Who Gets Drupal Sites?
Drupal sites are provided for official Cal Poly websites. For a detailed explanation of what constitutes an official Cal Poly site, please see Section E.11 of the Responsible Use Policy.
However, please note that there are many valid Cal Poly web needs that are much better-suited to being a page or small section within an existing site. Too many small and specific sites tends to make it more difficult for users to find the information they need, in addition to causing extra overhead and administrative issues.
As some examples - entire sites are usually not granted for short-term needs such as creating web presence for an event, nor for individuals. Usually, such content can be hosted on the sponsor or department site.
If the existing site's administrator is concerned about granting access to the new users who will maintain this additional content, Drupal's sections functionality is a useful tool for limiting which content users can access and edit. We have video tutorials on how to implement this functionality.
There are also cases where what is needed is actually a URL and/or redirect, rather than a website in a content management system. Drupal sites are not provided for these cases.
Under normal circumstances, staff and/or faculty need to be in charge of a site (although students can work on a site).
Common Request Categories - Do We Qualify?
Instructionally Related Activities (Sometimes)
Instructionally Related Activities (IRAs), as defined by Academic Programs and Planning, are handled on a case-by-case basis.
The recommended solution is to host IRA content within the sponsoring department's website, and many existing IRAs are currently handled this way. There may be circumstances which warrant an IRA being granted its own Drupal site, but a case must be made to demonstrate this is necessary for each such site, and it requires approval by both ITS and University Marketing.
Research (Sometimes)
Research websites are considered similarly as IRA sites with the preferred hosting solution within a sponsoring college or department website. Again, these are handled on a case-by-case basis.
Clubs (No)
Clubs, which are recognized as an ISO and officially recognized by the Dean of Students as such, are not currently provided any standalone web hosting at the University level.
In some cases, departments may elect to host club content as a page or section within their site - that decision is up to each department, and clubs need to work with their department site's owners to accomplish this. ITS can look up the site owners (if the site is hosted on our Drupal system) to facilitate opening this conversation. However if the department does not support club content on its website, clubs will need to look into alternative third-party hosting. Third-party hosting options vary, and are not supported by ITS.
Web Apps (No)
Drupal is a content management system designed to make it as easy as possible for a wide variety of users to create basic web content at Cal Poly. End users do not have any back-end access, and advanced development features are limited.
Web apps are beyond the scope of our system, and if you require any functionality more advanced than what you see on this website, Drupal may not be the right solution for you.
