How can I provide a single URL for the Valence portal

[gwilburn]

I would like to provide a single URL and/or bookmark that allows me to control instance that all users access.

I'm currently switching users from version 4.2 to 5.0. Instead of having each user change their existing bookmark each time we uprade, I would like to simply control the DNS associated with that port#.

Is there a way to do this on the Apache server?

[barnettc2]

Not sure what CNX's best practices are, but for us, we just change to port number of the server instance. We still use 7022 back from version 2.2 to avoid changing everyone's bookmarks.

Chris

[gwilburn]

Thanks Chris... I worked with IBM for a while on this. There really is not a good solution for hiding/masking the port number (for any application) short of using a reverse proxy. While you can redirect it, a user can still bookmark it.

So I just sent out an email with the new hyperlink, and then take down the prior instance. This forces them to update their bookmark or not get on at all.

[richard.milone]

We don't have an official "best practices" way of doing this. Like barrnettc2 suggests, having a specific port assigned to your production instance and swapping that to new versions of Valence as you deploy them should work fine. But personally, I like it best if you can have your network administrator set up a DNS entry and NAT for a particular host. For example, you could set up something like "portal.mycompany.com", where "mycompany" is your company's domain. Then your DNS can point that to an IP address (this DOES work for internal addresses). You can even leave off the port number since the browser will look to port 80 by default. You can then have your firewall or router forward port 80 to whatever port number you need. Then when you implement new versions of Valence on a different port it's just a matter of altering that port forwarding configuration. So if you can get your network admin to set this up for you I'd say it's the cleanest way to go.