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Summary
LSA Technology Services offers a suite of web services as part of our digital presence. General information on each is available on our public web site. This document provides a little more technical information about service technology and limitations for IT staff.
For more information about the services discussed here, or to request a site in one or more of them, please contact LSA Technology Services.
Environment
- WordPress Multisite
- Adobe Experience Manager
- Sharepoint
Directions
Digital Scholarship (DS)
What: The DS service is based on WordPress Multisite.
Why: The intent is for faculty and researchers, including graduate students, to showcase their research.
Limitations: Plugins are limited to those that have been tested and found to work in our environment, and new plugins are added at the discretion of LSA TS RCI Infrastructure and Web Services. Themes or templates are limited to specific LSA-branded versions. URLs must use the host name digitalscholarship.umich.edu.
Hosting: This service is at a third-party hosting provider.
Faculty, Lab, and Research Web Sites (FLR)
What: The FLR service is based on WordPress Multisite.
Why: The intent is for faculty and researchers, including graduate students, to showcase their biography, CV, lab, or research.
Limitations: Plugins are limited to those that have been tested and found to work in our environment, and new plugins are added at the discretion of LSA TS RCI Infrastructure and Web Services. Themes or templates are limited to specific LSA-branded versions. URLs must use the host name sites.lsa.umich.edu and should use name-specific paths as discussed in the policy document.
Hosting: This service is at a third-party hosting provider.
SharePoint
What: A SharePoint 2013 environment intended to facilitate collaboration on administrative tasks through easy and convenient sharing of documentation, calendar information, and tasks.
Why: The intent is for those who need the benefits of Nintex Workflows to automate tasks, or whose data fits into a SharePoint list.
Limitations: None specified.
Hosting: This service is fronted by the LSA load balancers and hosted on the LSA virtual machine environment.
Unit Web Sites
What: A formal content management system-based service based on Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). This service was based on the Vignette Content Management System (VCMS) from March 2002 through July 2016.
Why: The intent is for college or university units — centers, departments, institutes, programs or other units — to showcase themselves.
Limitations: As of this writing, all Unit Web Sites are LSA-branded, including theme navigation, banner elements, and footer, even if it's for a unit shared with another school or college. Except for those listed below, any entirely-within-LSA units' URLs must, and most other units' URLs should, use the lsa.umich.edu host name (the www.lsa.umich.edu host name is deprecated).
Exceptions:
- The International Institute and all of its centers use the ii.umich.edu host name (the www.ii.umich.edu host name is deprecated).
- Units that cross college boundaries, such as Digital Studies Institute or M-STEM Academics, may use their top-level domain name, but those are currently redirected to and rewritten as lsa.umich.edu/unit. That may change in the future.
Hosting: This service is fronted by the LSA load balancers and otherwise hosted at Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Web Hosting Environment (WHE)
What: A generic web hosting environment based on at least one of cPanel, Omeka, and/or OpenShift. cPanel provides a dedicated slice of a Red Hat Linux server for the user to run their own version of web server and related software. Default software versions are detailed on our web site. Omeka is a free, flexible, and open source web-publishing platform for the display of library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections that can run on a standalone server or in an OpenShift container. OpenShift is a container service for web applications.
Why: The intent is for people who already have version-specific software needs, or a custom code base, but who don't need or want to pay for a dedicated physical server or MiServer instance.
Limitations: cPanel administrative access is limited to on-campus or VPN-connected network addresses. Sensitive data is not allowed. Our cPanel license requires that all sites must be used for not-for-profit/academic type sites related to the University of Michigan.
Hosting: This service is hosted on the ITS MiServer environment.
Windows Web Application Hosting (WWAH)
What: A generic Windows (Server 2016) web environment based on the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS v7.5) web server.
Why: The intent is for those who have specific Windows application needs, or need to run ASP or .NET on their site. 99% of the WWAH environment is for either college- and university-level applications from Web and Application Development Services (WADS) or for old web sites from previous environments that we want to keep around for historical reference. This service should be rarely used.
Limitations: Sensitive data is not allowed. Availability is limited. ASP.NET versions 2.0 through 4.5 are available.
Hosting: This service is fronted by the LSA load balancers and hosted on the LSA virtual machine environment.
WordPress for Instructors & Students (I&S)
What: This service is based on WordPress Multisite.
Why: The intent is for instructors to provide a WordPress site for their course.
Limitations: Plugins are limited to those that have been tested and found to work in our environment, and new plugins are added at the discretion of LSA TS RCI Infrastructure and Web Services. Themes or templates are limited to specific LSA-branded versions. URLs must use the host name courses.lsa.umich.edu.
Hosting: This service is at a third-party hosting provider.