How to change primary domain for an application - subdomain

Presently, we host our java/j2ee web application with a third party hosting company.
Application URL is like abc-xyz.com
This primary domain abc-xyz.com is going to expire in couple of months. Client doesn't want to use this domain anymore and wants to register completely a new domain. In order to accomodate primary domain change, what needs to be done? Thank you.

This is a very broad subject.
If your client is willing to pay for the service why not just let the hosting company move the contents to the new domain. As far as what to do with the web application it really depends on where and how paths have been declared.
Some developers use static paths. I have seen some sites store the domain name in a text file and reference it through out the site, so a path would look like this where
x='new domain name'
<img src="x/images/yourpic.png">
However using static paths can be very frustrating. It is better to use relative paths in respect to the root of the domain. So the above would look like this instead:
<img src="../images/yourpic.png">
Another thing to consider are the paths to the datasources. If you are running something like cold fusion the datasource is set in the cold fusion administrator so moving a site can be as simple as moving the tables and pages then ensuring that the datasources are set correctly. In php developers typically will set a connect function for all database connections in one file.
This may or may not answer your question but the bottom line is that it really depends on how the site is structured and what type of platform is being used.

Related

How to create a website after creating code in Adobe brackets?

I'm new to coding, quite obviously. I created a web design using HTML in Adobe brackets. How do I create my own website from here? Like getting a domain or host. Not sure if those are even the right words to use
Welcome to the wonderful world of web development! Congrats on making your first HTML site.
I am not sure how much you know about the topic, so I will try to explain the basics of getting a site "online".
Websites essentially allow you to access other people's HTML documents in a file directory. You have probably noticed some URLs in the form "www.example.com/file.html". This means that to get your site online, you will need a computer to "host" your HTML files from. Since you probably don't want to leave your computer on 24/7, you will need to use a web hosting service. There are loads of web hosting companies that offer similar services, but they all have the same goal essentially - providing the means for people to remotely access your files. My hosting service of choice is Digital Ocean because they offer a decent price on a small web server. Through your web server (which is essentially a computer running Linux in a warehouse somewhere), you can install web server software (like Apache) which will allow you place your html files into a special directory which will can be accessed from a web browser (something like /var/www/html). Once your files are uploaded to your server, you can access your website through your server's IP address (some esoteric number in the form of http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx).
Of course, you don't access websites through an IP address (at least most humans don't). This is where a "domain name" comes in. The web provides a nifty feature (DNS) which allows you to map a domain name to an IP address. So you can go to your favorite domain purchasing website (something like GoDaddy, which you have probably heard of) and purchase an open domain name of choice. Once you purchase the domain (something like DragonFire09.com), you can map this domain name to your web server's IP address.
These are the two main steps to getting a site online! I hope this provides some insight. Note that getting a website online costs money because you need to pay for a hosting service and a domain, however its a great experience because along the way you will get your hands dirty with Linux and other parts of the web stack.
Of course, you can always create files locally and test them through your own web browser free of charge.
Good luck!

