Vatican.va Getting an Upgrade!

The Vatican website (one of the oldest domains/websites on the Internet) has been due for an overhaul for some time. Looks like it's finally going to happen! Here's the news, from EWTN:

The director of the Vatican’s website, Msgr. Lucio Adrian Ruiz explained this week in an interview that the site is going through an extensive redesign to improve the Church's evangelization efforts.

The main reason for the redevelopment? Getting the Vatican website in line with Pope Benedict's call to a new evangelization on the 'digital continent.'

How long will this project take? Well, judging by the fact that the Vatican has over 500,000 pages (many, I am sure, not following any set standard of formatting... making migration scripting very tough), it could be a while.

Msgr. Ruiz said the Vatican site receives three million visits per day, with the greatest number of visits coming from the United States, followed by Italy, Spain, Germany, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, Canada, France and China.

He also noted that the site has occasionally been the target of hackers [see an OSC report on one of the recent attacks here] and cyber attacks, but that the staff works closely with Italian online security officials to keep a close eye on their systems.

Just coming off the Catholic New Media Celebration (more info on the CNMC in a blog post here), this is a great step forward for our universal Church. Hopefully we'll see some movement soon!