Terms of Use

Eligibility for this Service:

UWM Shared Hosting service is available as a LAMP-based platform for hosting and maintaining University web applications for schools, colleges, administrative units, academic centers, and other university-wide programs and services.

This service is not available to host individual/personal websites for students, faculty, staff or Registered Student Organizations.

Responsible Use:

Customers using this service are required to:

Follow the UWM Acceptable Use of University Information Technology Resources

Protect the privacy and confidentiality of student, patient, employee and other institutional information, as required by FERPA and HIPAA.

Comply with all other applicable University policies, as well as State and Federal laws.

Inappropriate Use Policy:

We reserve the right to remove a website or application if the website or application compromises the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of University data or information systems; violates University policies or laws that govern the use of University data; or performs a function that is inappropriate for a non-restricted data environment (UWM Shared Hosting service has a dedicated restricted hosting environment). Examples of inappropriate use of this service include, but are not limited to:

  • Security issues resulting from software flaws
  • Site neglect and failure to apply security patches
  • Spam or other inappropriate commercial activity
  • Publication or collection of information inappropriate for a public facing web server such as credit card numbers, protected health information, social security numbers, or FERPA protected information

Restriction of Data:

The hosting platform and application access should be as restrictive as possible and only open to the audience it serves. UWM Shared Hosting will implement firewall rules, but the customers are responsible for ensuring their application is as restrictive as possible. For more information, please see Secure Application Coding Guidelines.

HIPAA Covered Data:

The UWM Shared Hosting restricted data hosting environment is not suitable for handling protected health information (PHI), subject to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rule. We reserve the right to decline a request of hosting a website or application if the data processed by the website or application are determined to be protected health information subject to HIPAA Privacy Rule by the UW-Milwaukee HIPAA Privacy Officer or HIPAA Security Officer.

For more information, please see the UW-Milwaukee HIPAA Guidelines.

If your website collects or stores health information or may have the need to do so, please contact PHI Governance Group, HIPAA Security Officer, or HIPAA Privacy Officer.

Compliance:

It is your responsibility to comply with Restricted Data Security Standards. If your application stores, processes, transmits, handles or otherwise accesses restricted data as defined by UW-Milwaukee IT Security, and UWM Shared Hosting is not notified, the University will take appropriate action to enforce compliance.

Web Hosting Account:

A web hosting account is defined as a web accessible directory, or source code repository, within the UWM Shared Hosting environment. Multiple websites on the same hosting platform can be part of one account.

Each web hosting account also receives access to a UWM Shared Hosting source code repository. Each repository will be given access to development, beta and production environments. These environments are for developing/testing content before production release, as well as hosting of a production ready release.

Customers should only advertise their Production domain and reserve the test domain for development and testing.

Division of Responsibilities:

UWM Shared Hosting is responsible for maintaining a stable environment for application development and web access. Customers are responsible for all the content of their site(s) and all web application development, including testing and troubleshooting. UWM Shared Hosting will strive to maintain the availability of the services at all times. In the event of an outage, UWM Shared Hosting staff members will resolve the issue promptly and provide appropriate information to users via available channels, such as http://itstatus.uwm.edu/

Web Site Development Assistance:

Customers interested in partnering with a developer can contact us at web-hosting@uwm.edu with a detailed description of the assistance needed. We will put the customer in touch with the most appropriate development group for their needs.

Backups:

The UWM Shared Hosting utilizes a backup service to protect data and recover it if needed. We maintain the last two versions of a particular file no older than sixty days. We also maintain nightly backups for all customer databases hosted on our servers.

Support Policy:

Support requests for UWM Shared Hosting are primarily handled via email to help@uwm.edu during business hours. We endeavor to respond to customer requests within 24 hours.

Infrastructure Maintenance:

Maintenance and upgrades to our platforms are conducted during regularly scheduled maintenance windows. Maintenance windows can be found within the UWM Knowledgebase.

This service is not recommended for sites that cannot accommodate infrequently scheduled maintenance outages or sites that require a highly customized hosting environment (i.e. specialized software installation, server restarts to pick up configuration changes). The Web Hosting environment is robust enough to support many of UW-Milwaukee’s high-profile websites and applications. In some cases, however, a dedicated server hosted with University Information Technology Services may be more appropriate.

Cancellation:

Customers can contact us at any time to cancel service.

Updates to Terms of Use:

Updates to the Terms of Use document can be made by the UWM Shared Hosting administrators at any time. The Terms of Use document will be sent out to all web hosting accounts when updates are made.

Questions

Questions/comments on UWM Shared Hosting? Send email to web-hosting@uwm.edu