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A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

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Where have all the websites gone? (www.fromjason.xyz)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I think it's a more global movement.

When I was recruited at my university in the early 2000s, every teacher had an ftp-accessible space with an http address like myuni.edu/~myname. The more techie ones did html, the fancier ones even added css. Muggles would export html from a Word document.

Then one day, the IT department decided to replace this with a "learning management system". A wysiwyg platform with dozens of modules for videoconferencing courses, homework submission, online exams, and so forth.

Except that the user (the teacher) no longer has control over his or her personal space.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Having worked in a university web team back in the day, these user personal spaces got dropped for various reasons. Teaching staff would push back on increasing password security, so accounts got hacked continuously. People would upload malicious applications through cgi-bins and the like. Maintenance costs skyrocketed. The cost of keeping these going because of these reasons were just not justifiable anymore, and it was much easier to provide them an account on a WYSIWYG system that could be secured, patched and maintained by an external company.

With the rise of online learning portals that included these features as standard, it became less justifiable. Why pay for two products, when one would do.