The popular Web site TuftsLife.com is to trade in its deteriorating Web host for a new, independent one in an effort to increase efficiency and reduce downtime.
The transition is to be made by the end of the week and will bring the site offline for several hours.
Once this is completed, however, an immediate improvement in usability is expected.
"The Tufts community should be left with the same great TuftsLife service as always, but with greater reliability," said junior Jonathan Nadler, the chief relations officer of TuftsLife.com.
The site, which receives around 30,000 to 40,000 hits per day, is currently running off of a shared host, which also supports around 50 other Web sites. It often becomes overloaded during prime late-night hours, resulting in downtime.
While TuftsLife has used the host for six years, the service was "a bit sub-par," according to senior and chief technical officer Isidoros Passidis.
The TuftsLife team got $4,300 from the Tufts Community Union Senate in April to implement the change, and its members spent the summer coordinating it with University Information Technology to plan the move.
Despite the initial cost, the change should prove to ultimately be cheaper though, since the Senate will no longer have to pay third-party hosting fees, according to Nadler. These fees amounted to $49.95 per month.
The new, independent host will consist of two servers in lieu of the single one currently used. Whereas the old server was housed out of state, these will be located on-campus.
"Because most of our traffic comes from within Tufts, we thought it made a lot of sense to switch to servers that were actually located here," Nadler said.
Student reaction to the expected change has been positive.
Freshman Tala Kayyali, for example, said she visits the site more than 30 times a day and notices that it is down several times per week.
"I feel like I'm not connected to the college anymore [when it's down]," she said.
-by Alexandra Bogus
