• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

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

Joined
Jan 14, 2011
Messages
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Location
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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.
 
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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?
 
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.
 
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