Quick Start

Available to: Students, Faculty

Cost: No charge

This service provides students enrolled in an academic class that teaches web design and web technologies a place to create websites. We provide a web address and a directory on the server, and you create and maintain your own pages and upload them to the server when you are ready to publish. This service provides short-term sites for academic purposes.

Benefits

As a student, you get a web directory where you can create your own website and web pages from scratch, without the confinements of a content management system. You control all aspects of the site design and content. You can upload files with an SFTP client or use a site management tool, such as Dreamweaver.

Key Features

  • Website – Your site address will be class.bu.edu/{username}/
  • Space – You will have 10 GB of disk space for your site
  • Security – All sites are hosted on BU’s Linux Virtual Lab

What to Expect

This service normally will be available 24 by 7 except for standard change windows, as described in IS&T’s standard policies, procedures, and schedules for making changes and for an annual one-day maintenance outage. Any outage caused by a need for hardware repairs will not be resolved until the following day. For additional information on availability, see the SCC Status page.

Requirements

  • Requests for websites on class.bu.edu must come from a BU faculty member or instructor
  • Students must
    • Be registered in a for-credit class at BU that requires building “from scratch” websites as a requirement for the course
    • Have an active bu.edu account
    • Have knowledge of HTML and/or an HTML editing package (such as Dreamweaver)
  • Because this service is designed for short-term work for an academic class, sites on class.bu.edu will expire and be deleted after one year. Students who wish to retain their work after the class is over should keep their own copy of the site for their personal use, archive, or portfolio.

Getting Started

  • Faculty should submit a ticket to the IS&T Help Center specifying the names and email addresses of the students registered for the class who will need individual websites. Include “University class website request on class.bu.edu” in the service request ticket.
  • The overall process has been documented and provided to faculty members who use this service for existing courses. Faculty members who are creating new courses that will require “from-scratch” student websites should Contact the IS&T Help Center for more information.