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University Systems

Self-serve web hosting

Employees and students can set up a personal website. You’re responsible for adding and maintaining content on the site, as well as setting permissions. You need a working knowledge of secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) clients, working with plain text files and UNIX file systems.

There are other, easier options for making websites at UVic. Self-serve web hosting will be most useful to experienced web admins and developers with specific technical needs, such as serving custom PHP or Python applications.

Details

For
Students & employees
Cost
Free

Students and employees can use the web hosting service. However, there are separate hosts (web.uvic.ca for employees and studentweb.uvic.ca for students) and the lifecycles of the services are slightly different.

Sign up and lifecycle

Sign up for web hosting using UVic Online Services. Read the service description carefully. It will tell you when your subscription to the web hosting will expire. If it expires, your website will be removed. You can renew the service up to 2 months before the expiration date.

Regardless of the expiration date, your website will also be removed if you stop working for or studying at UVic. If you want a website that you can keep after you graduate or otherwise leave, look into commercial web hosting services instead.

Cyberduck (SFTP client)

An SFTP client is used for transferring files from one computer to another computer or server. Cyberduck is our recommended SFTP client. It supports most operating systems and has a strong support community. The Computer Help Desk can only offer best-effort support for other SFTP clients.

If you’re using a UVic computer, you can install Cyberduck from Company Portal, Software Center or Self Service. It’s installed in UVic computer labs. Alternately, you can download and install Cyberduck on your own computer.

Before you start

Step-by-step guide

  1. Open Cyberduck.
  2. If this is the first time you’ve opened Cyberduck on this computer, change the transfer settings. (This will make it so you’re prompted to authenticate with Duo once per session instead of every time you transfer a file.)
    • Go to View > Preferences (Windows) or Cyberduck > Settings (Mac).
    • Go to the Transfers tab and set Transfer Files to Use browser connection.
    • Close the Preferences or Settings window.
  3. Select Open Connection.
  4. In the Open Connection window, enter:
    • Connection Type: SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol)
    • Server: web.uvic.ca (for employees) or studentweb.uvic.ca (students)
    • Port: 22
    • Username: your NetLink ID
    • Password: your NetLink ID passphrase
  5. Select Connect.
  6. If this is the first time you’ve connected to this server on this computer, you’ll be warned about an Unknown fingerprint. The fingerprint should match one of UVic’s servers. Select Allow to continue.
  7. You’ll be prompted to Provide additional login credentials. This is a non-standard Duo MFA prompt.
    • If you’re using a bypass code or a hardware token code, enter your code and select Continue.
    • If you’re using the Duo phone app, enter “1” and select Continue. Approve the push notification on your phone.

You should now see a list of files and folders you’ve created along with three pre-made folders (data, www and www-dev).

The files you upload to the www folder will be published to web.uvic.ca (employees) or studentweb.uvic.ca (students).

Shared responsibility

Our team administers the web server. We:

  • keep the server running
    • there are rare outages for planned and unplanned maintenance and situations beyond our control
  • keep shared software on the server (the operating system, the HTTP server, PHP and Python) patched and up-to-date
  • remove software that’s not receiving security patches
  • make nightly backups of user data and store it for 130 days

As a site owner, you're responsible for:

  • making sure that your website isn’t exposing sensitive data
  • keeping any scripts or applications you're running secure and up to date
  • not illegally distributing copyrighted material

We may suspend access to websites that violate these terms or UVic's acceptable use policy for information systems more generally.

Advanced options

We've documented some advanced configuration options on our SharePoint site.

Get help now

Contact IT support to:

  • get help accessing self-serve web hosting
  • report an outage or issue
Get help