ARCHIVED: About the tilde URL retirement on Pages

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Overview

The new Pages server does not support tilde URLs (URLs that previously existed on Pages as pages.iu.edu/~accountname). All sites on the new Pages server instead use the URL format accountname.pages.iu.edu.

A temporary translation service that allowed tilde URLs to exist was retired on July 20, 2021. As a result, Pages URLs with tildes no longer redirect automatically to their accountname.pages.iu.edu equivalents; they redirect to 404 error pages instead.

Important:

As of July 20, 2021, any scripts, includes, or embeds (such as MachForm) that reference outdated tilde URLs no longer work. Check your web pages, communications, and/or advertisements to find and update any tilde URLs.

To update tilde URLs, use any of the appropriate methods below to locate tilde URLs and change them to their accountname.sitehost.iu.edu equivalents (or to custom virtual hosts).

Locate files with tilde URLs

To generate a list of files containing links to tilde URLs, SSH into your Pages account, and then, in your home directory, enter the following command:

find_tilde

The find_tilde script will identify files in which tilde URLs are used and output the file path.

The script also has a verbose option that will display the matching text line in each file:

find_tilde -v
Note:
If you have a large number of files, the scripts may take several minutes to complete. The scripts will find tilde URLs only in the web directory containing links to pages.iu.edu/~, campus.edu/~ or www.campus.edu/~.

Backlink tools are available to help you determine if traffic is coming to your site via a tilde URL. UITS recommends contacting owners of sites using outdated links and providing them with updated URLs. If you need help identifying the owner of a site, contact your campus Support Center.

Impact dashboard

A dashboard is available to help identify incoming web traffic using tilde URLs. The dashboard shows a snapshot of traffic from mid-March to mid-April 2021 and does not represent all possible traffic via tilde URLs. The dashboard will display accounts associated with individual users. IT Pros will see information for those they support.

To access the dashboard, go to https://go.iu.edu/tilde-pro.

This data does not provide a complete picture of where traffic is going to and where it comes from, but it can help identify potential issues.

Note:
Some of the URLs displayed may lead to an old site or content that no longer exists. This is not uncommon and generally can be ignored if the account is no longer active.

Sitehost accounts are identified by the group account name under the "Account" column, and the "Account Type" is "Group".

Pages accounts are identified by the individual's username, and have an "Account Type" of "Individual".

Related documents

About the tilde URL retirement on Sitehost

This is document bgvi in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2023-05-09 07:22:06.