Accounts & Access Management

Website Hosting

The university’s website is a platform for communicating with external stakeholders, such as prospective students, researchers, and faculty, about university activities. The Office of Innovative Technologies (OIT) and the Office of Communications and Marketing (OCM) work together to make decisions about sites and content within the university’s website domain. Remember: any site within the utk.edu domain structure reflects on the university.

University-Supported WordPress for Academic and Administrative Units

University WordPress websites are hosted on OIT/OCM’s managed WordPress service, WP Engine. This offering is designed to allow departments to manage their content without worrying about updating WordPress.

OIT and OCM will work with the following units to create the site shells, manage plugins, and secure URLs:

Colleges, schools, and major administrative divisions
Academic Departments, Academic Support Units, Administrative Divisions, Administrative Support Units
Research initiatives, labs, groups, and projects
Special events and conferences

Learn more about University-Supported WordPress

Public Linux Environment for Labs, Student Organizations, Projects, and Special Events

OIT provides virtual server space for faculty, staff, and students—at no additional charge. This service is perfect for building websites for coursework and non-WordPress organizational websites.

The Public Linux Environment is a robust, full-stack LAMP service running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which includes:

Public websites hosted on Volweb (http://volweb.utk.edu/)
1 GB quota
Various programming languages
Apache
Access to a MySQL database service

After creating a Public Linux account, UT students, staff, and faculty can build websites, compile programs, edit files, and more. Your Public Linux account is available for one year after leaving the university.

What Is Volweb?

Volweb is the web hosting section of the Public Linux Environment where you can host content management systems, like WordPress sites, using the UT Template. Public Linux is accessed by NetID, password, and two-factor authentication.

Learn more about Public Linux accounts
Sign up for your account

Getting Started Guides

The following guides have been created to assist you with this process:

Using Two-Factor Authentication with Public Linux

You should receive a Duo prompt when trying to connect to your Public LAMP account using an SSH or SFTP client. (If you are logging in with a departmental NetID and the connection is not working, you may need to first associate your Duo login with the departmental NetID, or have the owner of the departmental NetID add you if you are not the owner). In addition, volweb.utk.edu WordPress sites will require a manual update and upload process. If you are using a virtual host or vanity URL with your Public LAMP account (these have utk.edu or tennessee.edu in the url), you may continue to use the Dashboard to update WordPress.

MySQL

MySQL is a popular open-source SQL database management system and is often used as a free back-end database for many web and open-source applications. If you plan to set up WordPress on your Public Linux account, you must sign up for a MySQL database.

Learn more about MySQL
Set up your MySQL database

Custom Vanity URL or Domains (Virtual Host)

Departments and organizations with an existing website can request a URL. Because the university’s website is a platform for communicating with external stakeholders about university activities, requests for top-level URLs, sites using utk.edu and tennessee.edu, are subject to approval.

Examples of top-level URLs include admissions.utk.edu, cci.utk.edu, and payroll.tennessee.edu.

Learn more about the URL options.

Do you need help understanding the differences between University-Supported WordPress and Public Linux? Discover which web hosting solution is right for you.