CNS WHS Policy

Published on June 22, 2021 7:12 pm MT
Updated on June 29, 2021 3:18 pm MT

DRAFT COPY IN PROGRESS

College of Natural Sciences Web Hosting Services

Web Hosting Services (WHS) at The College of Natural Sciences (CNS) at Colorado State University provide critical information and services to the CNS community. All managed web hosting services, including those not managed directly by CNSIT, are the property of the institution under which domain they reside. Use of these resources constitutes an explicit binding agreement to abide by relevant policies, standards and applicable laws. Unauthorized use of managed web hosting services is prohibited.

Eligibility

CNS WHS are eligible to groups affiliated with CNS departments or faculty. An explanation of the project clearly stating its relationship with CNS. The CNS WHS are not intended for personal solutions. If disk space, or other resource requirements exceed the standard allotment, payment may be required.
Before submitting a request, carefully consider what resources will be required to fulfill the needs of the site being developed. Please consider the following policies before submitting your request:

Policies

• Access will only be provided for required resources. It is the decision of the Web Hosting Group to determine which resource is best suited for the users need.
• The Web Hosting Group reserves the right to restrict access to resources based on the user’s classification
• Information stored on CNS WHS is backed regularly for disaster recovery purposes. However, individual file or Website restores will not be performed. For example, if a disk drive fails on the server, all of the sites stored on that drive would be restored from backups, but if an account holder accidentally deletes files from the server, a restore would not be performed. The account holder should maintain a primary copy of all files off-line from the servers and be prepared to restore from that copy if necessary.
• Additional software will not be installed on WHS in order to support a user’s application. Users are limited to using the software currently installed on the server. This includes the installation of custom components.

Sites maintained on CNS WHS must adhere to CSU Brand and Accessibility standards. It is the user’s responsibility to review and maintain these standards. More information is available at https://brand.colostate.edu and https://accessibility.colostate.edu

Reasons to choose CNS Web Hosting

• Department/Center sites are offered at no cost to the department.
• A CSU Branded theme is available, as are several premium site plugins.
• Custom CSU Domains and SSLs might be available for an annual fee.
• Integrations with other CSU resources, like SSO and VPN, are available.

Reasons NOT to choose CNS Web Hosting

• If you need to host large amounts of data. You get a modest disk quota to start, with possibilities of small increases. If the purpose is to host large data sets or large amounts of data, a different solution would be better for you.
• You need to create custom functionality or features beyond the standard package offered by CNS WHS. The CNS Web Hosting offers a robust, curated suite of functionality, formatting options, and only supports the CNS WordPress theme.
• If a critical level of site performance is required. CNS WHS are hosted on a shared platform on campus that provides reliable performance. Specific applications and sites may have different requirements that exceed WHS resources.
• You need full web staging for your website or application. CNS WHS does not provide development, test, or staging environments.
• Information on your site or application contains HIPAA or FERPA sensitive information. CNS WHS is not aligned with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a federal law that protects the privacy of student educational records, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a federal law that protects the privacy of medical information.