

There are 25 messages in this topic.