History of the PL club website

Archived snapshot of the old site: https://web.archive.org/web/20070510204908/https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~plclub/

Github archive of the old repo: https://github.com/plclub/plclub-web-old

The "old" PL club website was evidently launched around mid-2005 (the first archive.org snapshot is dated 14 September 2005---if there was a PL club website before this, it must have used a different URL). The build system was OMake and some parts of the site used Java. Overall the old repo was fairly eclectic, built from many different pieces created at different times, and its age was showing both design-wise and code-wise. Around mid-November in 2019 a conversation started about updating the website. The Slack #website channel was created on November 14, 2019 with the description:

20 cent bounty to convert website into Hakyll while preserving style.

The new website was launched on January 15th 2020.

Around April 27th some people in the department started a conversation about launching a PL Club blog, although the general idea of producing content for public consumption pre-dates the new website by at least a couple months. The topic was discussed at the April 1st PL club meeting (conducted over video chat, given the pandemic), where it was decided to appoint a designated editor rotating perhaps once or twice annually, and the first editor was elected.

Migration

To the extent the old website has been carried over to the new one, it may be found primarily in old_site/. A very significant amount of content was copied over, considering that much of the old site was static content and can be "grafted" onto the new one straightforwardly. It is expected that most, if not all, URLs from the old website (such as for old summer schools and conferences) should still function.