This page describes the options available to those persons who want to develop a web site, whether for school-related individual purposes, or school-related group purposes such as a lab web site.

Setting up a web site can be a little confusing because there are several options with a mix of pros and cons. The options available are listed below. Click on an option title for additional information:

Web Site Hosting Option	Description	Available For
Basic hosting	Suitable for those who need to do their own HTML coding.	Faculty and Graduate students
UCI campus WebFiles service	A spartan option for web sites.	Faculty and Graduate students
UCI campus web site service	Best choice for graduate students needing a multi-page site that is easy to maintain.	Faculty and Graduate students
UCI campus faculty web site service	Best choice for a professor's personal academic web site that requires multiple pages, or for lab sites.	Faculty

Basic Website Hosting

This hosting option is provided by a web server that Social Sciences Computing Services maintains in our data center, as opposed to the latter options which are hosted by OIT. You will be given a user account and instructions to use SFTP to login to a file server where you can upload your website files (HTML, images, CSS, PDFs, etc). You are responsible for developing these files, so some technical expertise is required. Files uploaded to your user account's public_html folder will be accessible at your personal URL.

Example website URL: https://sites.socsci.uci.edu/~username

Pros:

* You can design anything you want depending on your level of expertise in web development.
* Supported programming languages include HTML and PHP.
* Social Sciences Computing Services manages the server.

Cons:

* Creation of everything needed for your site is up to you, which can mean much more work.
* No web-based access to managing your site.
* No write access to the file system using PHP code.
* No database hosting is provided.
* Social Sciences Computing Services provides only hosting services and does not provide site creation or maintenance services.

For more on this option, please contact contact Social Sciences Computing Services at sscs@uci.edu.

  

Campus WebFiles

This option is provided by the UCI Office of Information Technology (OIT).  It is intended mostly for file storage and sharing, but web pages can be built in this service. For example, if your UCInetID was again "someone," your site URL may look something like http://webfiles.uci.edu/someone/www/index.html

Pros:

* Quick.
* Fairly easy to use and web-based.

Cons:

* Limited capabilities.
* A little "clunky."
* Not well suited for "full featured" web site needs.

 For more on this option, please visit http://webfiles.uci.edu.

 

Campus Blog and Site Service
 

This service is provided by the UCI Office of Information Technology (OIT), built using WordPress. Initially this service was structured for providing a web site blogging service. However, OIT has modified the service to provide generic web site capabilities.

This is the best choice for graduate students who want a site that is easy to access and maintain, contains multiple pages and is housed outside of social sciences.

Pros:

* Quick.
* Easy to manage content..
* Web-based management of content.
* Basic structure and functional design of the site is built for you.
* Content versioning.
* Automatic backups.
* OIT manages server.
* No HTML knowledge needed.
* Basic features (could be a good thing if not a lot is needed).

Cons:

* Cannot directly share content with school.
* Limited to themes provide by OIT (but some customization can be done).
* No PHP or other scripting capabilities.
* Basic features (might be a negative if you have complex requirements).

For more on this option, please visit http://sites.uci.edu.

 

Campus Faculty Web Site Service

This service is provided by the UCI Office of Information Technology (OIT), built using WordPress. It is intended only for individual professor or lab web sites.

This option is the best choice for a professor's academic web site that requires multiple pages, or for lab sites.

Pros:

* Quick.
* Easy to manage content.
* Web-based management of content.
*Site may be set up using pre-designed departmental themes (will appear to look as though it is part of your home department's site).
* Basic structure and functional design of the site is built for you.
* Content versioning.
* OIT manages server.
* No HTML knowledge needed.
* Fairly basic features (could be a good thing if not a lot is needed).

Cons:

* Cannot directly share content with your department or social sciences.
* Not integrated with home department's web site.
* Limited to themes provide by OIT (but the appearance/design can be customized by changing background color, fonts, and banner, or pre-designed departmental themes may be used).
* No PHP or other scripting capabilities.
* Fairly basic features (might be a negative for more than basic requirements).

For more on this option, please visit http://faculty.sites.uci.edu.