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Website subdomains for SCAR groups

SCAR groups are encouraged to host their websites using the name pattern: www.groupname.scar.org to help create a standardised SCAR branding and easily-memorable names.

This also has the benefit that if (as occasionally happens) the hosting institution for the group changes, then the www.groupname.scar.org address will stay unchanged even though the files are being hosted somewhere else in the new institution.

Setting this up is simpler than you think, and the Webmaster based at the SCAR Secretariat in Cambridge will provide assistance. Doing so incurs no cost.

Examples

Some examples of groups that have already 'made the switch' are:

Setting things up

To move your website to being a subdomain of scar.org like the ones below, please ask the IT people who host your current site to read through this page and follow these steps:

a) Contact the SCAR Webmaster to obtain the name

Firstly, contact the SCAR Webmaster by e-mail and let them know:

  1. The name of the group
  2. What the groupname bit of www.groupname.scar.org should be
  3. The current address of your website (which the SCAR Webmaster will then use to determine its IP address)

The SCAR Webmaster will then register the name and point it to that IP address, and confirm when done.

b) Adjust the configuration on your webserver

The second stage is to make some amendments on your webserver, as follows:

  1. Ask your webserver administrator to set up a new 'VirtualHost', with the www.groupname.scar.org address you chose. An example configuration in httpd.conf would be as follows if you are using Apache, with /path/to/files/www.groupname.scar.org/ being the place where the current files for the site are:
    <VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName www.groupname.scar.org
        DocumentRoot /path/to/files/www.groupname.scar.org/
        CustomLog logs/www.groupname.scar.org-access.log combined
        ErrorLog logs/www.groupname.scar.org-errors.log
        ErrorDocument 404 /path/to/files/404.html
        
        # Optional, but highly recommended, configuration, which redirects requests for
        # http://groupname.scar.org/path/to/file.html (without the www) to http://www.groupname.scar.org/path/to/file.html
        # in case people type the URL without the www at the start.
        # Note that this requires the mod_rewrite module to be installed and enabled, which is usually the case
        ServerAlias groupname.scar.org
        RewriteEngine on
        RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} =80
        RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !=www.groupname.scar.org [NC]
        RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://www.groupname.scar.org/$1 [L,R]
</VirtualHost>
  2. Restart Apache (or whatever webserver) to load the new configuration.
  3. If your site was in a subfolder of another site, e.g. www.someuniversity.edu/scar/ then we recommend you firstly ask your server administrator to move/copy the files to a different area of the disk, so that the files are then in their own hierarchy rather than also remaining part of another site's hierarchy. The location should then be relfected in the configuration above, i.e. the bits that start /path/to/files/ ...

Things should all then be working under the new name!

If your site was at an address like http://www.someuniversity.edu/scar/ and the links all had /scar/ (or whatever) hard-coded in them, you will need to adjust them to reflect the fact that the root of the site is now at / rather than /scar/ (or whatever).

c) Install automatic redirection from the old URL to the new address

Once you're happy that things are working under the new name, it's very important that you automatically redirect requests from the old address to the new one. This avoids people having to change their bookmarks, and will ensure that search engines will also adjust themselves. To do this:

Ask your webserver administrator to add the following configuration in httpd.conf to that VirtualHost used by the old site address, either:

If your site was at an address like http://scarsomething.someuniversity.edu/ then use:

Redirect Permanent / http://www.groupname.scar.org/

If your site was at an address like http://www.someuniversity.edu/scarsomething/ then use:

Redirect Permanent /scarsomething http://www.groupname.scar.org

and again, ensure that Apache is reloaded to pick up the new configuration.