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Web Development and Hosting

Tools and services for publishing and managing online content. A variety of free and for-fee options allow the Stanford community to create and administer a dynamic, secure, and recognizable web presence.

Stanford UIT provides access for faculty and staff to the Apple Developer Connection (ADC). ADC is designed for iOS and macOS software developers and provides access to developer resources necessary for creating, building and distributing applications for Apple hardware platforms.

WordPress is a popular, free, open-source content management system originally built for blogging and now used to create websites of all shapes and sizes. University IT recommends using Stanford Domains as your hosting platform to install WordPress for personal use. WordPress on Stanford Domains is good for small, low-traffic personal websites, portfolios, and more.

The Stanford CGI (Common Gateway Interface) Service enables users to run programs on the web server to provide dynamic content, collect user input, and offer services otherwise unavailable on the normal Stanford Web service. CGI is available, by request, to any user, group, or department with assigned AFS space.

For every class taught at Stanford, faculty members and TAs are entitled to a suite of centrally-hosted online services that have become an indispensable part of University-level instruction: web site space and templates, an email mailing list, a newsgroup for online discussions, and a central location on the campus network for sharing and storing documents and other data. There is no charge for these services.

Cloud-based web hosting for complex and highly custom websites.

G Suite provides faculty, staff, and students with access to Google document management, groups, and sites. Undergraduate students who already have Google mail accounts, plus some schools and departments, can access their @ stanford email and calendar via G Suite.

The Metrics Dashboard presents details about the health and performance of many of the systems provided by University IT. This service is available free-of-charge to current faculty, staff, and students.

See Vulnerability Management (Qualys)

SAML 2.0 is one in a set of authentication and authorization technologies underlying Stanford WebLogin, which provides access by individuals across organizations to protected web pages and applications, with just one login action.

An SSL certificate is a signed electronic guarantee that verifies the authenticity of a particular server. It's used for providing web pages through an encrypted connection. Any service accessible by SSL must have a certificate, including any web server with encrypted or “secure” content.

Stanford Sites Intranet is a fee-based service for building and managing a website for private, secure information sharing.

The Stanford Web Services unit builds department and group websites that are hosted on a shared infrastructure and provides assistance with larger projects requiring dedicated hosting or custom design. In addition, Stanford Web Services staff help to design and maintain key components of the University's shared and self-service web publishing tools.

The Qualtrics survey tool is an easy-to-use, full-featured, web-based tool for creating and conducting online surveys.

Qualys vulnerability scanner finds security vulnerabilities in web applications and other network services and helps you remediate them.

Explore options for where to build and maintain your website, and what University IT recommends for different website needs.

Stanford’s central web infrastructure services are available free to University departments, officially recognized groups, and all members of the Stanford community who have a full-service SUNet ID. These services are part of the main campus computing infrastructure and are handled by a server called web.stanford.edu.

The Stanford Web Virtual Host service lets you replace a long, unwieldy URL with one that is shorter and more descriptive of your website's content.

These virtual URLs help people remember how to get to your website and make it easier for them to type its URL into their browser. Two types of virtual hosts are available:

  • Vanity URLs (redirects) — the real URL of your website is displayed in the browser window after people arrive at your website.
  • Virtual Host Proxy — the virtual URL stays in the browser window after people arrive at your website.

Stanford Domains is a free, self-service web publishing tool used to create personal digital spaces for various media, e.g., portfolios and wikis. Stanford students, faculty, and staff can register a free subdomain (mysubdomain.su.domains) and install WordPress, MediaWiki, Drupal, or other popular open-source applications.

Stanford Sites is a self-service tool for building and managing Drupal-based websites for University work. Stanford Sites is available for use directly by faculty, staff, and students as a free, self-service utility requiring little technical expertise.

See Blogs (WordPress on Stanford Domains)

Workgroup Manager is a web application that gives Stanford community members a place to define groups of community members for use in various online applications, including web authentication. Though the name workgroup may imply usefulness only to faculty or staff, workgroups can be helpful to, and maintained by, anyone with a current SUNet ID.