UCSB sponsors a website hosting service for the campus called Pantheon. It offers sites in Drupal (https://www.drupal.org) and WordPress (https://www.wordpress.org) to meet the content management needs for UCSB. This includes a UCSB Theme for Drupal (https://brand.ucsb.edu/tools-and-templates/websites) which provides a site design template so you can focus on content and providing information. This theme also maintains a site design consistency throughout the UCSB web presence. The service features hosting along with ongoing maintenance and management via Pantheon, to ensure 24x7x365 availability, performance, and security.

How to Request a Connect Site by Pantheon

The Pantheon service is available free to host UCSB top level sites, divisional sites, college sites, department sites, and faculty sites. It is important to understand that we support the hosting service and not the actual website creation or code maintenance. It is up to you to develop the Drupal or WordPress site yourself for your UCSB organization.

Site Naming Conventions

Site creation should follow our standard naming convention of a URL separated by dashes and include a version number, for example connect-ucsb-edu-v02.

Use the UCSB IT Service Catalog to request a new site:
https://ucsb.service-now.com/it?id=sc_cat_item&sys_id=021ef6a5dbae360017bd7c28bf9619a6

UCSB Domains for Live Sites

Hosting a site on Pantheon requires a UCSB DNS manager to configure our local DNS to enable your site to go live.  The top level domain is ucsb.edu, department top-level subdomains are <dept>.ucsb.edu (e.g., biology.ucsb.edu), and below that are department subdomains for example undergrad.biology.ucsb.edu.  All UCSB department domains must have a DNS manager that can be contacted via help desk or directly via email using the domain convention, for example hostmaster@biology.ucsb.edu would be contacted to approve a website at undergrad.biology.ucsb.edu.  You must get your website approved by your department DNS manager if you want your site to go live.

All department top-level subdomains (e.g., biology.ucsb.edu) must be approved by Public Affairs if you want your site to go live.

Use the UCSB IT Service Catalog to request a new top-level domain:
https://ucsb.service-now.com/it?id=sc_cat_item&sys_id=d1f8bcd8db54f30025057b5b8c961919

Retiring a Live Site

It is very important when deleting your site on Pantheon to contact your UCSB DNS manager to remove the local DNS entry for the site.

How to Log into the Pantheon Dashboard

Pantheon Dashboard, start at https://dashboard.pantheon.io, and select “Use Single Sign-On”? Log in here.
See screenshot:


Enter your email address in the format of UCSBnetID@ucsb.edu and you will be redirected to the campus login page. You will be presented with the Pantheon Dashboard and a list of sites that you are a member of.

About the UCSB Web Theme

The UCSB Web Theme is an out-of-box website-building solution for university websites. It offers pre-build page layouts, modular design tools, and continuous enhancement free of charge. Learn more at the Web Theme User Guide (https://webtheme.brand.ucsb.edu/) site.

We encourage everyone who is planning to deploy a Drupal website to use this UCSB theme upstream. This provides UCSB with a unified and consistent web presence. It enables developers who change departments to quickly start editing and managing their content.

Pantheon Resources

Pantheon Docs https://docs.pantheon.io/
Pantheon WebOps Workflow https://docs.pantheon.io/pantheon-workflow
Pantheon Status https://status.pantheon.io/

At a Glance

features include:

  • Drupal and WordPress platform
  • Git-Based Dev, Test, And Live Environments
  • Free HTTPS (SSL) Certificates
  • Integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN)
  • Pantheon Upstreams, package your core CMS, custom code, theme, and open source components
  • Role-Based Site Access
  • New Relic performance monitoring
  • High-availability, high-performance web server hosting
  • Ongoing maintenance of platform security via regular updates
  • Daily backup with the ability to restore data up to two months
  • Guaranteed 99.9% uptime via automated system monitoring
  • Service calls during normal UCSB business hours (8 AM -5 PM weekdays)
  • Higher performance tiers, potentially at additional costs above the CGF (core) funded base level

 

Get Help

Learn: Pantheon Docs
Search: Knowledge Base
Request support