Taxacom: Fwd: treebase website problem?

[Buz Wilson]

Recently, I asked about Treebase. James Beach helpfully suggested that I 
write to, and provided the email address for William Piel, the operator 
of the website. His answer is below. You may have noticed some legacy 
sites like treebase were still using HTTP (like ubio or mesquiteproject) 
instead of HTTPS, which is a more secure connection to a website. 
Treebase found themselves without the resources to upgrade their site as 
required by the hosting institution so Treebase has gone off-line. 
William Piel is trying to find solutions but ultimately this will 
require assistance and funding to modernize the website.

This is a general problem because the internet and its interfaces are 
always evolving and changing. Research sites, like lists of species or 
access to specialized research software, are often operated by 
scientists who have their own research projects and are funded by 
organizations that may or may not support the project in the future. 
Sites that we use regularly for research can go and do go offline. My 
interest in Treebase comes from having uploaded the matrices and trees 
from various published projects, which I had assumed would always be 
available to other researchers. Now days, sites like Dryad or Morphobank 
can serve some of the function of preserving the data and analyses for 
others to use. Specialized sites, like Treebase, that have large 
database backends to process data and analyses into a consistent format 
are both more useful but also more difficult to maintain.

If you have a solution for Treebase, please contact William Piel 
<metepeira at gmail.com>

best wishes

Buz

-- 
George D.F. (Buz) Wilson, Ph.D.
Saugatuck Natural History Laboratory, LLC
website:https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.snhlab.com%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7cfa0b4429774498f76f08da34e00129%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637880433950399016%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=6KX03JgDfHQv5W8kSWRzDxeFSqbqc38RJOUnza5Imoo%3D&reserved=0
publications:https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fprofile%2FGeorge-Wilson-12&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7cfa0b4429774498f76f08da34e00129%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637880433950399016%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=RTay4vNZIBpAwHdDnNTXykH0EmRSA1g3Bjy8WsWcgTw%3D&reserved=0
email:gdfw at SNHLab.com



-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	Re: treebase website problem?
Date: 	Fri, 13 May 2022 11:05:11 +0800
From: 	William Piel <metepeira at gmail.com>
To: 	gdfw at snhlab.com




Hi,

Regrettably, the hosting institution suddenly shut it down because of IT 
security concerns. Various updates are needed for the software stack 
meet their requirements, and we don’t have any funds or staffing to do 
this. We are looking for other institutions willing to host. Failing 
that, we will try to do a kind of data dump where all prior datasets can 
be downloaded in static form.

bp



> On May 11, 2022, at 4:10 AM, Buz Wilson <buzwilson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Dr Piel
> I have used Treebase.org <https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftreebase.org%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7cfa0b4429774498f76f08da34e00129%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637880433950399016%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=mLw4wobXKn7fVpsB6FZvK2zEcFvK4%2F%2FivhnVQcwdFZE%3D&reserved=0> to store matrices and 
> trees resulting from phylogenetic analyses, and did so as late as 
> 2020. Now the website appears to be not publicly available. When I log 
> to treebase.org <https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftreebase.org%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7cfa0b4429774498f76f08da34e00129%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637880433950399016%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=mLw4wobXKn7fVpsB6FZvK2zEcFvK4%2F%2FivhnVQcwdFZE%3D&reserved=0> to view one of my previously 
> uploaded projects, a plain login dialog appears that does not 
> recognize my previous credentials. Has the website moved or changed name?
> best wishes
>
> -- 
> George D.F. (Buz) Wilson, Ph.D.
> Saugatuck Natural History Laboratory, LLC
> website:https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.snhlab.com%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7cfa0b4429774498f76f08da34e00129%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637880433950399016%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=6KX03JgDfHQv5W8kSWRzDxeFSqbqc38RJOUnza5Imoo%3D&reserved=0
> publications:https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fprofile%2FGeorge-Wilson-12&data=05%7C01%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7C7cfa0b4429774498f76f08da34e00129%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C637880433950399016%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=RTay4vNZIBpAwHdDnNTXykH0EmRSA1g3Bjy8WsWcgTw%3D&reserved=0
> email:gdfw at SNHLab.com