Moving the supercollider webpage

julian · November 13, 2023, 1:26pm

Here a suggestion which I think is a good one:

Obtain a new official URL which is not owned by GitHub

opened 10:15PM - 16 Oct 23 UTC

enhancement

## Motivation Currently the most official URL is supercollider.github.io whic…h is owned by GitHub - but there are also other URLs * scsynth.org * sccode.org * https://depts.washington.edu/dxscdoc/ * supercollider.sourceforge.net * ... ? This is per-se not a problem as it allows for a de-centralization which I greatly appreciate, yet it would maybe also help newcomers to have an official entrypoint and also provide a trusted URL for binaries, something which I think supercollider.github.io aims to be (and does a great job at this IMO). The official URL could and should still link to the websites above, such as the current github.io site does. This has been come up within #6108 ## Description of Proposed Feature Instead of relying on a URL which is not owned by any maintainer, there should be a URL which has the `supercollider` name in it. This would allow to * create a stable home for years to come (see `sourceforge.supercollider.net`) * host e.g. official docs (see #6108 ) via `docs.new-super-official-collider.org` * provide "official" links to outside resources such as the discourse forum via `forum.newsuper-official-collider.org` which redirects to `scsynth.org` * have "official" supercollider mail domains (in case they are necessary) * and reduce the dependency on GitHub. ## Plan for Implementation * [ ] Agree if there should be an official URL * [ ] Agree on a URL/TLD - I think this could be a live vote during a dev meeting b/c otherwise some people/bots would maybe take prior action and reserve the URL we want * [ ] Someone orders this URL (I would be up for that if it is not too expensive, but I am also happy if other people would be up for that) * [ ] `github.io` URL gets replaced by the new URL - the `github.io` can redirect to the new URL (the github pages workflow would not change in this regard, so the change does not introduce any external hosting, only an URL)

semiquaver · November 13, 2023, 2:15pm

agree! ‘supercollider.online’ would be great and thank you to @dscheiba for registering!

…my one concern - what happens to this domain if Dennis is abducted by aliens or otherwise disappears? How do we keep it “in the community”?

dscheiba · November 13, 2023, 3:22pm

I’d hope you’d search for me :o

On the other hand, the domain is managed via OVH, which allows to set up an IAM management - so although I would own the domain, it would be possible for others to manage it as well. If one of the maintainers has an OVH account, I am happy to give them full access to the domain, allowing them to configure it to their liking.

With this access it is also possible to approve an outgoing transfer which transfers the ownership of a domain (IIUC).

scztt · November 13, 2023, 7:32pm

The scsynth.org forum is already hosted on a digitalocean instance. We could do something through them?

dscheiba · November 29, 2023, 8:24am

In order to get things running I created a PR to move the official website to the proposed https://supercollider.online domain (currently the domain is not working b/c it is already setup to replace github.io address)

github.com/supercollider/supercollider.github.io

Switch to supercollider.online as domain

supercollider:main ← capital-G:new-domain

opened 08:21AM - 29 Nov 23 UTC

capital-G

+1 -0

Also see * https://scsynth.org/t/moving-the-supercollider-webpage/ * https:/…/github.com/supercollider/supercollider/issues/6114 Although GitHub is a convenient platform for developers, SuperCollider should not be too tied to GitHub. In particular, any external communication should always be independent of GitHub or any other coding platform, as history has shown for example via <https://supercollider.sourceforge.net/>. Using a self-owned and platform independent domain creates a more resilient address for the SuperCollider community. Setting up a domain is an easy task and does not consume too many resources, so I decided to donate an official domain to SuperCollider called <https://supercollider.online> (I also bought the address <https://supercollider.dev> as a "backup"). I am happy to share any admin rights of the URL with the maintainers through OVH IAM management (see scsynth post), in order to be more resilient if, for example, I will be absent from the community indefinitely. There are already some other websites which are operating under this domain, such as * https://docs.supercollider.online/ - see https://github.com/capital-G/sc-docs * https://baryon.supercollider.online/ - see https://github.com/capital-G/baryon * https://quarks.supercollider.online/ - see https://github.com/capital-G/quarks-web -will soon be deprecated soon in favor of baryon I already setup the A record for the domain, so that once the branch is deployed the website would be available under <https://supercollider.online>. If deployed, the "old" domain <https://supercollider.github.io/> will automatically redirected to the new domain <https://supercollider.online>, see https://capital-g.github.io/quarks-web/ which now redirects automatically to https://quarks.supercollider.online/

Feel free to discuss here or on GitHub any blockers, worries or support of this delicate action

mike · May 6, 2024, 7:30am

Would love to see some movement on this.

Is the only remaining concern which host is used?

semiquaver · May 9, 2024, 3:29pm

Per the PR no hosting is required and the domain is already registered. So unless there is a compelling reason to move the registration from OFV I think this is ready to move forward.

Next steps are described here: Managing a custom domain for your GitHub Pages site - GitHub Docs.

We should follow up though on @dscheiba’s suggestion to set up IAM management and make sure one or more additional project members have access…

muellmusik · May 9, 2024, 5:48pm

Will there be any ongoing costs associated and is there a plan to manage that?

dscheiba · May 14, 2024, 1:52pm

I’d appreciate if we could get this implemented.

To keep it simple I’d be willing to pay for the URL for the next 10 years upfront.

Are there maintainers/forum admins who would like to have access to the URL via IAM management? They would need an OVH account for this.

muellmusik · May 14, 2024, 3:41pm

That’s extremely generous. As there’s no hosting I’m guessing the costs would be low?

I can be one of the people with that access if that’s of use. Probably best to make sure it’s shared amongst at least a few until such time as a more general approach to SC ownership issues arises.

smoge · May 17, 2024, 8:05am

After seeing a small political party’s Instagram page being stolen by an ex-militant who left the party after a fight and rebranded the page to start his new journal, I realized that anything could happen.

Variations of such stories are numerous.

Therefore, we need a security protocol. And it should never depend on individuals but on protocols.

There may be a few uncontestable trusted users with an unparalleled level of trust: Scot Wilson, Julian Rohrhuber, James Harkins, Josh Parmenter, Alberto de Campo, etc, at least. The community trusts those individuals

It could be the first practical step into a “web of trust model” and the publication of their public keys online. Certain legal protections could be provided to protect the new site and any public “official” communication.

smoge · May 17, 2024, 12:24pm

For example, if there is a serious security situation, a public statement would have its effect only if digitally signed by the most trusted users.