Spring Application - Getting images on Amazon S3 to client

I am building a Spring Web Application hosted on Elastic Beanstalk. I use S3 to store user uploaded images which works great. What I don't understand is how fetching images from S3 to the client work. I found three alternatives.
1.Get the image in a controller and send it to the client. Like this:
S3Object object = amazonS3Client.getObject("bucketname", "path/to/image");
2.Open up all images and reach it directly by an URL in the client. Something like this:
<img src="http://aws.amazon.com/bucket/path/to/image.jpg">
3.Use signed download URLs that only working for a certain time. Like this:
GeneratePresignedUrlRequest request = new GeneratePresignedUrlRequest("bucketname", "path/to/image");
String url = conn.generatePresignedUrl(request)
Im not sure which approach to go for. Routing it through the web server seems unnecessary, since it loads the server. Open the URLs to anyone might higher requests and costs since anyone can use the images. And the third way is new to me, haven't really seen anyone practising this which makes me insecure if this is really the way to go.
So, how is this usually done?
And how is this used in the development environment versus production environment. I guess its not changing? Or is it common to use spring profiles to change the location of static content while developing and only use S3 for production?
If your hosting Javascript, CSS on S3, is it then most common to go for approach 2 and open them up for everyone?
For me it depends upon the requirements you have for access control for images uploaded by a user.
If the images are non-sensitive i.e. it wouldn't really matter if someone else got hold of another user's images, then I would go for approach 2.
If on the other hand it would be a disaster if someone managed to get hold of another user's images, then I would go for approach 3 (or some other form of expiring token access to the images).
The last time I did this I went for approach 2 because the images were non-sensitive. To try and prevent people from discovering images, we did apply a hashing function to the name of the image, but again I wasn't massively concerned about this. In either case, a well defined bucket structure that can be easily worked out by the application when constructing the URL for an image is useful. So for you, perhaps consider something like:
s3:bucket_name/images/users/<hashed_and_salted_user_name>/<user_images>
As for you request regarding dev vs prod environments, then matching a bucket name to the Spring profile is the approach we used. So for example:
s3:bucket_name/prod/images/users/user/foo.jpg
s3:bucket_name/dev/images/users/user/foo.jpg
As you can probably guess we had Spring profiles named "prod" and "dev". The code for building image URLs took into account the name of the current Spring profile when creating the URL. Gives a nice separation between environments.
In terms of CSS and Javascript, then I tend to host obfuscated/minified versions in the production S3 buckets, and full versions in the dev/test buckets (mainly for performance rather that trying to hide code). In addition I'd use some sort versioning/naming structure in how you host CSS/Javascript in S3 so that you can determine what "version" of resources your app is using. So for example:
s3:bucket_name/css/app-1.css
s3:bucket_name/css/app-2.css
The version of the CSS/Javascript resources is updated each time you push a new version into production.
By going down this path you kinda look at S3 as the final resting place for a piece of Javascript/CSS when it is ready to go into the wide world of production. Once there, you know it will never change. If CSS/Javascript does change, then the user has to fetch a new resource from S3 as the version will be incremented. You can hook this into your build process so that your main app is always referencing the latest version of CSS/Javascript. I found this has two useful functions:
Makes it very easy to determine which version of a resource your application is running with
Makes it very easy to cache resources (either with browser or something like CloudFront) as you know they will never change
Hope that helps.

What user friendly subdomain should I use with an existing site?

I am developing a login and account system for use with an existing website, this will run on a subdomain under the main site url.
I would like to use a subdomain that is generic enough so it isn't tied to an account system but not off-putting to users.
I was thinking of www2 but I am concerned people will see this and think its not "legitimate".
Thanks
Some more context.
The new site is currently used for the login and account system but I will eventually migrate the whole website to the new system, this means the services and pages served by the subdomain will very a lot so it can't be specific to one thing.
Try something generic in the interest / knowledge domain of the existing website. What does the existing website do or provide? This can help you determine a proper subdomain.
Some generic examples:
info.domain.com
account.domain.com
auth.domain.com
app.domain.com
to.domain.com
Providing a better subdomain is going to require some more context.

How do i load my html files into the internet?

