University of Hawaii Hosted Website Service

About These Practices

Website Lifecycle

A clearly defined and well managed website lifecycle ensures that the UH Hosted Website Service delivers quality services to its participating websites and their audiences. The lifecycle defines the phases that a website project will undergo and thereby details the practices ITS follows in managing those websites. The lifecycle phases are summarized in the table below.

Table 1. Phases of the Website Lifecycle
Details of each phase of the lifecycle and how projects transition from one phase to another are described below.

Request

The first phase in the website's lifecycle is the preparation of the formal website request.

An official request can be made online at http://www.hawaii.edu/its/webservice/front.php using the online application form. You will be required to select whether you would like to either:

1. Request for a website through the multisite service
2. Request for web space to upload your own managed website

The application includes the following:

1. Choosing a web address to represent your project

   The URL you choose must reflect the University of Hawaii URL Naming Guidelines. To avoid audience confusion with existing and future initiatives, avoid the use of acronyms. A designated campus web content coodinator, not working under ITS, will review your requested URL for approval. The campus coordinator has the final say, and therefore we will not be able to process your request if your URL is denied.

2. Official Request from an Executive Sponsor

   The official request is a list of basic project and contact information accompanied by the Executive Sponsor's approval, acquired electronically. The Executive Sponsor must be one of the following:

   
   

   Requesting Unit	Appropriate Executive Sponsor
   Department	Department Chair
   Staff Office	Senior Office Administrator
   Programs or Project	Principle Investigator

3. Purpose and Description of Your Project

   The purpose and description provided should cover the scope of the project, the project timeline, and the what resources are available and needed for the project. This allows ITS to accurately assess the impact of the website on the hosted service and to determine what resources need to be set up when processing the approved request.

4. Service Level Agreement

   The Service Level Agreement (SLA) documents the level of service to be provided by ITS, the understanding and agreement of the sponsor regarding that level of service, and the commitment of the sponsor to comply with all guidelines associated with this service.

Roles and Responsibilities

The assignment of roles helps ensure success by clarifying responsibilities and identifying communication channels. Four typical roles are described below. For your project team, identify one or more persons for each role. For smaller project teams, one person may fill multiple roles.

Note: All individuals who are involved with managing the website files (including content management system updates) must have a personal UH Username to access the web server. For security reasons, we do not allow departmental and organizational UH Username access to the web server. If you have hired a contracted web developer who does not have a UH Username, your department will need to submit a request for a username for your developer using the instructions at https://www.hawaii.edu/askus/1785.

Website Executive Sponsor

The website Executive Sponsor authorizes the creation and continued existence of a website. Sponsors are generally faculty or staff responsible for running departments, staff offices, and/or projects. This role can be rotated or reassigned as project membership changes over time. Executive Sponsors are contacted yearly to reaffirm official support for the website. If Executive Sponsorship is withdrawn, the site enters the Observation phase (see Website Lifecycle). The Executive Sponsor is ultimately responsible for the appropriateness of the site's content and its applicability to the mission of UH.

Website Manager (Primary Contact)

The Website Manager works with Developers and Content Providers, the Executive Sponsor, and any other stakeholders to achieve the vision of the website. Functions of the Website Manager include setting the project timeline, managing progress, facilitating communication between team members. The Website Manager usually has the final word on how the site is built and maintained.

The Website Manager is typically the Primary Contact identified in the Service Level Agreement. The Primary Contact ensures that the website functions properly. Problems reported to ITS regarding the website will be forwarded to the Primary Contact. In the event that the website unreasonably taxes the resources of the UH Hosted Website Service, the Primary Contact will be notified. Depending on the severity of the problem, the site may enter the Observation phase until the problem is resolved. If ITS cannot reach either the Primary Contact, the Executive Sponsor will be notified, and, at the discretion of ITS, the website may enter the Observation phase.

Website Developer

The Website Developer develops and maintains the website. Developers perform the necessary programming and on-going code maintenance required to ensure that the website is up-to-date and functioning properly.

Because this is a hosted service, all websites may be impacted by upgrades to the software and systems upon which they depend. The Website Developer is responsible for making the changes to his or her code required to keep it functioning properly.

One or more people may be assigned to this role. For critical websites, ITS recommends staffing at least two Website Developers.

Website Content Provider

The Website Content Provider provides written text, images, and or graphic design elements to the Website Developer. The Content Provider is responsible for keeping the website information fresh, accurate and current. The Content Provider develops meaningful information for their particular target audiences.

For small websites, the Developer and the Content Provider are often the same person while larger websites typically employ multiple Developers and Content Providers.

Operational Practices and Policies

Executive Policy E2.210

Executive Policy E2.210 is the basis for university-wide policies and practices for the acceptable use and management of all University of Hawaii information technology resources. The policy is available at http://www.hawaii.edu/policy/e2.210.

Annual Confirmation of Sponsorship and Support

Annual renewal of official sponsorship and support from the Executive Sponsor is required. An email reminder is sent annually to the Executive Sponsor informing them how to reaffirm their support for the project. This entails logging in to the project's administrative website and submitting a simple, online renewal form. This action can only be performed by the Executive Sponsor.

