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Feature #21710

closed

Maintenance page design and language for Reclaim migration

Added by Boone Gorges about 1 month ago. Updated 26 days ago.

Status:
Resolved
Priority name:
Normal
Category name:
-
Target version:
Start date:
2025-01-07
Due date:
% Done:

0%

Estimated time:
Deployment actions:

Description

Here's our existing maintenance page (note that this is on the GC server, not on Reclaim): https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/maintenance-test.html

We want to do the following;

1. Colin will come up with language that explains that we're down for a hosting migration, with links to external posts etc as needed. My one recommendation is to point to something that lives on the status blog or elsewhere on the web, since the Commons itself will be unavailable.
2. Sara will do a simple design refresh so that the page matches our current identity
3. Ray will implement. Ray, please put things in the reclaim-migration branch on GitHub.


Files

texture.png (165 KB) texture.png Sara Cannon, 2025-01-08 12:02 PM
CAC-logo-stacked.png (27.5 KB) CAC-logo-stacked.png Sara Cannon, 2025-01-08 12:02 PM
Under Construction.png (923 KB) Under Construction.png Sara Cannon, 2025-01-08 12:02 PM
maintenance.html (108 KB) maintenance.html Raymond Hoh, 2025-01-08 03:11 PM
maintenance.html (108 KB) maintenance.html Raymond Hoh, 2025-01-10 12:38 AM
Screenshot 2025-01-17 at 6.22.19 PM.png (161 KB) Screenshot 2025-01-17 at 6.22.19 PM.png Colin McDonald, 2025-01-20 05:43 PM
Actions #1

Updated by Colin McDonald about 1 month ago

I just published an "upcoming downtime" post on the status blog:

https://commonsstatus.wordpress.com/

I slightly modified the language I just drafted in the forum for wider communication about the migration. I'll edit it as needed, but it seemed good to get something up for now.

I'm inclined to just keep linking to the status blog homepage, as opposed to a specific post, as we redesign this maintenance splash page. That way everyone will hopefully see the latest updates pretty easily.

For the splash page text itself, is it doable enough to change the text to something migration-specific for Jan 15, since the downtime is so notable? Then we could get the key info right on that page, something like:

"The CUNY Academic Commons is offline while we migrate to a new hosting provider. The process began at 10:30am Eastern on Wednesday, January 15th and will take 48-72 hours to complete because of the size and complexity of the data involved.

Please check our status blog (link:https://commonsstatus.wordpress.com) for the latest updates. Thank you for your patience as we take this important step for the stability and improvement of the Commons."

Let me know if you think we should just go with an updated but generic offline message instead. Either way, we could plan to use something like this post-migration:

"The CUNY Academic Commons is offline for maintenance. Our team is working to restore the site as soon as possible.

Please check our status blog (link:https://commonsstatus.wordpress.com) for the latest updates, and thank you for your patience."

Actions #2

Updated by Boone Gorges about 1 month ago

Yes, we can have something specific to the migration on the maintenance page, and IMHO it's a good idea to do so.

Actions #3

Updated by Matt Gold about 1 month ago

Thanks so much, Colin. The post looks great. I think we should maybe add the help address so that people can email us if they have concerns/questions.

Perhaps one other thing we might want to mention is all content added to the Commons ahead of the downtime will be migrated to the new host. People may have questions/concerns about that, and/or they might not know/understand what a hosting migration means

Actions #4

Updated by Colin McDonald about 1 month ago

Thanks, Matt. I'm going to start finalizing and posting outreach, also as per my forum post here:

https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups/cac-community-team-project-planning/forum/topic/host-migration-communications/

I will add the note about preserving and migrating all content. Part of me didn't want to even bring that up, at the risk of worrying users who hadn't considered it, but on second thought it seems better to say too much on that front and cut any concern off at the pass.

Actions #5

Updated by Sara Cannon about 1 month ago

Attached is a simple under-construction page that has Colin's updated wording along with the assets.

Actions #6

Updated by Raymond Hoh about 1 month ago

I've quickly put together the new HTML maintenance page. Please download the attachment and load it in your web browser for testing. I've added a few mobile breakpoints, but let me know if anything looks out-of-place.

A few dev notes: The texture and CAC logo are already included in the HTML file as inline images. The Poppins and Merriweather fonts are loaded externally via the Google Fonts CDN.

Actions #7

Updated by Matt Gold about 1 month ago

Thank you, Ray and Sara! Looks great!! So much better. One small note -- can you please edit

we take this important step for the stability and improvement of the Commons.

to

we take this important step to improve the stability of the Commons.

Actions #8

Updated by Colin McDonald about 1 month ago

Looks great to me, too! And thanks for the copy edit, Matt.

Actions #9

Updated by Raymond Hoh about 1 month ago

I've updated the maintenance page with Matt's copy and also with some mobile breakpoint fixes. For those that want to test locally, I've attached the maintenance.html file; I've also uploaded the page to the GC servers for easier testing: https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/maintenance-reclaim.html.

Boone, for the reclaim-migration branch, did you want me to overwrite the existing maintenance.html file or did you want to use a different filename?

Actions #10

Updated by Boone Gorges about 1 month ago

Boone, for the reclaim-migration branch, did you want me to overwrite the existing maintenance.html file or did you want to use a different filename?

Let's use the same filename - there's no reason to keep the old one around. After the migration, we can change the language in that file to be more general.

Actions #11

Updated by Raymond Hoh about 1 month ago

  • Status changed from New to Staged for Production Release

Gotcha! I've added the new maintenance page to the reclaim-migration branch in https://github.com/cuny-academic-commons/cac/commit/90e46bad19b7ff1fa366fdc48ea5a35fceb03966.

Actions #12

Updated by Boone Gorges 30 days ago

  • Status changed from Staged for Production Release to Resolved
Actions #13

Updated by Colin McDonald 27 days ago

This is far down the list, just working through some notes I have made the past few days. I was wondering how the automatic maintenance page works now that we're on Reclaim. Will it always default the newly designed one? I screengrabbed the attached one on Friday at 6:30pm as we were working through launch issues. In some cases, are we tied to the more technical and less friendly Cloudflare page?

Actions #14

Updated by Raymond Hoh 27 days ago

It looks like it might be possible to customize the Cloudflare error page: https://developers.cloudflare.com/support/more-dashboard-apps/cloudflare-custom-pages/configuring-custom-pages-error-and-challenge/, but this feature is only available to Cloudflare Pro, Business, or Enterprise plans. We'd have to reach out to Reclaim to see if this is possible.

Actions #15

Updated by Matt Gold 26 days ago

Thanks, Ray. As Colin says, this is not urgent, but we probably should reach out to Reclaim about it when things calm down a bit

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