ASUCH Admin Links
Website Updates
Posted by My Hastings Web Services Administrator--Nessie on Aug 24, 2004, 23:12
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2001-the year of the expired domain name
ASUCH first created the ASUCH.ORG website in 2001. It happily served as the repository for notes online until the next year rolled around, and an ASUCH allowed the domain name ASUCH.ORG to lapse.
The domain name was promptly usurped from ASUCH. The usuper wanted ransom, and the usupee decided not to pay.
ASUCH members took a vote on several possible domain names, and decided on myhastings.org, so that's what we are now... student website devoted to helping you build community in law school. So, think of it as yours.
2002--the year of the unpaid hosting bill
The domain name problem caused us to lose all of the material on the website, save an old backup. So, we rebuilt myhastings.org from the ground up.
Then, no one on ASUCH knew anything about the website information because everyone else who knew had graduated. All of a sudden, the site was down. An ASUCH rep looked up some info on the net and found the webhost. No payments had been made on the site for three months.
The hosting problem caused us to lose all of the material on the website, save an old backup. So, we rebuilt myhastings.org from the ground up.
2003--MyHastings is automated! We will all have more leisure time!
MyHastings got a new program called Article Manager. ArtMan allows multiple users to add articles to the site. No more tedious hand-coding for the EIC!
But it was still inflexible, and required the knowledge of an html-coder-minor geek type to keep it running. Vis, archiving could only occur by section and date range, not by individual article title. How can you keep static web pages in an archive like that? How can we find a program that busy law students can operate without having a stroke? (They will have to take a few though.) aeiou! aeiou!
Excuse me.
2004--the year of the new Content Management System!
My Hastings web services started testing open source content management systems in January 2004. We tested:
- PhpNuke (extensively)
- Drupal
- Geeklog
- WordPress
- Mambo
- PhpWiki
- Post-Nuke
- Siteframe
- Zoops
We were warned off testing:
- phpWCMS
- phpWebSite
- PMachineFree
We finally decided on Mambo, and ran it on other sites for 8 months with few difficulties, and in case of same, a willing volunteer troubleshooting staff who usually has an answer within a day. Not bad for paying nothing but respect.
After we were satisfied with Mambo, we were ready to go. Then, hosting agreement expired almost a month before school started! We requested a domain name server change. Four days went by before the request was addressed.
It was addressed. YIPPEE! We began uploading Mambo to MyHastings.org. Everything went JUST FINE for four hours, and then the administrative login crashed. OK, so allow that some meany geek had hacked the site and add four more hours to the work. Ain't such a big deal.
Make a new directory, upload the backup. Still can't access the administrative interface.
BFD!
Download the new directory and the backup and delete it, start all over again.
We began to upload to MyHastings. Everything went fine for two days. Then the Loch Ness Monster came and devoured the directory on the server, never to be found again. Backups failed.
So, we are back to good old Article Manager...for now. In ze background ze Mambo vill dance again soon. Don't worry. You can always find us by typing www.myhastings.org
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