HumTech is happy to provide web hosting services to members of the UCLA Humanities community (faculty, staff, and students). Please read through the options below and select the one that works best for you. If you have any questions, email us at support@humnet.ucla.edu.

Basic Web Hosting

HumTech provides basic web hosting to UCLA Humanities for free, via our HumSpace hosting service. In partnership with Reclaim Hosting, HumSpace uses cPanel to provide you with a blank server running Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. You can install common web content management systems (CMS) like WordPress and Omeka via a simple menu. If you’re more technically savvy, you can also try installing more complex software. URLs are in the format (yoursite).humspace.ucla.edu, although you can substitute another URL that you own, too.

Reclaim provides 24/7 basic support by email for HumSpace users. If they can’t help you resolve your problem, HumTech can provide more advanced support. However, see “Support” below for more details on how HumTech prioritizes support requests.

HumSpace users will initially receive 2GB of storage space for academic-related projects. Upon request, we can increase that to up to 10GB. Undergraduate students will need a faculty sponsor to contact us in advance and let us know about the class or research project for which the student needs hosting. All websites are subject to annual review based on our hosting capacity.

HumSpace server owners are responsible for keeping their servers secure. Please see “Security” below for more details about what that means for you and why it matters.

Advanced Web Hosting

If HumSpace doesn’t meet your needs, HumTech can work with you to design and implement a custom web hosting solution in the cloud. Possible examples include:

• Extended file storage
• Computationally intense analysis
• High-performance databases
• Custom application dev environments

We can design and provision both traditional virtual private servers (VPS) and serverless solutions, of which the latter often meet research needs much more efficiently than traditional servers. However, depending on your needs, we may need to pass some or all of the cost of this hosting on to you.

HumTech provides direct support by email for this hosting option. Please see “Support” below for more details on what that entails.

Custom hosting facilitated by HumTech conforms to all UCLA security guidelines. Please see “Security” below for more details about what that means for you.

If you would like to know more about our Advanced Web Hosting, please contact us to set up a discussion about your needs.

Support

HumTech provides technical support for web hosting services Monday – Friday from 9am to 5pm  However, we all also have other job responsibilities. Therefore, we must respond to support requests according to their technical urgency. We prioritize as follows:

Highest

Maintaining network integrity. Examples include:

• Troubleshooting and repairing offline or non-functional services
• Investigating and mitigating active security threats, e.g. by taking compromised applications or servers offline

Medium

Addressing individual user service integrity. Examples include:

• New account creation
• Troubleshooting and fixing bugs in core services that affect individual users or small groups, but not the entire network or service
• Providing training to users in core applications and services

Low

Customizing individual user experience. Examples include:

• Editing web page content for users, e.g. in individual websites hosted in HumSpace
• Updating custom URLs
• Troubleshooting and fixing bugs in custom applications, e.g. individual websites hosted in HumSpace or in our Advanced Web Hosting
• Helping remediate problems to a website or application created by hackers, after the app has been taken offline or otherwise sequestered

HumTech does not provide technical support between 5PM and 9AM, or over weekends and holidays, except to maintain basic network integrity. If you request support during one of these times, your request will be reviewed and triaged as soon as our team arrives on the next working day.

If, based on the nature of your request or requests, we believe that we don’t have the resources to resolve it in a timely fashion, or if we don’t completely understand the support request, we will instead ask you to meet with us (and possibly a faculty advisor) to discuss it in more detail. That way, we can help you scope out a support solution that will better meet your needs. If you are not available to help us understand and scope the request(s), it may delay our ability to support you.

If the support service level described above will not meet your needs (e.g., because you will be using a particular application as a core part of a scheduled undergraduate class, or because you need support outside of regular working hours), we encourage you to contact us to discuss your situation in more detail. For short-term needs relevant to HumTech’s core mission, we may be able to arrange a special service level. For longer-term needs, we may be able to help you find an external developer or other specialist who can better meet your needs.

Also, please remember that we contract with Reclaim to provide 24/7 basic technical support to HumSpace users. For simpler requests, you will likely receive quicker service by contacting them directly. If you email us with a support request for your HumSpace site that Reclaim could fulfill, we will forward it to Reclaim on your behalf.

Security

Security for your web server or application is your responsibility. All HumTech hosting accounts must abide by UCLA IT policies, FERPA, and any other applicable guidelines and laws. If an account is found to be in violation of these policies, or if it is flagged as possibly having been compromised by hackers, HumTech and Reclaim will take it offline immediately and will not restore it until the issue has been resolved. We’re happy to help you resolve your security issues, but please be aware that we will triage them as any other support request: Our highest priority is sequestering the compromised app, not fixing it (see “Support,” above).

If you don’t have (or no longer have) the capacity to take on this level of responsibility, consider alternative solutions to live web hosting. We’re happy to help you explore archival publishing solutions and repositories into which you can deposit your content for long-term preservation. There are a number of UC-sponsored services for these needs, including eScholarship, Dryad, and the UCLA Library’s Data Science Center. Contact us for more information.