Revert "CYB-189 Refactor session initialization"

This reverts commit 32f2820160f24c5c9afdaa05c13cd0fc423e80fd.

The session information was not available when needed for this refactor.  Other part of the commit was cleanup of cruft, that will come later.

[CYB-189 Refactor session initialization](https://jira.ets.berkeley.edu/jira/browse/CYB-189)
@coyote shouldn't this be part of the settings file? Isn't this URL going to change depending on environment?