Hi, everyone, After running a pilots to host our own Wordpress multisite and set up individual Omeka instances for scholars, we decided last year to contract with Reclaim Hosting to offer NYU scholars a c-panel with one-click installs of, among other things: 1. fully customizable version of Wordpress (NYU IT already runs a Wordpress service, called Web Publishing, https://wp.nyu.edu/, which has predefined design themes and plugins and is designed to be as trouble-free as possible: you can't get to the php, you can override CSS but can't modify the original, etc.) 2. Omeka 3. Scalar 4. MySQL databases (with PHP and Python)
We're been running this pilot service, called Web Hosting, https://hosting.nyu.edu/, since January 2016, and are in the process of transitioning it to a full-fledged service. We're funneling as may people as possible to the Web Publishing service, described above, because it's safe (i.e., unbreakable) and should meet the majority of scholars' needs (we use it for our own Digital Scholarship Services (DSS) blog, https://wp.nyu.edu/dss/). But for those who need more Wordpress customization or the other platforms offered, and are comfortable working in a more technologically complex environment, the Web Hosting service meets many of those needs. In our pilot we have been exploring not only the tech side of the service, but also how to provide scalable and sustainable user support. Since NYU DSS is a very small operation, that has led us to partner with service providers across NYU who can, themselves, support their own constituents. As we transition from pilot to service, we're considering how to scale up account provisioning, how to handle account de-provisioning (what happens when users leave NYU? How will we know? What do we do with their sites and content?), how to manage media storage (can users store things elsewhere and point to them from Wordpress, Omeka, Scalar?), and other such issues.
