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draft for fixing #56 #257

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draft for fixing #56 #257

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72534d4
draft for fixing #56
abizer Feb 27, 2017
a4fb388
add details to draft, needs to be condensed
abizer Feb 27, 2017
bddef2a
update off-site hosting draft
abizer Apr 6, 2017
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48 changes: 47 additions & 1 deletion ocfweb/docs/docs/services/web.md
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@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
[[!meta title="Web hosting"]]


All accounts include hosting with a web address at:
All OCF accounts include web hosting with an address at:

* **`https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~user`** (canonical version)
* **`https://ocf.io/user`** (shorter version)
Expand All @@ -11,6 +11,52 @@ where `user` is the account name.
Group accounts may also request a [[virtual host|doc services/vhost]] for
another domain (e.g., group.berkeley.edu).

#### Off-site hosting
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Can we put most of this information somewhere else? A small section here that links to another page might work well. Right now this takes a page which contains useful technical information about updating your website and inserts a giant blob of political text which isn't relevant to most people.


One question that often comes up is if the OCF is able to host websites
from services such as Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, Tumblr, etc. Unfortunately
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I think it should be made clear here that we can host websites imported from these services, but that we don't have the same editing interfaces and stuff that they do. We also can't somehow host a website also hosted by them, that doesn't make any sense, which is more the point you made in the next paragraph.

due to logistical considerations and University policy, the OCF is unable
to do so. More specifically, the OCF cannot point <group>.berkeley.edu
domain names to off-campus hosting providers, but it can, however, host
websites exported from such providers.

Many website building services like Wix and Weebly make their money by
using a proprietary service to allow users to design their websites, and
subsequently charge users to host those sites. This means providing the
servers, storage space, internet connection, and configurations to allow
these sites to show up on the internet. Obviously, the OCF is unable to
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Not so obviously for some ;)

access this proprietary software and is therefore unable to host sites
developed using them. However, the OCF is capable of hosting anything made
using the free and open-source backends we support, including Wordpress,
Django, Ruby on Rails, Node.js, PHP, and others. You may wish to consider
building your website with those if you desire to host with the OCF.
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I like this section, maybe mention the ability to export from those providers though in case they are already using them? I would make sure to discourage exporting from their service and importing to the OCF though because that complicates setting up their site and probably wouldn't be as easy to maintain due to whatever obfuscation/plugins they use or other stuff like that (unless it's simpler, like migrating from Wordpress.com to Wordpress at the OCF, which we already have a docs section for).


Furthermore, University policy prohibits campus DNS from redirection to
off-site hosts without explicit permission from the University. This means
that, if you want to host your website with Wix or some other provider, we
cannot give you a URL like group.berkeley.edu that points to that website.
If you would like to host off-site, OCF is not the appropriate point of
contact in such cases - one would have to
[contact the university](https://offsitehosting.berkeley.edu/) directly
to request permission. This is primarily relevant to student groups.

Similarly, the OCF does not generally allow hosting under custom domain names
for student groups. This means we do not usually support things like
"you_or_your_group.com" pointing to a website whose files are hosted on OCF
servers. However, we may agree to host websites under custom domains on a
case-by-case basis, usually for University affiliates such as faculty members,
ASUC/University programs, and others. Please [[contact us|doc contact]] for
more information.
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We'd want to link to the vhost policy we are writing for a lot of this part, so I think it might be good if this waits until that is written up, which should be in the next week.


For reference, a typical web hosting scenario involves two things: the domain
name, and the hosting server. The domain name is purchased from a registrar,
and using it involves setting Domain Name System (DNS) records to point to
the address of a hosting server. This server is purchased from any variety
of sources, and must be configured to respond to web requests to the domain
name in question. While the OCF provides both, only a limited subset of their
functionality are available for general use by the campus community due to the
legal, technical, and policy considerations explained above.
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I feel like this last part doesn't work so well, like the part about the server being "purchased from any variety of sources" and then explaining the limited functionality of our servers. To me, it seems like something we shouldn't be explaining (in vague terms anyway) and something that just complicates the topic.


## Uploading Files

Upload files to your web space the same way you [[upload files to your OCF
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