Adding/Removing Individual Access

Departments, programs, units, and organizations under the UH are responsible for notifying us of any changes to their website management team. If running an individual content management system, the existing website management team should ensure its new management team has access to the website's administration dashboard/console. Any failure to pass off access could lead to being locked out of the website. In such a case, the website's current management team may only be provided the option to build a new website from scratch.

Any person who needs access to manage an existing website under the UH Hosted Website Service must go through an authorized individual with existing web server access to manage that website. We require that authorized individual to send in a written consent for us to grant this new person access. The authorized individual must email us at web-support-l@lists.hawaii.edu from their personal UH email to verify authorization.

The email request to add a person must include the following:

1. The full name of the person to grant access
2. The UH Username of the person to grant access
3. The web address of the website of which to apply the granted access to

The same process applies to have an individual removed of their website access. However, an individual with existing access can also request to have their own web access removed (e.g. no longer with the university, graduated, no longer employed with department).

Emails received from an unauthorized individual email account will not be processed, and may cause delays in granting access. Any website that is found to have any individuals with existing access are subject to entering the Observation phase.

Disk and Database Quotas

The disk quota for the production environment is 1GB. The database quota for the production production is 250MB. As of September 2017, management has discontinued billing for additional space. Any department requiring more resources may want to consider using the VMware service.

Since resources are shared by all service participants, abuse of quotas is taken seriously. Every attempt should be made by each project to remove old or redundant files/data and to keep file size to a minimum.

This service is not designed to handle streaming media of any kind. Please use third-party resources such as YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, etc. to handle this type of content. Google@UH Consumer Apps are available for personal use, and users need to agree to the Terms of Service of the consumer apps.

With Google's changes to the Terms of Service, UH faculty and staff can now use the Google@UH Consumer Apps YouTube for work purposes. However, faculty, staff, and students are waiving their privacy/FERPA protections that the Google agreement for the core applications provides protections for.

General Requests

All requests are assessed for their appropriateness and viability. This is determined by considering many factors including available resources, impact to other participants, and appropriateness of the request. Most requests receive a response within 5 business days.

Application Approval

In order to ensure that participants receive fast, reliable service, each request for a new hosted website results in an assessment of its potential impact on existing websites and resources. In some cases there may be significant delays in approving a new website while upgrades necessary to support additional sites are acquired, installed, tested, and deployed.

Service Level Agreement

The Service Level Agreement (SLA) documents a common understanding between ITS and the Sponsor of the available services and the conditions under which they are offered.

ITS Data Center Infrastructure

ITS provides a Data Center designed to support the availability requirements of UH for its servers and applications, including this service. By design the ITS Data Center is a 24-7 facility and includes tools and practices that provide for rapid detection and escalation of problems as they arise. While ITS has taken precautions to ensure high availability of servers and services, continuous availability cannot be quaratined due to the need for periodic maintenance, infrastructure improvements, construction, and unforeseen events.

ITS Data Center features include:

• Uninterrupted power supply
• Redundantly powered equipment racks
• Redundant air conditioning units
• Air temperature monitors
• Network monitoring
• Server and services monitoring
• Video surveillance
• Fire suppression system
• Fire detection sensors and alarms
• Automated tape backups
• Robotic tape librarian

Network Security

ITS protects all production servers with network firewalls. By design the network firewall rules restrict all access to each server except that which is necessary for the service(s) on the server. Backups and ITS management functions are done over a private network rather than over the public network.

CSOC Monitoring

Servers and Services are monitored by the ITS Client Service and Operations Center (CSOC) 24 hours/7 days a week. In the event of a problem, the escalation process provides for documented procedures designed to ensure expeditious problem resolution and restoration of the service.

System Backup and Recovery

Full system backups are done weekly with incremental backups done daily after normal working hours. Full system backups are retained for three weeks. Daily incremental backups are retained until the next full system backup.

While ITS has well established practices and procedures to ensure the reliability of backups, ITS can assume no liability for any problems with restoring from backups. All ITS backups are done over a private network.

In the event of catastrophic failure of multiple production services, ITS prioritizes transactional services such as the Student and Financial services before web services, including the UH Hosted Website Service.

Database Disaster Recovery

Full MySQL backups for disaster recovery are done weekly and retained for three cycles. There are no daily incremental backups. Backups require that the MySQL database be offline. Backups are automated to occur at 3:00 a.m. Monday morning.

Recovery will be done only for a disaster using the latest full backup. ITS will not recover database for any user error. The Website Manager is responsible for ensuring database backups are performed appropriately.

General Commitment to Accessibility

By University policy, all web content should be in compliance with federal Section 508 Standards and should also meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level AA as outlined in EP2.210 (http://www.hawaii.edu/policy/e2.210). This includes any theme used if using a CMS (e.g. Drupal, WordPress). Please refer to the UH Guidelines for Accessible Technology and Digital Media at http://www.hawaii.edu/access/uhguidelines.html and to Information on Website Accessibility at http://www.hawaii.edu/access/webaccess.html, for more information on how to make your web content accessible.

Unscheduled Downtimes

ITS endeavors to minimize unscheduled downtimes. However, these may occur for a variety of reasons including hardware or software failure, human error, or emergency security upgrades.

Interruptions in service and their resolutions are posted to the ITS Alerts page at http://www.hawaii.edu/its/alerts.