RAA website

[Seal]

Does anyone know where this has gone:question: I have not been able to get to it for several days now.

 

 

[Admin]

I was just on there at http://www.raa.asn.au/

 

 

[Guest basscheffers]

The http://www.auf.asn.au domain name seems defunct, so use the raa one Ian just posted.

 

 

[Guest J430]

I had trouble finding stuff on the weekend, following old links from google I think.....

 

Ian was kind enough to post the new site details!

 

J

 

 

[Seal]

Ah hah, that explains it. I had the auf one in my bookmarks and that was also the one google came up with. Thanks all.

 

 

[TechMan]

The auf.asn.au should still get you there.

 

The real reason was that we had a change of IP address from our service providers and the DNS for the raa.asn.au domain name needed updating. This was done, though it needs a bit of time to filter through the net.

 

Chris

 

 

[Guest basscheffers]

Chris, raa.asn.au has been fine all along; it is auf that is not working because it is not configured properly:

 

------------------------

 

$ dig http://www.raa.asn.au

 

; <<>> DiG 9.4.1-P1 <<>> http://www.raa.asn.au

 

;; global options: printcmd

 

;; Got answer:

 

;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 4745

 

;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

 

;; QUESTION SECTION:

 

;http://www.raa.asn.au. IN A

 

;; ANSWER SECTION:

 

http://www.raa.asn.au. 5788 IN A 119.15.105.2

 

;; Query time: 309 msec

 

;; SERVER: 4.2.2.1#53(4.2.2.1)

 

;; WHEN: Tue Jun 17 13:46:16 2008

 

;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 48

 

$ dig http://www.auf.asn.au

 

; <<>> DiG 9.4.1-P1 <<>> http://www.auf.asn.au

 

;; global options: printcmd

 

;; Got answer:

 

;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 50188

 

;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

 

;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

 

;; QUESTION SECTION:

 

;http://www.auf.asn.au. IN A

 

;; Query time: 4002 msec

 

;; SERVER: 192.168.1.1#53(192.168.1.1)

 

;; WHEN: Tue Jun 17 13:46:28 2008

 

;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 32

 

----------------------------

 

This certainly not a matter of anything needing to filter through, the domain is completely not configured by the ISP that is hosting the DNS. One DNS listed for the domain does not answer this request and the other one is not even active.

 

If you want this to work again, you will have to take some positive action!

 

 

[Guest brentc]

Sounds like they have the Techman working on highly technical IT matters now too!

 

 

[Seal]

If it is any use in troubleshooting, the auf domain has been off the air for at least 10 days. Unless there has been a very recent change the nameservers for the domain are:

 

Name Serverns.lannet.com.au Name Server IP121.223.205.167 Name Serverns.auf.asn.au Name Server IP210.11.222.52

 

The lannet server says it is down briefly for maintenance and the auf server does not reply. Just bye the bye, it is interesting that a small organisation such as RAA chooses to maintain its own nameserver.

 

The raa nameservers both reply. The raa record was last changed yesterday afternoon and the nameservers are completely different to those for auf .

 

 

[TechMan]

Apologies for putting my unqualified comments in. That'll teach me.

 

Now that I know that people are still trying to get to AUF instead of RAA, that will be fixed.

 

Why not use http://www.raa.asn.au until auf.asn.au is fixed. It will get you to where you want to go.

 

 

 

[Guest basscheffers]

One of the issues is that Google still links to AUF and people still have bookmarks too.

 

The best thing to do is not to have AUF working directly again as a website, but to make any requests to AUF redirect to the new RAA domain. So when someone goes to http://www.auf.asn.au/students/index.html, they get redirected to: http://www.raa.asn.au/students/index.html.

 

That way people will start bookmarking the right one and next time Google indexes the site, it will also notice the change and start linking directly to the new domain.

 

 

[Seal]

Absolutely no problem in using the raa domain, just working through the changeover. You could go the route of mapping the auf site to the raa site as suggested or just put a redirect for any auf request to the top level of the raa site. This could have a delay which shows a ¨This site has been relocated, please adjust you browser" message then, after a little while, kill the auf domain completely. Talk to your hosting provider about the best way to implement this.

 

Cheers,

 

 

[Admin]

Personally I think that it may be better (without knowing any reasoning) if the RAAus just used the RAA domain but the problem is as stated that there are many still using the AUF domain from bookmarks and search engines. In this case I always feel it better to notify visitors of the domain change by having an index page for AUF advising of the change and to update their bookmarks/favourites plus instead of a timed redirect, to make the user click a link on it to the new RAA domain. This makes it sink in more and allows users of different reading speed the time to read the page.

 

Another option is to simply create an index page on the AUF domain that simply has this content:

 

When a user goes to the AUF domain the index page will simply redirect them to the RAA domain without them knowing

 

Whilst I am on the subject I would like to offer the RAAus free hosting on a fully managed Australian server located in Sydney. Recreational Flying has extensive disk space and traffic quota that is not being used that the RAAus could use without any cost. John can still manage the content, the DNS, hardware and op systems are all fully managed 24hrs a day, daily backups plus when Rec Flying get the video presentation room going the RAAus could easily link into that application to use themselves - again for free. This is just a small thing that will help to reduce the RAAus costs (our costs) yet proving a better service in uptime and technologies - just a thought!

 

 

[Guest basscheffers]

While the "we have moved" link or meta-refresh would work, there are also some downsides to both options.

 

In the first case, many links to AUF no doubt still exists on other websites so search engines will keep indexing them and what used to be an interesting page will now be indexed as the "this page has moved" message.

 

For the meta refresh, Yahoo states that a 0 delay will be treated the same as a "301 Moved Permanently" redirect. Google, however, does not guarantee this and recommends the use of an actual 301. (i.e.: use the redirect function in Apache with a 301 code)

 

The advantage of using a 301 is that any links followed by the search engine from other sites, the redirect is treated as the target page and will get indexed with that URL. (i.e.: no more AUF links in google, even though most external websites still link to that domain)

 

My recommendation therefor has to be configuring apache to 301 redirect any AUF request to RAA (with the same path, not to the RAA homepage!) and then keep AUF registered for eternity. It only costs a couple of bucks a year and has the advantage that every current link will work as expected, no updates to bookmarks needed and they will work forever. But because every URL displayed when people are reader will now be RAA, new bookmarks and links on other sites will always be created to the RAA domain.

 

 

[Guest basscheffers]

While the "we have moved" link or meta-refresh would work, there are also some downsides to both options.

 

In the first case, many links to AUF no doubt still exists on other websites so search engines will keep indexing them and what used to be an interesting page will now be indexed as the "this page has moved" message.

 

For the meta refresh, Yahoo states that a 0 delay will be treated the same as a "301 Moved Permanently" redirect. Google, however, does not guarantee this and recommends the use of an actual 301. (i.e.: use the redirect function in Apache with a 301 code)

 

The advantage of using a 301 is that any links followed by the search engine from other sites, the redirect is treated as the target page and will get indexed with that URL. (i.e.: no more AUF links in google, even though most external websites still link to that domain)

 

My recommendation therefor has to be configuring apache to 301 redirect any AUF request to RAA (with the same path, not to the RAA homepage!) and then keep AUF registered for eternity. It only costs a couple of bucks a year and has the advantage that every current link will work as expected, no updates to bookmarks needed and they will work forever. But because every URL displayed when people are reader will now be RAA, new bookmarks and links on other sites will always be created to the RAA domain.

 

 

[Guest Bendorn]

Now that's an echo........

 

 

[pylon500]

No, That's just in case you missed it the first time....