Service Options
Web services are available to students, staff, faculty, colleges, departments, and organizations affiliated with Colorado State University. Depending on your role and needs, you will find help and resources from either the Applications Development or University Web Management Teams within the Division of IT.
Colleges, departments and organizations are set up with a special account for web services. The Division of IT provides the accounts, storage space and web services but does not provide end user support for authoring web pages. These services are broken into two options:
- WordPress: University Web Management hosts websites on the WordPress platform using themes that they develop and maintain, which follow university branding and graphic standards. They also offer hosting for WordPress sites created by other groups. To begin the process, please contact Web Services.
- .NET Web Apps: The Division of IT hosts websites utilizing .NET technologies on IIS web servers. They provide the account, storage space and web services but do not provide end-user development support for authoring web pages. To set up your .NET web hosting, email windows@colostate.edu to request an account.
Hosting Services
Windows-based Dynamic Web Servers
The Division of IT provides accounts for Windows web services for departments and colleges to build dynamic, database-driven websites using the Microsoft .NET Framework. More details are listed below. For more information about any of the services listed here or to request a web server account (also known as a CWIS account), please contact windows@colostate.edu.
Background
The Windows-based dynamic Web servers are provided in a dual-server configuration: both a development and production system are available. The two servers are configured identically such that the production environment is duplicated in the development environment. These servers run the Microsoft Windows Server Operating System with Internet Information Services [IIS], and support only Microsoft .NET Framework technologies.
We require that departments develop and test all code on the development server before posting content to the production server. The Division of IT reserves the right to shut down a website that is noticeably impacting the performance of the web server and other sites on that server until the problem can be resolved.
Database Services & Support
The Division of IT offers database connectivity in conjunction with or independent of the Dynamic Web Servers, via Microsoft SQL Server.
Getting Started:
- Dynamic web services are available to colleges, departments, and organizations. If an interested department already has a CWIS account on one of the Unix systems, an account of the same name will be created on the dynamic web servers. If an interested department does not already have a CWIS account, one may be obtained by contacting windows@colostate.edu.
- Dynamic web services are not offered to students or faculty/staff for personal websites.
- The Division of IT will create an account, provide storage space, and help with the setup for database connectivity
- Access to CWIS account: content directories on the servers are available via Windows Networking shared drives, or by FTP.
- Server Hosting via Campus Cloud: The Division of IT provides severs hosted virtually (VMs) via VMWare, the campus cloud hosting service.
- Virtual site hosting: is available on an as-needed basis. Virtual Hosting means that while the name of our production server might be “abc.colostate.edu”, we could host a “virtual” website named “yourdepartmentname.colostate.edu” if desired.
- Client authoring software: If needed, end users must purchase their own client authoring software (MS Studio Code, Microsoft Visual Studio, etc.). Additionally, end users must know how to create and manage their own databases and write the dynamic web code to interact with the database.
- Fees/Quotas: At this time there is no charge for use of the Dynamic Web Servers. While we are not placing strict quotas on disk space, we will monitor disk usage and from time to time will make determinations about disproportionate disk usage and make suitable arrangements with the department involved.
- Authentication: CSU Federation via Shibboleth Single Sign-on.
- InCommon Certificates: InCommon Certificate Requests (must sign in via NetID/password).
- Accessibility Tips: The College of Health & Human Sciences has compiled some tips and best practices for design and accessibility.