.org Web Sites

ITECS provides web services free of charge to support its top-level .edu hosted domains, or "vhosts." The college is limited by its funding and mission to the administration of .edu domains only, granted by EDUCAUSE, although some restricted .org support is offered on a case-by-case basis. No .com or .net domains are allowed, see also Hosting.

Requirements for Hosting a .org

The hosting of .org sites for non-profit purposes is supported by the College of Engineering on a case-by-case basis. The sites are usually for academic conferences, journals, consortia, and special projects that are managed by an NCSU engineering department or faculty member, with some benefit accruing to the college from the affiliation. Most often, these sites are inter-institutional in their mission, support, or membership.

ITECS will host .org sites that meet the following criteria:

• Have sponsorship by a primary department or unit in the College of Engineering.
• Have no commercial intent, advertisement, or transaction at the site. Sites that wish to collect membership, subscription, or registration fees online need to choose a commercial service for these transactions and link offsite.
• Use the same supported tools, configuration, and technologies provided by ITECS to all hosted web sites.
• Pay the costs of domain registration and any third-party technologies and services the site requires beyond what ITECS provides free-of-charge to all college web sites.
• Provide a statement on the web site that the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University is hosting the site. Suggested text:

This site is hosted by the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University (Hosting contact: http://www.itecs.ncsu.edu).

Procedure for Hosting a *.org Domain

1. Have your department webmaster contact the college web coordinator in ITECS (engr-webmaster@ncsu.edu) to create a vhost for your .org domain and a web locker to house the content. ITECS systems will need to determine which web server will be hosting the domain and then provide its IP address to Comtech, which registers it in their DNS servers.
2. Fill out the online Domain Name Request Approval Form. To the question, "Who will be maintaining the Web server for this new domain?" enter "ITECS." When your request is approved, you will be sent the DNS information you need to register the new domain name with the Internet, see instructions for Obtaining an Internet Domain Name Outside of the NCSU.EDU Domain.
3. Register the .org domain name with an Internet registration service (e.g., http://www.networksolutions.com/ or http://godaddy.com) and pay the required fee. Forward the registration acknowledgment you receive to support AT ncstate.net. After a few days, the new domain name will appear on the Internet root servers and added to the NCSU DNS servers. A confirmation message will be sent to you to let you know that the new domain is in place.
   Important note: The web address for your org. domain will be www.orgname.org, even if you did not specifically register your domain name with www (see following section).
   

URL, Site Path, and Permissions

The URL you publish for your .org domain must include www, i.e., www.orgname.org.  ITECS web servers are configured to require www, even if you registered the domain name without it.  Although some browsers will automatically add www if the orgname.org address fails, other browsers and versions may not, so be sure that all URLs you publish for your .org site include www.

ITECS configures its Apache servers to deliver content to your .org site from its associated web locker in AFS at /afs/eos.ncsu.edu/engrwww/orgname.org (www is not part of the pathname).  A web locker is an allocation of space that looks like any other directory or folder, but it is actually an independent AFS volume with its own quota and permission groups.

The locker owner's Unity ID and three locker permission groups are placed on the access control list (ACL) of the web locker.  A typical setup for a .org site looks like the one below.  The URL, locker-specific path, owner, and access groups are in bold.

International Organization for Structural Mechanics in Reactor Technology (IASMiRT)
URL: www.iasmirt.org
Path: /afs/eos.ncsu.edu/engrwww/iasmirt.org

Access list for . is
Normal rights:
  iasmirt-www:wwwread rl
  iasmirt-www:wwwedit rlidwk
  iasmirt-www rlidwk
  itecs-admin:lockeraudit rl
  engr:www-servers rl
  itecs-admin:webadmins rl
  system:administrators rlidwka
  matzen rlidwk

Only the owner is listed by UnityID on the ACL (must be faculty or staff). The Unity IDs of all other people needing access to the site are placed in locker-specific access groups.

• Owner: matzen is the faculty owner with write (rlidwk) access. The owner can add/remove people to/from the following groups via the LOCKER PORTAL.
• Admin Group: iasmirt-www is the administrators group with write (rlidwk) access. Note: No "a" rights (rlidwka) are granted or needed with this configuration.
• Edit Group: iasmirt-www:wwwedit is the editors group with write access (rlidwk).
• Read Group: iasmirt-www:wwwread is a read-only group of people with read-look (rl) permission to use/copy files (not usually needed).

If non-NCSU people need access to the web locker, you can get them guest Unity accounts, or contact ITECS for assistance.

If you are the owner of the locker, use the web-based LOCKER PORTAL to change permissions, request more quota, alter settings, etc.