CDA hosts the majority of Fine Arts classes, student and research web pages. There are some guidelines in place to ensure that there is high availability for this service.
Availability (uptime)
CDA makes all efforts necessary to make sure all websites are available 24/7. At times though we may need to go offline briefly for maintenance and users will be notified.
CDA does not guarantee that student or class websites will be available during the summer (May-September). All class shares and student websites are made available to enhance curriculum during class time. All files should be backed up and removed at the end of each semester. We usually keep student and class files during the summer but there can be significant downtime for maintenance and upgrades.
Backup for Students, Faculty and Research Projects
Student Home and Class Share folders are not backed up. Faculty and research websites located on Hybrid are backed up if they are less than 5GB.
Database - CMS - Dynamic sites
We run PHP which has internal support for SQLite databases for student use. Class and research based sites can ask for a MySql database setup from our webmaster Valentin Eidelman (see contact page). There will be no storage of images or other binary files inside the database itself.
If using PHP, make sure that your site supports the currently supported version of PHP. For security reasons, we have to keep the PHP version on the server up to date.
CMS systems, if kept up to date, are kept up to date with the current version of PHP by their developers. If you are running custom code, it is up to you to adapt it to the changes in the PHP language.
Regardless of the software used, it must be kept up-to-date for security reasons. Also, there can be no open registration or threads left open for comments by anonymous users. Even with registered users, such sites have to be closely moderated to avoid having illegal material posted.
For faculty and class projects, CDA only allows plain HTML sites or WordPress solutions. CDA will routinely scan for vulnerabilities and if there are web sites that are not secure, then we will disable them without notice.
Bandwidth usage
Users must ensure that their bandwidth usage is reasonable. By reasonable, we mean as to not interrupt the normal function to the rest of the network.
Space Quotas
All websites (students, faculty, research and class websites) have a maximum space of 5GB allocated to them.
****CDA reserves the right to disable any website without notice that does not adhere to the above guidelines.
Special Projects
CDA can host your special project on our servers. The project must be approved by your department Chair or Administrator and they must submit the request to CDA management. The project will then need to be reviewed and approved by our staff to make sure we can fully support it. Projects will be given a quota of 10GB and a modest expansion of this space is possible by submitting a request to CDA management. All our other web hosting guidelines continue to apply.