School of Medicine entities desiring a new website should take the following steps:
- Contact the department or unit communicator. The Federation provides multiple ways in which a unit, lab, center or program can be hosted on the department's website and still maintain some autonomy, including a distinct third level domain name (a duke.edu URL) and separate branding.
- If the prospective website site is not a good fit to live on the department's site, consider sites.duke.edu, Duke University's free WordPress platform. Sites can be quickly created and launched using using widgets and tools provided along with numerous themes to choose from.
- If the need is for a more robust site, then the SoM Federation is the next option. A School of Medicine Base Build (essentially a plug and play Drupal build) is available for $5,000 per instance and $3,000/year ($250/mos) in maintenance, support, training, resources, and upgrades. Units who have paid the fee can submit a request for a Drupal site and will receive their base build within 7 - 10 business days. Upon receipt of the build, units can start populating their content immediately. Numerous resources including training classes, videos, MS Teams user group, and a documentation website are available to assist users building their site. If necessary, units can also pay an outside vendor to create their content and/or build their site.
OIT-DWS hosts Drupal and custom WordPress sites as well, but units will have to contract with them or a vendor to develop those sites and will have to pay for hosting.
The School of Medicine strongly recommends that all websites are hosted on Duke servers to mitigate security risks and to protect Duke's brand.
Please contact Beky Branagan at rebeka.branagan@duke.edu or (919) 668.0150 if you'd like to more fully explore these options, if you have any questions or concerns, or if you'd like to pay the fees for a Drupal Instance on the Federation.