the-yard

Homepage for The Yard

Retired: theyardgames.org redirects to Vault

Since 2026-10-05, theyardgames.org and wwwtest.theyardgames.org send every visitor to Vault Learning Games with a permanent (301) redirect, set in .htaccess:

• Any path that names one of the 10 games as a whole path segment goes to that game's Vault page with the player open (https://vaultlearninggames.org/<slug>#play). That covers game/<name>.html, game/<name>/iframe.html, the old copies under beta/game/, copies at other paths (nitrogen/iframe.html, fieldday/yardgames/<name>/…), and mangled links like game/water.html&x=y. The paths come from the site's Google Analytics landing pages, 2026-10-05.
• Everything else goes to the Vault library filtered to Field Day Lab's grade 5–8 science games (https://vaultlearninggames.org/?grade=5-8&subject=Science&maker=Field+Day+Lab#gg-filters, scrolled to the filters). That includes the home page and game/model.html, which has no Vault page.
• /.well-known/ is not redirected, so Plesk can keep renewing the HTTPS certificate.

The games themselves are still built from this repository and published to Vault's CDN by .github/workflows/publish.yml (make build).

Deploying

DoIT's Plesk deploys the sites straight from this repository (Plesk → Websites & Domains → the domain → Git).

Branch	Site
production	https://theyardgames.org
wwwtest	https://wwwtest.theyardgames.org

• Pushing to one of those branches runs .github/workflows/plesk-deploy.yml. It joins the campus VPN, SSHes into porky with the fielddaylab.wisc.edu deploy key, and from there calls that site's Plesk webhook (repository secrets PLESK_WEBHOOK_PRODUCTION/PLESK_WEBHOOK_WWWTEST), and Plesk pulls the branch into the site's /httpdocs. The webhooks (port 8443 on porky and petunia) only answer inside the campus network, not from GitHub's webhooks and not over the VPN. If a deploy doesn't show up, re-run that workflow or use Pull now on the domain's Git page.
• Plesk doesn't check out the game/ submodules. The game folders already on the servers stay as they are, and the redirects cover them.
• Keep .htaccess the same on both branches.