Dear government weather data webmasters: think before you change URLs!

[Dan Robinson]

Do we have any government weather data webmasters reading ST? If so, I would like to pass on a plea on behalf of the meteorological and storm chaser communities:

Do you really have to change your web site domain or URL? If you absolutely must move a site or change a URL, please use the very simple 301 redirect so that the thousands of people who have bookmarked your site don't have to update their links.

The frequency at which this type of thing happens is really quite ridiculous. For example, is it really necessary to change hpc.ncep.noaa.gov to wpc.ncep.noaa.gov? You're willing to do something *that* disruptive to change ONE letter in the domain?! If a web-clueless supervisor ordered this change, then so be it - but at least keep the DNS entry for the old domain and add this tiny little file called .htaccess in the old site's root folder:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/$1 [R=301,L]:

Or, just alias the old domain to the new. Either way, it's not that difficult and takes virtually no resources or time to do so.

Furthermore, by changing URLs, you wipe out your search engine listings, backlinks, bookmarks and annoy all of your users who have to continually update their bookmarks and web pages. In this day and age, there's no reason to do something so disruptive and unnecessary.

 

[rdale]

HPC ceased to exist well over a year ago... They announced the URL change months ago too. Why have the URL go to HPC when their name is WPC?

 

[Dan Robinson]

Agencies changing isn't the issue. The issue is why shut down the old internet URL and force everyone to manually update bookmarks? It's not just the HPC. Some agency changes something at least once a month it seems. They move a product, rename a file, change a domain, etc. When you use dozens of data sources, it gets quite irritating to always have to change bookmarks. These days there is no reason to retire a URL for all the inconvenience it causes.

I switched my domain in 2007 from wvlightning.com to stormhighway.com, and the old one still works thanks to a 301 redirect. It took 30 seconds to set up the 301, doesn't cost me a thing (other than the domain renewal), and all of the old backlinks I have all the way to 1998 still work. My question is, why can't they do the same? It's not rocket science, it's a simple DNS or htaccess setting. Why would they care if someone still types in or has bookmarked the HPC URL 5 years from now? They'd just get redirected to the new site, and nothing gets disrupted.