I am learning the html course from the available tutorials on the internet. And with that knowledge I have developed some html files and I believe there is more to go. These files consist of our old school friends and their present condition and what they're doing. I have created a bunch of html files. Like I have created a website for now named as www.mypage.com
Arjun
So in the href I'm just giving the path but those files are in my desktop pc itself. How do I put them on internet and share with my friends who are living somewhere out of this town. I want to reunite all of my school friends using these files. But where do I upload them and make it like a webiste to my friends? Is there any free way to do that? Or any possible way to reach it.
And I'm saying sorry if the question is not for the tag I mentioned. Please let me know and I remove the tag. I don't know what is the link to wikiposts to share my views. If you know then let me see the link. Thank you.
Find a web hosting service (Google knows lots)
Sign up
Follow their instructions
Arjun
And use relative uris
I use http://webhosting.uk.com ... for about £32 a year you get asp.net hosting and access to sql server.
then you simply ftp up to your website something like this (using windows explorer) ....
ftp://mysite.com <-- not a real link
... that would then open up the remote server as if it was a local folder so you could drag and drop your files straight over.
there's an online chat link on the top right of the homepage, the support staff will walk you through getting setup.
don't forget though ... the cost of the domain name that's the bit that turns your server ip address in to stuff like google.co.uk ... I highly recommend them.
I shall just expand on Quentin's answer, because it is clear that you are new.
What you need is a web hosting service. This is a service which hosts your html pages, meaning stores them in their own computers, and also displays them to the world as webpages. Web hosting services are usually paid, but there are some excellent free services if your content is not too big. A simple and free service that I would recommend is Google Sites. You could also try Google App Engine, where you have more freedom and control over your content, but for the same reason it is a little more advanced. But since you are learning html, I believe it is a wise idea to learn more about these services and related concepts.
When you upload your files, the html links need to be changed. They can no longer point to files in your hard drive. When you upload these files, there will be a directory structure in it. All you need to do is place hyperlinks with relative addresses.
And about what your website will be called, www.whatever.com, that is quite another business. For that, you need to register your own domain name, for which you must pay. If you don't want to, then your website will be labelled something under the hosting service domain name. This forum is not adequate to go into a more elaborate explanation of all this, but I think I have mentioned all the key terms, so do some research!

Which is the easiest cloud for static web content

I've got a few HTML pages with the requisite images, css and other bits and pieces, all static content no CGI required. I currently host it on an Amazon EC2 image that I need to have up and running for a different application. Ideally I'd like to move the hosting of the static content off the EC2 image so that it's independent of any single EC2 instance. I'd like to host it on one of the free or at least pay as you go cloud options.
The options I've come across are:
Windows Azure, in this case I haven't been able to get .html pages working and even if it is possible would it mean I'd have to update the whole Windows Azure app everytime I needed to update an image? Or is there an easy way static web content could be served up from Azure blobs?
Amazon's S3, I think I'd have to put fully qualified URL's into each HTML page for each image, css etc. file but that wouldn't be too bad. This seems like a reasonable option.
Google's App Engine, only spent 10 minutes looking at it but it seems like it would work as well.
Wordpress, I could just incorporate the HTML into a wordpress blog site but I find the themes a little bit too restrictive, pages can only be so wide etc.
Is there an easier way?
Update:
After some further investigation the two best ways I found are the S3 approach as described by Sug and Windows Azure Blob storage (rather than a Windows Azure service).
The difference between S3 and Azure Blobs is how the CNAME can be managed:
For S3 you'll end up with a CNAME like mybucket.mydomain.com
For Azure you'll end up with a CNAME like *.mydomain.com where * represents whatever you like. To access blobs the path is then *.mydomain.com/container/.
So S3 dictates the CNAME host but gives full flexibility on the resource path. Azure gives full flexibility on the CNAME host but dictates the first part of the resource path.
For serving only static files, using services like AppEngine or Azure will be over kill.
The simplest solution will be to use AWS S3:
1) No coding required
2) Pricing
3) You can easily map a bucket to your own domain or subdomain.
4) Free client tools to manage your buckets as it was dead simple filesystem.
I personally use S3Fox but there are many others (BucketExplorer is another example)
“S3 dictates the CNAME host”
Amazon has a CDN service called CloudFront, that uses an S3 bucket for storage. You only pay for S3 data transfer (I think).
Your bucket contents are copied to Amazon’s CDN, meaning superfast access from around the world. However, because it’s a CDN, files are automatically cached for a long time (so there’s a delay when re-naming or deleting files).
Just using an S3 bucket, and setting up another domain to point to the bucket via a CNAME, might be the best idea.
For simple sites like this, I've had good experiences with Nearly Free Speech.Net.
GitHub.com pages. You just need to know Git basics, check out the gh-pages branch, and put the static content there. It will be available at http://your-name.github.io/your-project/
For example, this is my project's file.