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IT Services

Website hosting

  • Service Group: Collaboration and Communication Services
  • Users: Staff

Service Description

IT Services hosts various websites on behalf of the University and generally these are maintained and managed by the Marketing and Communications department, or the relevant School or Department which owns the website.

Requests for new websites or web hosting should be made to the Marketing and Communications team who will discuss your requirements with you. Where it is not possible for Marketing and Communications to manage your website, please refer to your Faculty Relationship Manager in IT Services.

Should the latter be the case, please allow for at least 4 weeks for the hosting arrangement to be made.

Technical Details

This service provides hosting for static (i.e. HTML) websites. It is typically used to host content from the Content Management System provided by Marketing and Communications.

For those unable to use the Content Management System, files can be transferred to this service using the SFTP protocol.

This service is load balanced between two datacentres for resiliency and offers robust and performant hosting for static websites.

Domain Names and SSL Certificates

Domain names should match the following criteria and if so, IT Services may be able to supply an SSL certificate at no cost to your department.

Domain names should:

  • end with "qmul.ac.uk"
  • not include the prefix www.
  • end with a suitable school or departmental domain (e.g. history.qmul.ac.uk or sllf.qmul.ac.uk)
  • must not already be in-use, unless by your existing website which you plan to move to this service.

With agreement from Marketing and Communications, your domain name could:

  • end with "qmul.ac.uk" and not use a departmental prefix.

Non qmul.ac.uk domain names may be used, however this is not generally recommended and there could be further ongoing costs and obligations you will be responsible for.  Please note it is not possible to use Idcheck authentication with a Non-qmul.ac.uk domain name.

If you are unsure, please contact us and we will be happy to discuss this with you.

The University House Style requires URLs or web addresses not include the "www." prefix.  Therefore, we do not issue those domain name as standard, and won’t normally provide an SSL certificate at no cost.  Where necessary, we can provide a redirect from your domain name with a "www." prefix to your domain name without it.

Backups

Nightly backups are taken, primarily for disaster recovery purposes.  Backups are retained for at least one month.

If your website is updated by the Content Management System provided by Marketing and Communications, you should contact the Web Team about any content that may need to be restored. For those not using the CMS, you're encouraged to maintain your own backup copies of your website, particularly before applying updates.

Information Classification

This service is not suitable for sensitive information.

Information classified as "Open" or "Protect", as defined in DG09 Information Classification, can be hosted.

Your Obligations

In addition to normal University policies (including the IT Regulation and Web Policy) you are obliged to maintain the content of your website.

If your website is no longer required, please let us know so that it can be decommissioned. If you are leaving the organisation or changing roles, please ensure your website is handed over to a colleague and IT Services are informed.

If you are writing content for or designing a website, please refer to the University Brand Guidelines.

How To Request This Service

Contact Marketing and Communications Web Team by using their Book in a project form.

If your website is not related to services provided by Marketing and Communications, please make your request through the Service Desk.

If your domain name doesn't meet the criteria described above may need to manage the domain name registration, the purchasing and updating of SSL certificates and any additional costs required to do so. If you are unsure please contact us and we will be happy to discuss this with you.

Lead Time

Website Hosting related requests should be made at least 4 working weeks in advance.

Cost

There may be some costs involved, this needs to be consulted with the Marketing and Communications Web Team and IT Services.

Availability

Hours of Service: 24/7/365

Supported Monday to Friday 8am-6pm (excluding bank holidays and university closure days).

Support

For support with your website templates or content you should contact the owner of the website, or the department responsible for it.

If you are the website manager, please contact the Marketing and Communications Web Team or where you have developed the website yourself, please contact our Service Desk.

Contact the IT Service Desk
Call: +44 (0)20 7882 8888
Email: servicedesk@qmul.ac.uk
Self-service: Service Desk

Dependent Service

This service is dependent on Infrastructure Services.

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