Effective immediately, COE will not accommodate new requests for locally hosted, public-facing websites, applications, or web projects. New public-facing content should be built on an approved platform such as OSU Drupal in Acquia Cloud, OSU WordPress, AWS, or Azure.

COE’s legacy LAMP hosting environment, including public_html, remains available during a transition period for existing self-service use. This environment is self-supported and is appropriate only for instructional, experimental, or personal web content using basic HTML, client-side JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL. It should not be used for new public-facing college, department, research, lab, center, program, or service websites. Contact coe.support@oregonstate.edu for assistance in getting started with any of the approved platforms.

Beginning Monday, June 26, 2028, COE-hosted public_html / LAMP content will no longer be publicly accessible from the internet. Access will be limited to campus networks or VPN.

Site owners who need content to remain publicly available should plan to move it to an approved platform before that date.

Where should web content live?

Need / Use Case

Recommended Platform

Best For

Publicly Accessible?

Notes

Official public-facing website

OSU Drupal in Acquia Cloud

College, school, department, lab, center, program, research, and service websites

Yes

Preferred platform for most official OSU/COE public web content. Use this for sites that need to represent an official unit, service, research group, or program.

Blog or lightweight public publishing

OSU WordPress at blogs.oregonstate.edu

Blogs, news-style updates, informal publishing, simple faculty or group sites

Yes

Best for content organized around posts, updates, or simple pages rather than a custom web application.

Custom public website or web application

AWS or Azure

Custom code, specialized hosting needs, frameworks, APIs, databases, or nonstandard platforms

Yes

Use when Drupal or WordPress cannot meet the technical requirements. May involve costs, security review, compliance requirements, and ongoing maintenance responsibilities.

Internal documentation or shared content

SharePoint

Internal procedures, team resources, committee materials, working documents, shared files, and content intended for OSU audiences only

No / Internal only

Recommended for content that does not need to be publicly available. Use SharePoint for internal knowledge bases, documentation, collaboration spaces, and file-based content.

Software development and version control

COE GitLab

Source code, repositories, issues, collaboration, CI/CD, and software project history

Not primarily a publishing platform

Use GitLab for development workflows and source control. GitLab is not a general web hosting or public web publishing platform.

Legacy instructional, experimental, or personal web content

COE LAMP / public_html

Self-service HTML, client-side JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL content in COE users’ network home directories

Temporarily, until June 1, 2028

public_html is a legacy, self-service, self-supported environment. It remains technically available during the transition period, but it is not recommended or supported for new public-facing content. Beginning June 1, 2028, COE-hosted public_html / LAMP content will no longer be publicly accessible from the internet. Access will be limited to campus networks or VPN.

COE LAMP / public_html hosting

COE’s LAMP platform — Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP — remains available as a self-service environment for instructional, experimental, and personal use.

The platform supports:

  • HTML
  • client-side JavaScript
  • PHP
  • MySQL

It does not support web applications that require persistent server processes, custom application servers, non-standard network ports, or server-side frameworks such as Python, Ruby, Java, or Node.js.

public_html content is part of COE users’ network home directories and remains technically available during the transition period. However, it is self-service, self-supported, and is not recommended or supported for new public-facing content.

Beginning Monday, June 26, 2028, COE-hosted public_html / LAMP content will no longer be publicly accessible from the internet. Access will be limited to campus networks or VPN.

When your needs do not fit the standard options

If your project requires functionality beyond basic HTML, client-side JavaScript, PHP, or MySQL — or if Drupal, WordPress, SharePoint, GitLab, AWS, or Azure do not appear to meet your needs — contact COE IT before selecting another platform.

Requests for new tools or platforms will be evaluated based on:

  • Scalability: whether the tool can support multiple users and groups
  • Manageability: whether it can be deployed and maintained without significant added complexity
  • Uniqueness: whether it provides features not already available through supported tools or platforms

Some options may involve additional costs, security review, compliance requirements, or ongoing maintenance responsibilities.

Need help choosing?

Contact COE IT Support at coe.support@oregonstate.edu before starting a new public-facing web project, migrating an existing site, or selecting a custom hosting platform.