Central Web Hosting

Central web hosting service is set up to provide a consolidated, fully monitored and managed environment for hosting departmental web sites or project web sites. The hardware and the software of the central web service are maintained and supported by the ESU while the web page contents and applications are developed and maintained by the departments.

Central Web Hosting provides two platforms for departments to host their website(s), they are :

• Web Content Management Platform (Drupal) hosted in Acquia Site Factory
  (to be obsolete, a new Content Management Platform will be ready in April/May 2025)
• HTML/ASP.NET website hosted in Microsoft Azure with Azure SQL DB

Compatibility and technical advices will be provided to assist web administrators on developing new websites or migrating existing websites. To ensure the stability of the central web server, NO testing, development, and user training should be done on the production server (www.ncm2.xyz). Instead, website administrators/developers should test their websites thoroughly on the centrally provided staging environment before deploying them in the production server.

Development Guidelines

Website administrators/developers are required to follow the development, staging, and production cycle for website development as follows:

Development

This is a working environment for developers. It may be the developer's local workstation for a single developer, or a department's/vendor's local server for a development team. Developers should test and complete the development of their websites on their local development servers before uploading them to the staging server for UAT.

Staging

This is a centrally provided environment, which has a footprint identical to the production server. Site administrators should carry out UAT and user training in the staging server and make sure the website and corresponding web application(s), if any, are working without problems and vulnerability free before deploying them to the production server.

Production

NO testing, development, and user training should be done on the production server, www.ncm2.xyz.