BerkeleyLUG domains, "hosting", etc.

["Michael Paoli" <Michael.Paoli@cal.berkeley.edu>]

So, BerkeleyLUG domains were transferred earlier this month.
Yes, more than one domain.
There's berkeleylug.com - which as far as I know has always been the
canonical.
There's also berkeleylug.org - which I only relatively recently
learned about.

Which should be the canonical, and which domain(s) should we keep?
There was some discussion of this at the most recent BerkeleyLUG
meeting this past Sunday.

Bit 'o history:
http[s]://berkeleylug.com/ has, as far as I'm aware, always been the
canonical, and in more recent years or so, using https (http redirects).
http://berkeleylug.org/ has, apparently through most of its existence,
done 302 redirects to http://berkeleylug.com
https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=berkeleylug:digital_resources&rev=1551419780
More recently I changed it to also support https,
and preserve path components in the redirect (it didn't before)
and to use 301 ("permanent") rather than 302 ("temporary") redirects as
it did before.
https://www.wiki.balug.org/wiki/doku.php?id=berkeleylug:digital_resources
I'm willing to pay for one domain going forward,
some other folk(s) have volunteered to pick up (at least some of)
the costs of 2nd domain (at least on the shorter term - most notably
upcoming renewal (vs. expiration) of berkeleylug.org).
berkeleylug.org domain expires 2019-05-17T04:39:28Z
berkeleylug.com domain expires 2020-01-20T05:05:36Z

We could "retire" the .org, if we so choose (and nobody(s)
wants to cover cost of a 2nd domain).  If we wanted to make
the .org canonical rather than .com, then both should be
renewed at least a year, to allow various references and
search results of search engines, etc., ample time to transition
from .com to .org.
Also, if we're going to renew the .org, if we want to move that
to a different registrar, that should be done sufficiently well
in advance of expiration time.  Presently both domains have
Google (domains.google.com) as registrar (that was easiest first
move - no cost to keep them there as-is, no changes to existing
functionality or DNS (at least initially) and hosting thereof, etc.

.com "vs." .org?
In our case, .com has always (at least as far as I know) been the
canonical for BerkeleyLUG.
.org is technically more appropriate for an ORGanization,
.com for COMmercial entities.
However, also, many browsers, etc. will default to or preferentially
pick/try a .com domain over .org - most notably if domain isn't
specified - this may be increasingly less of a concern, as increasingly
search engines are used, and decreasingly do browsers blindly default
preferentially to .com domain - but I still do often see browsers
favoring .com (e.g. phone browser, when typing in url offers a single
keypress to add .com, but for .org one needs hit all four keys for
those characters).
So, there are those basic domain questions.
There's also www. prefix - or not.  As far as I'm aware,
BerkeleyLUG has generally effectively not used www. (it redirecting
to without the www. prefix).  There are advantages and
disadvantages to each as far as which is canonical.
Without www. is of course shorter.  With www. can be more flexible -
e.g. mail/list/other services, can be more easily separated out to
different sites/hosts, by using a separate (sub-)domain.  Also,
much software - e.g. many email clients and email web interfaces, etc.
will automagically hyperlink www.whatever even without a leading
http[s]:// prefix, whereas without the leading www., they often
won't.
Keeping things (mostly) functionally the same is easier on users,
more consistent on hyperlinks continuing to work as-is (or nearly
so), etc. - but also, isn't necessarily optimal over longer term.

Presently the DNS is hosted by Google (complimentary as registrar),
the .org redirect is provided by Google (complimentary as registrar),
There is also G Suite on the .com - but that will be phased out fairly
soon.

http[s]://berkeleylug.com/ is hosted on wordpress.com
Jack Deslippe (thanks Jack!) has us covered for up to
approximately 6 months continued paid hosting ($4.00/mo.)
on wordpress.com - that non-free hosting lets us use our own domain and
have advertisement free hosting (free hosting there gets one neither of
those non-free features).  I have access to and have exported the
WordPress data.  We'll rehost it elsewhere.  Anyone want to
volunteer to do that?  Notwithstanding suitable volunteer
coverage of that, I'll likely host it on BALUG virtual machine.
It looks like the incremental resources needed for that host to
also host http[s]://berkeleylug.com/ and WordPress there are
fairly minimal, so likely quite doable (I'll be sure to check
and test).  With the WordPress import/export to move the site,
looks like "users" of the site will need to be remapped (map
users from old site, to users on new site) - other than that,
looks like (most?) everything comes straight across (pages/blog,
comments, etc.).  I looked at the export - only 5 defined users,
so that remapping shouldn't be too hard.
I did also, thus far, allocate 2 IPs for use by BerkeleyLUG ...
but there's no "there" there ... yet - at least in particular.
temp.berkeleylug.com.   IN      A       198.144.194.238
temp.berkeleylug.com.   IN      AAAA    2001:470:1f05:19e::4
4.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.e.9.1.0.5.0.f.1.0.7.4.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa. IN  
PTR berkeleylug.com.
The 198.144.194.238 is shared by multiple domains, the
2001:470:1f05:19e::4 is exclusively for BerkeleyLUG (but any services
there not yet configured specifically for it).

I'll likely use temp.berkeleylug.com for testing of BerkeleyLUG
stuff to be moved - and then remove temp.berkeleylug.com once it's
no longer needed.

So ... thoughts on domain(s), canonical URLs for main/home page on site,
hosting, etc.?  Also, moving DNS will be easy - have sufficient
volunteer resources on that (but also feel free to add yourself to the
volunteer pool there).

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