Current projects and status. Some of these projects are technical in nature and may not have a dramatic effect on the Nicholls website.
Upgrade www.nicholls.edu operating system and web server software
Nicholls webserver is currently using RedHat Enterprise 4.2. This project is an effort to upgrade this operating system to RedHat 5 and transition the webserver software to newer versions of the MySQL database software and PHP web scripting software.
Testing for most applications has been using webmanager.nicholls.edu which uses Fedora Core 9 as an operating system. The MySQL and PHP components on the testing server are already updated to the most recent versions.
- Convert web traffic and error logs to standard Apache logging and use rotatelogs utility for archiving. – Compete
- Test RedHat 5 operating system and note compatibility issues.
- Perform RedHat 5 upgrade – This will cause downtime for the Nicholls webserver.
- Fix compatibility issues.
- Perform MySQL upgrade.
- Perform transition to PHP5 web scripting language.
Upgrade WordPress sites to 2.6 or 2.7
Hopefully this upgrade to WordPress will coincide with the operating system for www.nicholls.edu. WordPress releases several new versions throughout the year, so currently the target versions for this upgrade are WordPress 2.6 or higher.
This upgrade is expected to require massive changes to the theme files and plugins used. These dependencies must be addressed before the software can be updated.
Dramatic changes to WordPress will require changes to documentation. End user documentation must be rewritten or edited before the software can be updated.