Modify UMIL nginx to redirect from vim and whatisthisinstrument

[homework36]

We want umil.simssa.ca, umil.linkedmusic.ca, and https://whatinstrumentisthis.ca to point to current vim.simssa.ca.
Domains are managed on AWS. We need to figure out how to port new url with nginx (currently everything goes to prod edge)

[dchiller]

Do you want them to redirect to vim.simssa.ca? Or all be acceptable host names for the same site?

Either way, as long as the DNS set-up in AWS is pointing to the prod edge server, the rest can be done in the operations repo with ansible and then with a few modifications to the current VIM django/nginx configuration.

The operations bit may require a bit of finagling because I think this will be the first time using the linkedmusic.ca domain.

[homework36]

Do you want them to redirect to vim.simssa.ca? Or all be acceptable host names for the same site?

What's the difference between them? I guess we just want all those urls to go to the same VIM server.

Either way, as long as the DNS set-up in AWS is pointing to the prod edge server, the rest can be done in the operations repo with ansible and then with a few modifications to the current VIM django/nginx configuration.

Great! This part I have some idea.

The operations bit may require a bit of finagling because I think this will be the first time using the linkedmusic.ca domain.

This I don't know. I will read some documentations and maybe I will need some help later.

[dchiller]

Do you want them to redirect to vim.simssa.ca? Or all be acceptable host names for the same site?

What's the difference between them? I guess we just want all those urls to go to the same VIM server.

In the first case, when someone requests umil.linkedmusic.ca we send them back a 30X with location: vim.simssa.ca (in other words, their browser will them open vim.simssa.ca and it will show "vim.simssa.ca" in the address bar.

In the latter, it'll show the same site no matter which of those you have in your address bar, but it'll keep the address bar the same.

The operations bit may require a bit of finagling because I think this will be the first time using the linkedmusic.ca domain.

This I don't know. I will read some documentations and maybe I will need some help later.

I suspect that we'll want to refactor our process so that we can specify domains and subdomains for each service in the playbooks/vars files.

[fujinaga]

Actually, I would like the reverse. I would like to slowly phase out the use of VIM and replace it with UMIL. So vim.simssa.ca should show up as umil.linkedmusic.ca. Whatinstrumentisthis.ca can also show up as UMIL.linkedmusic.ca

[notkaramel]

Actually, I would like the reverse. I would like to slowly phase out the use of VIM and replace it with UMIL. So vim.simssa.ca should show up as umil.linkedmusic.ca. Whatinstrumentisthis.ca can also show up as UMIL.linkedmusic.ca

We (@dchiller @homework36) talked about three different approaches to migrate VIM domain to UMIL

1. Redirect 1: Configure a redirect on vim-nginx from vim.simssa.ca to umil.linkedmusic.ca
2. Redirect 2: Configure a redirect on vim-app from vim.simssa.ca to umil.linkedmusic.ca
3. Dual domain name: Users can go to both domains. We configure vim-nginx and vim-app to accept requests from both domain

I think the best approaches for this is either option 1 or 2 because we eventually also want https://whatinstrumentisthis.ca/ to redirect to UMIL. It would be less work overall.

[ahankinson]

Note that publishing the same website (same content) under two different host names is bad for Google Search Engine Optimization.

Best to choose a "canonical" URL (e.g., "umil.linkedmusic.ca") and redirect all alternate hostnames to that canonical one.

[notkaramel]

I currently hardcoded a redirect from vim(.staging).simmsa.ca to umil(.staging).linkedmusic.ca on both servers until I can figure out how to properly do PR#195: Redirect 301 on nginx from VIM to UMIL