Early this Summer DoIT will be upgrading several key web services including the main campus web server, www.umbc.edu. While every measure is being taken to ensure a minimal disruption of service, It is important that departments review the following changes to make sure their online offerings will not be affected.

On Saturday June 13th we will be migrating the main campus website environment so it is running on new hardware and software. This past fall an emergency preparedness exercise was conducted by the campus and it became clear that in the event of an emergency one of our main methods of communications, the campus web server, would be unable to respond to the demands placed on it. The new web environment will be running a modern set of web protocols and the infrastructure will be able to scale and meet the demands of the campus moving forward.

To help prepare for this transition we have been working with OIA to test compatibility between the main website as well as some of the departmental websites hosted on the main campus web server.

If you department has moved to our new sites.umbc.edu environment, usually indicated by a format of “http://department.umbc.edu”, your website will not be affected at all by this migration. If your site has not migrated and is still accessed through a link that looks like “http://www.umbc.edu/yourdepartment” it may be affected by this migration and need some updating to work on the newer software.

If you are responsible for a website whose address begins with “http://www.umbc.edu/yourdepartment”, we have instructions available here that you can use to test your site against the new environment ahead of time to check for any issues.

If you are unsure if this affects you or your department you can call the Technology Support Center at x53838 or put in a RT ticket at http://rt.umbc.edu.