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Policies and Documents

Policy Statement on Website Hosting and URL Addressing

Because the websites of School of Medicine departments, divisions, offices, academic centers, and affiliated programs reflect upon the School as a whole, it is necessary to define policies concerning fundamental elements of collaborative web development for the School. These policies have been adopted not as restrictions or impedances to progress, but as uniform guidelines to remedy immediate and foreseeable problems with the distributed website development & maintenance system now in place.

1. Hosting

The University provides web hosting free of charge on 24/7 supported, high bandwidth systems. AAIT likewise provides account creation and software for accessing these systems, as well as basic training upon request on using the system (please note that AAIT does not provide web development training). In addition, the School of Medicine ITS office provides dedicated application server space for more sophisticated development initiatives, such as dynamic web sites, web application services, database integration, and streaming technologies. These services are provided at minimal cost, as the environment space is shared among multiple entities. In addition, SOM-ITS has a development division whose primary mission is to provide School-wide web services in coordination with the specific needs of users. Thus, it is neither technically nor fiscally viable for each School unit to operate its own web servers, negotiate contracts with third party hosting companies, or procure web services or domain names from any external vendor.

2. URL's

The official URL for the School of Medicine shall be http://med.emory.edu (note that this is but an alias to the old URL http://www.emory.edu/WHSC/MED, and it is not necessary to operate one's own web server to achieve an abbreviated or customized web address). Departmental websites, as well as any other programs or offices which report directly to the School's central administration, should be referenced one level below at http://med.emory.edu/DEPARTMENTNAME (case insensitive). This will be the official URL, as recognized by the School and University, and can be redirected elsewhere.

3. Policy on Web Advertisements

Emory University and the School of Medicine are considered non-profit entities, and thus cannot engage in commercial advertisement on any of their websites, whether University hosted or no. Sites hosted on ISP or public domain servers which rotate advertising banners are a violation of University policy and are not permitted links from other University pages or rights to use the Emory University or School of Medicine name.

4. Commercial Domain Names

The University provides a full range of DNS services, in addition to the SOM-ITS managed directory structure beneath http://med.emory.edu. If desired, it is possible to create domain aliases in the emory.edu domain without the unnecessary expenditure and configuration associated with purchasing .com or other external domain names. Per University policy, all officially recognized Emory websites must exist within the emory.edu domain. Sites hosted externally or with .com extensions may not use official Emory logos, represent themselves as official Emory sites, or obtain links from official Emory sites.

5. Changes to URL

Changes to official site locations impact the entire University website, as every link to the site must be updated whenever a change occurs. Thus, if a School of Medicine entity wishes to change its URL, it must first inform SOM-ITS so the official site redirect can be established. It is seldom necessary to actually change the physical location of the website files, as DNS aliases are quickly and easily created to change the "preferred" URL, while the old address continues to function.