Sysadmin Load Reduction: Legacy Compatibility Redirects

[Ben Cooksley]

On Sat, Nov 9, 2019 at 1:02 PM Ben Cooksley <bcooksley at kde.org> wrote:
>
> Hi all,

Hi all,

>
> One of the more smaller things that Sysadmin currently looks after is
> a large number of legacy compatibility redirects, which keep a variety
> of subdomains under KDE.org functional.
>
> For the most part these refer to dead projects, and have been legacy
> compatibility redirects for many years (5+) now.
>
> Given that sites should have now had a chance to update themselves,
> i'd like to go ahead and remove a number of these redirects.
>
> These redirects, whilst appearing relatively minor in nature, do
> require a certain degree of custom logic on the server side to handle
> them and therefore collectively create maintenance burden that in many
> cases probably outweighs the value they provide.
>
> We therefore should only retain them if there are places we are still
> unable to update which someone may need to follow (and not simply
> because 'somewhere might still link there') given that most people
> find things through their preferred search engine now.
>
> Below are a list of all the redirect candidates:
> --
> kate.kde.org
> accessibility.kde.org
> books.kde.org
> buzz.kde.org
> de.kde.org
> dolphin.kde.org
> es.kde.org
> evolve.kde.org
> gwenview.kde.org
> kaffeine.kde.org
> kmail.kde.org
> kmobiletools.kde.org
> kopete.kde.org
> korganizer.kde.org
> korganizer.org
> lokalize.kde.org
> people.kde.org
> phonon.kde.org
> pim.kde.org
> kdepim.org
> kdepim.com
> plasma.kde.org
> solaris.kde.org
> themes.kde.org
> usability.kde.org
> vdesign.kde.org
> windows.kde.org
> women.kde.org
> yakuake.kde.org
> contour.kde.org
> brainstorm.forum.kde.org
> research.kde.org
> akregator.kde.org
> nepomuk.kde.org
> in.kde.org
> people.kde.org
> mac.kde.org
> kdevelop.kde.org
> ar.kde.org
> --
>
> Any comments?
>
> I'd also like to be able to recommend to the KDE e.V. Board that we
> permit kdepim.org, kdepim.com and korganizer.org to expire at the end
> of their current registration period.

I have now gone ahead and removed those various redirect hosts from our systems.

In total 44 redirect hosts were removed, which reduced the size of our
zone file (excluding the various *.*.l10n.kde.org entries) from 432
lines to 388 lines (a reduction of 10%).
Additionally, for one system it has now made it substantially easier
to see the services it does operate.

>
> Thanks,
> Ben

Cheers,
Ben