2024 Website Support Transition

Per Georgia Tech policy, faculty and researchers are responsible for individual and laboratory websites, social media, and mobile applications — including website ownership, content management, and site maintenance.

In keeping with this policy, and to support academic freedom and individual control of your website layouts and content, moving forward, the College of Sciences Communications and Academic and Research Computing (ARCS) teams will continue to point to hosting and support resources but no longer directly engage with individual or labratory website management.

What You Need to Know:

Create a Sites@GT website

If you would like to create or redesign an individual or laboratory website, please visit Sites@GT/ to easily stand up and maintain your own web presence through Georgia Tech’s contract with CampusPress (WordPress For Education), which offers Institute-approved templates, on-demand help desk support, and troubleshooting for all Sites@GT websites.

Request website removal/redirects

Historically, ARCS has maintained over 750 separate websites across the College of Sciences. Last semester, ARCS audited this list of sites and began working with website owners and school contacts to decommission and redirect outdated websites and resources. If you are the owner of a gatech.edu website that you would like removed or redirected, please email web@cos.gatech.edu.

Next Steps: Transitioning First-line Website Support to Individuals

Beginning January of 2024, owners of sites that currently have CoS ARCS web listed as their support will be contacted.

In this email, we will ask for the site owner to respond regarding:

• Are you still the primary contact for this site?
  • If not, please provide a replacement contact if able.
  • If so, is this site still active/needed?
• Are there any current issues which need to be addressed with the site?
• If the site is active and is not on Sites@GT already - is there any functional reason to not migrate the content to Sites@GT?

For any active website not already on Sites@GT, the ARCS web team will provide one-time assistance in migrating the content to Sites@GT.

Migrations will occur on a response order and time allotted basis, after discussions with the site owner about any impacts the change in hosting could entail.

If an owner does not wish to have their site migrated to Sites@GT, they may be able to maintain their site where it is currently, and all contact updates will be changed to this site owner.

What happens to sites that are inactive or have no identified owner?

Any site with no owner on file, which cannot have a new one established, or from whom there is no response, will have their site deactivated by the end of Spring 2024. These frozen sites will be given a further 6 months of inactive status before being backed up and then removed from campus hosting.

What does this mean for security and audits?

All audit and security responsibilities ultimately fall to the primary stakeholder on any site.

However, any security or content incident will be routed appropriately from OIT/Legal/IC to the site owner. If there is a particularly egregious issue, the site may be frozen immediately until resolved.

I need more information regarding Sites@GT

Faculty, staff, and students are all encouraged to use the Wordpress-based hosting at Sites@GT for their websites, which is excellent for low complexity informative websites that are a public face for an individual, a research project, or laboratory group.

Sites@GT, via the CampusPress hosting service, also includes direct support ON EVERY PAGE when any editor or administrator is logged in on their site via the blue “Get Help” button.

Sites@GT is also supported by the Office of Information Technology (OIT) and Institute Communications (IC) for branding and security. This support removes a large burden for anyone maintaining a web presence that is satisfied by Wordpress.

The Sites@GT FAQ and Documentation can help determine if your needs will be met on the service.

I still have questions

If you or any site owner have additional questions regarding this procedure, please reach out to web@cos.gatech.edu or respond to the ticket any of your sites will have generated.