Adding new users to your site is now super easy! Full instructions for adding a new user to your WiscWeb site can be found in: WiscWeb - Editing users

Issues with logging in to your site are nearly always a result of attempting to login from off campus without being connected to the campus network. In order to use the WiscWeb tool from off campus, you must be signed in to the campus network using the Palo Alto “Global Protect” VPN client with your personal NetID credentials. Full instructions for logging into your site can be found in: WiscWeb - Logging into your site.

There are several reasons for this. WiscWeb is a multi-site instance of WordPress. As such, providing you FTP access would grant you access to all WiscWeb sites – not just your own. We really do not want users to have the ability to change projects that are not their own and therefore, FTP access is not allowed. We also have strict version control processes in place to maintain the stability of the multi-site for all customers. Allowing folks access to make changes via FTP could jeopardize this stability and result in site or entire service outages.

The WiscWeb service provides highly scalable WordPress hosting at a low cost per site. As such, there are some features which are not available in this environment: no customers have direct file access (no SFTP, no SSH), users cannot add their own plugins/themes, and creation of directory structures or file types outside those that WordPress natively supports are not available (just to name a few).

If you are interested in some more of those advanced features, we recommend:

• Exploring a Web Hosting account.
• Consider alternative approaches – not all content needs to exist under one domain name in order to get web visitors to the right place. You might host an application under a sub-domain, for instance, and link out to it from your existing WiscWeb site.

We have the ability to do some initial consultation about the structure and layout of your site’s contents. For this, please schedule time in Office Hours or fill out our Customer Support Form.

WordPress is different from a lot of other content management systems because it started as a blogging tool and then grew into a tool that was used world-wide for the building and maintenance of regular websites. As a blogging tool, it was assumed that users were mostly generating content via posts (like news articles) and that’s the basis for how this tool was structured. Therefore, everything in WordPress is technically a post – even pages! Confused yet?

The biggest thing to remember is that you should use “Posts” (in the left nav options) when you are focusing on news or blog content that you’d like to feed into a post list. This is usually the only way that true Posts are used in the UW Theme. You should use “Pages” to build out the content that will go in the navigation of your site. To reiterate: Pages are the main content holders while Posts are just for articles. 

When you request a new website with WiscWeb, it is created as a project. Your project URL structure is sitename.project.wiscweb.wisc.edu.

This is described in more detail in our Welcome to WiscWeb video.

Once you are ready for your site to launch publicly, you will need to fill out a site launch request. When submitting this form, you can designate your desired production domain/URL. Note that if you require a 3rd level production domain (something.wisc.edu), you will be required to provide a rationale.

Related resources:

• Launch prep
• [Link for document 98200 is unavailable at this time]
• WiscWeb - Domain naming Guidelines for WiscWeb

Under the WiscWeb service, the “Additional CSS” field is not available to admins and editors of the site. This is to protect the multisite from changes that could break other websites.

At this time, all customizations to sites in WiscWeb must be done by a WiscWeb developer, in order to ensure the stability of the entire multisite. You will not have the option to upload a custom theme built by your staff or a 3rd party vendor. There is a charge for customizations because this type of work is not covered by the campus funding. Any custom CSS or logo changed to UW Theme 2.0 in WiscWeb must be approved by the Office of Strategic Communication. We will facilitate this process for you. Steps for this process, as well as strict rules for what can and cannot be accommodated, are located on the Customizing Your Site page.

The WiscWeb team no longer supports changes to the site font. This is to align campus websites with UW-Madison brand standards.

WiscWeb is a controlled and supported WordPress multi-site environment. All plugins go through a vetting process prior to addition to the multisite to ensure that they will not jeopardize the stability of the service. This vetting process can be reviewed on our Plugin Review Process page.

Once plugins are added, the WiscWeb team supports them. This requires regular testing of each plugin anytime there are updates to the plugin itself, UW Theme 2.0, or WordPress. It also involves a significant amount of testing on individual sites to ensure that customizations, styles, and functionality are rendering correctly after plugins are activated or updated. We vet and limit the plugins so that we can continue to maintain this level of security and service integrity.

Before launching your site:
Prior to launching your new website, you can publish and view all changes at your sitename.project.wiscweb.wisc.edu URL. This is a shareable link and the site’s contents will only be visible to those who have this URL. Just make sure that your pages are fully published (i.e., not in draft status).

Sharing draft pages after site launch:
The WiscWeb team now offers a plugin that allows you to share draft pages with non-users of the site. The KnowledgeBase has instructions in WiscWeb - Enabling a Public Draft Preview.

We’re happy to report that the process for launching your new WiscWeb site is very easy! We ask that you first review our Preparing for Launch page. When you are finished, please fill out our Launch Request Form at the bottom of that page. Note that we require two weeks’ notice for a launching a site.