Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 11:58:25 -0400 (EDT) From: BCPL.NET SysAdmin To: BCPL.NET News Subject: BCPL.NET NEWS: Web Site URL Changes -------------------- WEB SITE URL CHANGES -------------------- For several years all of the following URLs would reach the Baltimore County Public Library Web site: www.bcplonline.org (the official Library site URL) www.bcpl.lib.md.us (the original Library URL, kept for legacy reasons) www.bcpl.net (officially the BCPL.NET Internet Services URL) The BCPL.NET Internet Services Web pages have been housed within the structure of the Library's Web site, and could be reached by any of the above URLs followed by something else. For example, to go to the Technical Support pages you could use any of the following: www.bcplonline.org/help.html (never officially sanctioned) www.bcpl.lib.md.us/help.html (original URL, kept for legacy reasons) www.bcpl.net/help.html (the official URL for BCPL.NET pages) If a BCPL.NET customer has Web pages here they could be reached using any of the following URLs (using fictitious customer "John Doe" as an example): www.bcplonline.org/~jdoe (never officially sanctioned) www.bcpl.lib.md.us/~jdoe (original URL, kept for legacy reasons) www.bcpl.net/~jdoe (the official URL for BCPL.NET customers' pages) The Baltimore County Public Library Web site is in the process of being moved to a different server, leaving the original server for BCPL.NET Internet Services and its customers. This gives us the opportunity to rationalize our URLs, to eliminate the current ambiguity and confusion, and to create an entirely separate Web site for BCPL.NET Internet Services and its customers. The following changes will take effect on the dates shown: --------------------- Effective May 1, 2000 --------------------- The Baltimore County Public Library Web site will be reachable only via the following URLs: www.bcplonline.org www.bcpl.lib.md.us The new BCPL.NET Internet Services Web site will be reachable only via the following URL: www.bcpl.net The new BCPL.NET site has been almost completely redesigned, featuring greatly improved technical support pages and other information useful to BCPL.NET customers. Be sure to take a look at www.bcpl.net on May 1, and visit often after that because we will be adding lots of new information. BCPL.NET customers' Web pages will be reachable only via the following URLs (again using "John Doe" as the example): www.bcpl.net/~jdoe www.bcpl.lib.md.us/~jdoe (but see below) ---------------------- Effective July 1, 2000 ---------------------- Beginning July 1 BCPL.NET customers' Web pages will be reachable only by using the following URL (again using "John Doe" as the example): www.bcpl.net/~jdoe The old www.bcpl.lib.md.us/~jdoe URL format will be discontinued for BCPL.NET customers' pages as of that date. We suspect this last change may be unpopular among a few of our long-time customers whose pages are still being hit using the old www.bcpl.lib.md.us URL, but we have to do it. The Library is receiving an increasing number of complaints that pages having nothing to do with the Library appear to be contained within the Library's Web site. We patiently reply that those pages belong to customers of BCPL.NET Internet Services, not to Baltimore County Public Library, that the contents of customers' pages in no way reflect the policies or opinions of the Library, that no taxpayer money is being used to host customers' pages, and so on. Unfortunately a lot of the people who send these complaints still fail to understand the distinction between Library pages and BCPL.NET customer pages. Dealing with this has become a major hassle. The July 1 deadline gives those of you affected by this ten weeks to alert visitors to your Web pages about the change, to contact search engines if your pages are indexed by them, and to do whatever else you feel is necessary. To help ease the transition, if at all possible we will arrange for requests for the old URL to be redirected to a page explaining the change. -- BCPL.NET INTERNET SERVICES CONTACTS: ----------------------------------- Administration & Policy: ispadmin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 Sales, Renewals, Account Status: accounts@bcpl.net 410-887-4172 Technical Support (Help Desk): help@bcpl.net 410-887-3297 Usenet News Newsgroup Requests news-admin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 E-Mail & Newsgroup Abuse Reports: abuse@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 FAX: 410-887-2091 Help Pages: http://www.bcpl.net/help.html (or enter "help" at the UNIX shell prompt) News Archives: http://www.bcpl.net/sysnews.html (or enter "sysnews" at the UNIX shell prompt)