CALS IT offers no-cost WordPress* web hosting services to CALS Administration, Departments, research groups, and other groups within the College, hosted on our VMware cluster.
Low-cost services are available for hosting grant products and websites for revenue-generating CALS entities.
* WordPress is a content management system that allows you to login with your NetID and password from on or off campus to maintain your website content.
Non-WordPress Site Hosting
Sorry, we are no longer taking on new Drupal, static html, or other CMS clients.
Site Design Choices
We provide several choices of custom-created WordPress themes. The theme controls the look and feel of the site, including color, fonts, and page layout. Our latest theme includes a homepage image slider and numerous other features, and is designed from the ground up to be mobile-device ready. For a sample of this theme, please visit the main CALS website.
SERVICE OVERVIEW
Most of our customers’ WordPress sites are integrated into one of our professionally-managed, multi-site instances, which are based on single Ubuntu 12 or 14 LTS virtual machines with recent versions of Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Customers are able to add and edit site content and theme features through the WordPress interface, with additional flexibility to edit theme and content files outside of WordPress using a web based tool.
As our service has grown and matured, the influx of additional clients has caused us to re-evaluate how we structure our WordPress environment. In order to deliver the best possible experience to our customers, we are moving toward a newly engineered WordPress hosting solution in late summer 2015. This new platform is based on extremely low latency delivery of web content with high availability and maximum uptime. Follow this link an overview of our new WordPress cluster.
HARDWARE PLATFORM
Our primary VMware cluster hardware consists of Dell SAN storage and host servers, and is located in DoIT’s secure, redundantly powered and cooled Dayton Street datacenter. We also house an identical hardware setup in Taylor Hall. Having geographically separate datacenters affords us the flexibility of backing up, mirroring, and replicating our server data in the best interest of our clients.
ADDITIONAL WEB SERVICES
The managed WordPress solution is ideal for many websites, though we realize there are organizations who might need some additional flexibility with a WordPress environment or would like a deeper dive into managing at the server level. To serve these customers, we may be able to offer additional capability depending on your interests and needs. Please contact us, and we may have a solution for you.
NEXT STEPS
Please read our Planning Your Website document, and then email us at websupport@cals.wisc.edu to setup a meeting to discuss your needs.