What is it?
The “web hotel” is a place where our researchers and employees can publish stuff on the web. It has a WordPress server, it can run shiny apps, and it can also host ordinary static web sites. It does have the ability to serve websites under other host-names, and thus can be used to give a project a “web presence”, with its own web address.
This new one replaces the server known as fafner — which you may fondly remember, but which was, at the end, an enormous security hole.
The new setup involves both a separation of different functions across several servers, for easier maintenance, as well as protection in the form of upgraded security and a fronting firewall.
How do you get your own space?
Send an email to it-support@meb.ki.se, and tell us what you want to do.
Are there restrictions and caveats?
Well, yes …
- Obviously, it’s meant to be used for publishing stuff related to your work at the department. Your CV, a blog on epidemiology or biostats, a website for a course you are running, things like that.
- For safety’s sake, there are limits to what you are allowed to do with your site: you cannot add users on your own, and you cannot install plugins and themes, only activate the ones already installed (or deactivate). We will try to maintain a nice selection of themes and plugins for you, but if you have needs or suggestions outside that, tell us, and we will try to help you.
- Also for the sake of safety, we will ruthlessly upgrade the software running the site, even if that breaks stuff.
- If you run a shiny app, you’re on your own, basically — you get a login on the server, and your own R environment, and you are responsible for getting it to work. Again, we’ll try to help, but we’re not the R specialists here …
- And while we are talking about shiny: it’s meant to show off algorithms and clever tricks — it’s not for running computation services for the research community or the public.
Questions?
Send an email! To it-support@meb.ki.se, as usual.