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Services: Web Hosting

Three Steps for Creating a New Website

There are three components to getting a website up and running - the first is to decide if you want your own ucsb.edu sub-domain such as http://newsite.ucsb.edu OR to put it beneath an existing website (http://isber.ucsb.edu/newsite/). Each sub-domain will need a brief couple of sentences explaining the purpose of each site. Each subdomain request has to be processed by the campus hostmaster and they are much more easily approved when a faculty member provides this statement of purpose. An example is provided below.

Next, you need to find a place that will host your website - preferably a department that supports a content management system (CMS). ISBER provides this service for a fee to host on our servers.  Hosting requires periodic software updates to keep the website running securely and periodic "fixes". ISBER charges an annual fee for CMS website hosting as this includes the up-keep of the software powering the website and the time spent working with a website developer to install whatever features they need, provide email and webform integration, etc.

Third step, someone to design the website. While we do provide website hosting and consultation, we do not do website design. Ocean O' Graphics, which is part of the Marine Science Institute, does excellent work in the design area and because they are on campus it is easy to pay for their services. Contracting with outside vendors is a difficult and time consuming process, and it becomes very difficult to do minor updates. You can contact Monica Pessino <pessino@msi.ucsb.edu> to inquire about their services. They don't charge for their initial consultation. One of their recent projects is for another of our new centers and you can see the site (note: it's in active development) here:


http://www.uccnrs.ucsb.edu/ - this is designed in Drupal, a CMS, and is the platform I encourage you to choose for your site. Drupal provides a very flexible tool for building websites and will give the end-users such as you the ability to edit some of the content on the site yourself without having to enlist a website developer each time you want to add or edit content. Many universities such as Yale, Stanford and ASU are huge proponents of Drupal, it's also what powers http://www.whitehouse.gov/ .

ISBER can provide Drupal-based website hosting. A normal site with 1GB of disk storage and daily backup is about $784 per year.

 

Subdomain request form example:

UCSB Subdomain Registration Form          
                        $Revision: 1.2 $

    IF ANY OF THE INFORMATION ON THIS FORM EVER CHANGES, PLEASE
    NOTIFY hostmaster@ucsb.edu.  

Configuration                       
=============                          

   UCSB Subdomain Name: cdrp.ucsb.edu			
    Represented entity:	ISBER - Institute for Social, Behavioral and Economic Research
                 
    Primary nameserver: netboy.isber.ucsb.edu
            IP address: 128.111.147.39

  Secondary nameserver: default                 [DEFAULT=ns1.ucsb.edu]
            IP address: default                 [DEFAULT=128.111.1.1]

  Secondary nameserver: default                 [DEFAULT=ns2.ucsb.edu]
            IP address: default                 [DEFAULT=128.111.1.2]

    Associated Subnets: 128.111.147.0/24

Contacts
========

     Technical contact: Randall Ehren
            Department: ISBER
                 Phone: 805.893.5632
                 Email: sysadmin@isber.ucsb.edu

         Control point: Jana Bentley
                 Phone: 805.893.2548
                 Email: bentley@isber.ucsb.edu

Example statement of purpose:

This website supports the California Dropout Research Project (CDRP) at the University of California, Santa Barbara that produces research to inform policymakers and the larger public about the nature of-and potential solutions to-the dropout problem in California.  The project is directed by Russell W. Rumberger, Professor of Education in the Gevirtz Gradute School of Education.



by Dr. Radut.