Dear Arts and Science Community Member:
Arts and Science Communications is forwarding this important message on behalf of NYU IT. Please share this with all faculty and staff in your department. Questions and concerns regarding this email should be sent to webteam@nyu.edu.
As you may have heard, NYU IT is retiring the ancient i4 web server in this upcoming AY20-21 year that has long held many Arts and Science websites and web applications.
This retirement is part of moving NYU IT servers to cloud-based services -- Amazon Web Service (AWS) -- for cost-savings, increased IT security, and code sustainability.
The first recommendation of NYU IT is to retire and remove all websites on the i4 server that are no longer in use or needed. NYU IT (via the webteam@nyu.edu email address) can provide ZIP download files to website owners for personal or administrative archives. The i4 web server is not an appropriate place for archiving content no longer needed for public viewing.
The second recommendation of NYU IT is to suggest to the owners of websites on the i4 server to move such website needs are better hosted on supported NYU services. For example:
- Faculty “CV” sites could be hosted by school-based websites; many school websites have faculty directory sections that can list your publications, research interests, courses taught, etc.
- The NYU Web Publishing service (powered by Wordpress at wp,nyu.edu) is capable of providing basic web content hosting, with a variety of templates approved for accessibility, and with enterprise-level backup and up-time availability.
- The library’s Digital Faculty Archive (at https://archive.nyu.edu/) may also be able to host scholarly publications.
- The library also runs NYU Scholars (https://nyuscholars.nyu.edu/), another platform to archive your list of publications.
The third recommendation is for NYU IT to provide an AWS cloud environment for those who need to retain a “hands on” approach to their website or applications. But, to be clear, this is not likely a “lift and shift” activity. Most websites on i4 that are beyond basic HTML will require some re-coding to work with current versions of PHP, Perl, etc. and to be compliant with NYU accessibility standards.
Lastly, expect that the URL to your website will change. No URL lasts forever. Link rot is real. The sooner you move your website to another platform, the sooner NYU IT can put in a redirect to “train” site viewers and search engines to find your new site at its new URL
Our ask is this:
- Understand that change is coming. Please review your current i4 folders(s) hosting your websites or web applications.
- Delete and download anything no longer needed on the public web server. The more you prune out the “weeds,” the easier it will be to concentrate on any “flowers” that remain.
- Consider the alternatives. Be proactive.
If it has been a long time since you have logged into i4 and need a refresher, please read the "Working in i4 with an SFTP client" article.
We will be back in touch in a few weeks to see how you are doing and to provide more details.