Re: Suggestions for http://www.debian.org/ home page
> Date: Fri, 28 Jul 95 09:10:53 PDT
> From: mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com (Bill Mitchell)
> Message-Id: <[🔎] 9507281610.AA27036@bb29c.mdd.comm.mot.com>
> Subject: Re: Suggestions for http://www.debian.org/ home page
>
> > > [repeats someone's earlier suggestion for a debian user local home page]
> > This has been done, there is a default web page on my computer now.
>
> I don't follow that "this has been done". Do you mean that I should
> now have a default debain user home page on my recently-installed
> 0.93R6 system? If so, where is it?
>
/home/httpd-data/Welcome.html (or file://localhost/Welcome.html)
It's created by /usr/sbin/httpdconfig which is included in:
cern-httpd-3.0-3.deb
[...]
> Please enter Lynx's default URL to use if none is given
> Default is http://www.debian.org/
>
> That's not terribly useful for a user who hasn't set anything up
> locally and has a system which is not net-connected.
>
> I'd like to see a debian-provided local home page be the install-time
> setup default, possibly with the user able to override that by providing
> an alternate (or perhaps alternative ;-) filename.
>
I've been wondering if there's a way we could make the default home-
page more "intelligent". I've been thinking about using re-direction
to make access to Debian-specific URLs faster when there are multiple
mirror sites for each doc.
An example - from /home/httpd-data/Welcome.html
> <H2>The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ</H2>
>
> The <A HREF="http://www.wi.leidenuniv.nl/~jdassen/debian-faq_toc.html";>
> frequently asked questions</A> list for Debian GNU/Linux is a valuable
> resource.
>
Ok, this is the URL for the FAQ, for me (in Ohio, USA) it takes a
while to load. Chances are good that there's a copy of this doc
on ftp.debian.org or a mirror, and that copy would, probably, load
quicker.
If Welcome.html had a redirection to
file://localhost/Debian-FAQ-location.html we could then apply some
logic to determine the contents of Debian-FAQ-location.html. We
know the timezone the system is in, and the domain, so we should
be able to "guess" which archive to redirect to get the actual document.
Another example - also from /home/httpd-data/Welcome.html
> <H2>Debian GNU/Linux Bug Report Logs</H2>
>
> Think you've found a bug? Check one of these locations to see if
> someone else has already discovered it:
>
> <UL>
> <LI> Debian bugs at the
> <A HREF="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/iwj10/debian-bugs/";>
> University of Cambridge</A>.
> <LI> Debian bugs at
> <A HREF="http://www.cps.cmich.edu/~streeter/debian-bugs/";>
> Central Michigan University</A>.
> <LI> Debian bugs at the
> <A HREF="http://www.engr.wisc.edu/~streeter/debian-bugs/";>
> University of Wisconsin</A>.
> </UL>
>
> Enjoy browsing!
Replace all three of these URL's with one that redirects to:
file://localhost/Debian-BRL-location.html. Now use the same logic
to eliminate www.cl.cam.ac.uk as my system's default location
for this doc - wrong domain. I'm in the same timezone as the
Central Michigan site so that would be the URL we'd redirect to in
Debian-BRL-location.html.
The benefits of this are that the Welcome page could have more
information with less clutter (ie. more room for cute, little Gnus.
Oops, wrong page - "...guess I don't know my own strength!")
and would provide the requested doc from the "closest" source. The
caveats are that this is a rather unorthodox approach, and it does
add some complexity to the system.
Chuck
--
Charles A. Stickelman <stick@richnet.net>
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