WordPress Hosting (for large schools & departments)
Service Description
WordPress web hosting and content management is offered to enterprise customers (i.e. schools, divisions, departments, centers and institutes) at no charge. The service is built on WordPress, a web-publishing system that is flexible, scalable and easy to use. A dedicated project team is available to assist customers. Similar to the self-service platform, web.unc.edu, Departmental Publishing is managed and supported by ITS. Features include:
- Easy-to-use, modern, flexible and powerful platform
- Plugin architecture for web forms, calendars, SEO, permissions, social media and much more
- Ability to define different roles for team contributors and editors
- Security scanning
- Infrastructure maintained and monitored by ITS Middleware, the same unit that supports Sakai and ConnectCarolina hardware
- No software to buy or support
- Option to receive assistance with site migration
- Large and growing WordPress community at Carolina
Users/Customers
Large departments, school and organizations at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Service Provisioning
Users request new sites by submitting a ticket to ITS-DIGITAL-SERVICES. In the request users must define the URL prefix (ex. Sitename.sites.unc.edu).
Supported Environment/Services
- WordPress has two environments: Development and Production. Development is an unstable environment used primarily for testing theme/plugin updates prior to deployment and may be offline or wiped without prior notice.
- 7 themes available for use. Heelium encouraged.
- 46 plugins available for activation.
- Custom plugins and themes are not currently permitted.
Technical Support Contact Information
ITS Service Desk:
- Phone (919) 962-HELP (4357)
- Chat: https://help.unc.edu/chat
- Online Help Request: http://help.unc.edu/help/olhr/
- Twitter: @unchelpdesk
- Facebook: unchelpdesk
- YouTube: unchelpdesk
- Instagram: unchelpdesk
SLA Response Times
- Critical = 15 minutes, 8-5 M-F
- Important = 24 hours, 8-5 M-F
- General = 72 hours, 8-5 M-F
KPIs
Average response time for page load.
Service Metrics / Service Goal metrics
New sites provisioned in 1 business day
Uptime - 99.9% (8.75 hours of downtime/year)
Average response time for page load - < 1 second
Maintenance Schedule
Wednesday mornings 6-10AM for regular maintenance and upgrades. Upgrades with high-risk/impact or high urgency may be completed outside of this window.
Hours Of Operation
24x7x365
User/Customer Responsibilities
- Site owners and contributing users must comply with the standards set by the Information Security Office for storing and publishing data.
- Should not publish sensitive data. See: http://help.unc.edu/help/what-is-sensitive-data/.
- Site owners and contributing users are responsible for obtaining all permissions that may be necessary to incorporate works of third parties in their site. Use of such works may be permitted by principles of fair use, consistent with copyright laws (see, http://help.unc.edu/help/unc-chapel-hill-copyright-information-and-policies/).
- Site owners are responsible for ownership continuity and must ensure that a site has an active UNC affiliated owner.
Other
Not applicable.Out of Scope
- Subdomain management — users that wish to use a primary UNC subdomain (ex. Website.unc.edu) must contact IP Services and sign an MOU. Digital Services can assist with the actual domain mapping via a support ticket to ITS-DIGITAL-SERVICES.
- WordPress at Carolina runs in a shared, managed environment with many themes, plugins and code designed specifically for the Carolina community. For security and stability reasons, we do not allow users to upload custom plugins, themes or custom functionality (i.e. PHP/JavaScript modules).