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Group Web Sites

There are many freely available options for setting up a group web site at the University of Michigan:

SiteMaker

Many groups use UM.SiteMaker to set up and maintain their group web sites. More information on UM.SiteMaker can be found on our SiteMaker Support pages.

CTools

CTools is also ideally suited for group-project web sites. Collaborators can share resources and create e-mail archives. More information on Ctools can be found on our CTools Support pages.

Drupal CMS

ITCS offers websites that use the Drupal CMS via their Web Application Sign-Up Service. Drupal which allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website.

IT Central Services

ITCS provides an option for faculty & staff who would simply like an allocation of online file space to develop their own group web pages. To request AFS course space, simply fill out the form listed on the ITCS page and submit it to the ITCS Accounts Office.

SPH-Hosted Sites

School of Public Health Computing Services provides free web hosting for groups or centers clearly affiliated with the School of Public Health. These groups are responsible for developing and maintaining their own web sites. A list of such groups is provided on our Research Centers & Initiatives page. We also host several student groups.

If the person designated responsible for developing and maintaining the web site does not know how to create web sites using HTML, we recommend that they use the Adobe Dreamweaver web page editing program. Dreamweaver is available on all UM Computing Sites computers as well as the computers in the Public Health Library's Multimedia Lab.

Dreamweaver may be purchased at a discount from the following sources:

M-MarketSite via Wolverine Access
the UM Computing Showcase
Adobe using their education store.

Web Services provides free hands-on Dreamweaver training workshops during Fall and Winter semesters. If needed, SPH Web Services can provide them with a list of vendors that groups have worked with before. Mary Beth Lewis, the school’s Web Editor, will be happy to look over web site content and suggest changes that will make it more consistent with the content on the SPH web site. Patty Bradley-Diehl, the Web Administrator, will be happy to assist with the uploading of initial files, and provide technical expertise.

Group web sites do not need to match the look and feel of the SPH web site. However, the Web Administrator will be happy to provide the group with templates if they wish to have their site look like the rest of the SPH web site. These templates are created to be used with the software Dreamweaver.

Once a group has their web site files ready to be published, they should follow the following steps:

Familiarize themselves with our Web Publishing Guidelines before proceeding.
Decide what the URL of the web site will be on the SPH web server. All URLs on the SPH web server start with http://www.sph.umich.edu/. The group needs to choose one short word, with all lower case letters and no spaces or special characters. This word will become the name of the folder that all their web site files are kept in on the SPH web server. For example, the Michigan Center for Genomics and Public Health’s URL is http://www.sph.umich.edu/genomics/. All of the web site files for this web site are in a folder called genomics.
The SPH staff member who will be updating the web site needs to get an SPH UNIX account, if they do not have one already. There is no fee. There is a form for requesting this account . When the staff member fills out the form, they can tell SPH Computing Services that they need their space on the web server set up, and what their folder will be called.
Once SPH Computing Services has completed the request, the group’s space on the web server will be ready to have files uploaded to it. Files can be uploaded via Dreamweaver or SSH.
Ask the Office of Communications if it is appropriate to put a link to the new web site among the major centers and initiatives (mostly multidisciplinary) listed on the Research Center & Initiatives page. This request can be initiated through an e-mail to sph.web@umich.edu, which is monitored by the Web Editor from the Office of Communications

If you need to hire an outside vendor to design or create your web site, please contact SPH Web Services to obtain a list of our recommended vendors.

Your Domain Name

If you would like to register a domain and have it pointed to your web site, SPH Web Services would be delighted to set that up for you. The cost of registering a domain is $12 a year. Please contact us for more information.