How many schools host there own website? or part of?

[lalalalalalalalalalala]

Hi,

How many schools host there own website? I know many have an intranet and do there own email, but who actually hosts the website themselves?

I know of 1 school that does, and my hosting company has 1 schools website, and do the email for 2 schools.

So whats your set up?

I personnaly think it is good if you can do it yourself, but notprossible in most cases.

[webman]

Website, Email, everything. A) It's quicker, B) We have full control, C) It's cheaper - we already have an internet connection and servers so why pay for this twice?

And everything still works when our internet connection is down

We used to have our website hosted with our ISP, but even then it was still slow and they only offered Windows+IIS hosting, which obviously didn't help the speed factor very much. Since moving it internally we've made changes to it that would have taken days to carry out with the ISP, or some that may not have even been possible at all.

Hosting them internally also helps if you want single sign-on and integration with an existing network.

[Norphy]

We host a VLE/Intranet internally as well as email but have our website hosted by a third party. Reason is, our Internet connection is slow and unreliable at present. It isn't worth risking the downtime for our public facing brochure site while with the VLE and email it doesn't matter so much.

We use Easyspace for our hosting, they're adequate.

[Sylv3r]

Mainly for the same reasons as webman, and we have the same ISP.

Also we will have our VLE installed in school next week also. This includes our Mail server, Online Reports System, Online Booking system etc, etc. Everything is much better when hosting everything internally, as it sometimes could be days by the time our ISP gets round to opening ports etc.

The disadvantage is that we have had Internet issues for about 3 - 4 weeks, with our connection dropping randomly throughout the day + had no internet connection at all today from 10:15 until 3:15!!!

So things have been extremely difficult working / checking e-mails from home lately.

[localzuk]

Huh? How is email anything to do with a website? We host our website but not our email - this is done by RM and the LEA.

The reason we host our own site is that our LEA couldn't provide us with enough space or with php/mysql with which to host our CMS.

I would love to move away from using RM Easymail for kids email but at the moment I can't justify the cost (as it is included in the cost of our net connection which is dealt with (both technically and financially) by our LEA). I really hate RM Easymail!!

[limbo]

We host our own website accross three servers - one for the main site including the secure zone which you need authentication for, one for the users home directories access and one with Outlook Web Access for email.

Two huge advantages to this above the ones webman highlighted - domain level security on everything (no second username and password to remember in order to access locedk down areas) and the other being the fact that this means our website potentially has access to everything on the network we we can easily integrate MIS data and students personal files into the mix without any problems at all.

Our whole VLE is written around the data that is already there so there is no additional mantenance - including any extra managing of usernames and passwords.

[sidewinder]

Feel a bit rubbish - we dont host anything internally

Our 'website' is just our Uniservity VLE which is hosted by the LEA

And for our email we just use the LEA webmail

Its very, very basic compared to what a lot of you have

I just dont know how to go about changing anything - as much as I think Uniservity is AWFUL and I would prefer to run exchange rather than use some circa 1995 webmail system, everyone else seems fine with it

I dont particularly want to host a website internally, but it would be nice to have a proper website, hosted away from the LEA, and have a VLE running internally.
Because it just looks so unprofessional for our only public facing website to just be a Uniservity front page

[mark]

Our website is hosted by our LA centrally on one big linux/apache/mysql/php server for all schools. They kindly state that they'll make it as big as we need it, and support us freely with upgrades, creating databases etc.

We've also just been 'given', as LEA High Schools, from 14-19 money, a shared Moodle install hosted on a 'conjoined' WAN FE college server. Authentication looks unlikely, but where schools have no impetus themselves and would not have had the opportunity we think it's a good thing all told.

[localzuk]

With me, things work ok. I would prefer a single mail system for our staff and pupils but that is not going to happen (staff are hosted via exchange at the LEA and it would be too complex and unreliable to set up our own and still feature on the central distribution lists).

The issue is 'why change it if it works'? Ok, RM Easymail is a beast to manage, the interface is clunky IMO but kids seem to use it ok and management is relatively ok (even if it is internet explorer only).

To go to managing things internally can add a huge workload onto your shoulders and can also make your life a lot more difficult if it goes down as it is on your shoulders...

For a while I was looking at setting up a custom phone system using asterisk but with such an important service the problems would far outweigh the advantages.