As many of you have likely noticed I made the move to the new server last week. On Tuesday to be exact. I had forgotten that I was going out of town on an office retreat the next day, or I might have waited just in case there were any problems. C'est la vie. Only relatively minor issues arose, most I was expecting, and certainly nothing fatal.

The majority of problems have revolved around file permissions (the new web server runs as a different user than the old web server) and perl modules. Most of the dynamic content on the site is generated using perl scripts. You can add all kinds of extra functionality to perl through additional perl modules. Needless to say I use many, many extra perl modules (above and beyond the base perl installation) to make the fancy things on seaturtle.org happen. Unfortunately, I do a poor job of keeping track of which ones I am using so I mostly figure it out when some perl script breaks because it can't find a module it needs to operate.

Related to this are a few extra applications that make some of the tools work. GMT, the GD Graphics Library, and ImageMagick are the biggies, to help Maptool and the Image Library go. ImageMagick is by far the trickiest to get running, so Maptool and the Image Library weren't fully functional until Friday or so.

Also ImageMagick and GD have requisite perl modules to make them work with the perl scripts, so those had to be installed. There have been a scattering of other perl modules that I missed, a few to make this blog work. In fact, another suite of modules that I had to install just to write this update from my favorite blog app. If you come across any part of the site (or HerpDigest or the MTSG site for that matter) that give you script errors let me know so I can get them fixed.

As I mentioned before, file permissions have caused some slight problems. One was that page view counters, that are scattered about the site here and there, broke because the server no longer had permission to update the counter files. That's fixed. Another was that members couldn't update their sites, for the same reason. More specifically, they couldn't update existing files, but should have been able to create new one. Anyways, that's fixed too. If you come across any pages that give an error that says something about permission denied let me know so I can fix those too.

The only other issue is the mail system. I don't think there is anything wrong with it, it's just different from what I am used to. I've always just run a pop server, but the new server has an integrated pop and imap server (definitions here). I have to decide whether I want to switch it to just a pop server and keep on working as I have for eons, or change the way I work and start using imap. Decisions, decisions. My understanding is that imap is superior (depending on your needs), but NOAA has done such a poor job of implementing their imap-based mail system that I a wary of making the switch myself. They've basically tied themselves to a Netscape server, and try to discourage you from using mail clients other than Netscape. And Netscape 4.7 at that!!!!!! Which is several years out of date and extremely buggy. What idiots!

That's about it. I'll keep picking away at the problems as they turn up. You can help out by reporting any errors that you come across to me at webmaster@seaturtle.org.