About
The internet is a central part of modern society, and the ability to create and build websites is highly valued by employers. Starting to build on the web in college gives students the opportunity to showcase their skills and projects to a global audience, which can be beneficial for networking and finding job opportunities. At the same time, practicing online creation allows students to exercise creativity and problem-solving skills as they learn to design and develop functional and visually appealing websites.
To empower students, faculty, and staff to experiment with web building, the University of Mary Washington (UMW) has developed two web building platforms. Designed to get users building on the web quickly and easily, Sites@UMW allows users to build websites using WordPress and a few built-in customization options. For more complex or long-term projects, Domain of One’s Own allows users to choose their own url and gives them web hosting space to experiment with a wide variety of applications and uses.
The platforms are managed by UMW’s office of Digital Learning Support (DLS) who supports faculty and the Digital Knowledge Center (DKC) who supports students.
Sites@UMW
Sites@UMW is the newest iteration of UMW’s original web building platform, UMW Blogs. This platform allows students, faculty, and staff to create and maintain their own personal websites. It is powered by WordPress, a popular and user-friendly platform for creating and managing websites. Users can easily customize the appearance of their blogs and add features such as photos, videos, and links using built-in customization options.
Sites@UMW is a great way for members of the UMW community to share their thoughts, ideas, and experiences with a wider audience, and is a useful tool for practicing web creation in a lower-stakes environment with reduced complexity.
Domain of One's Own
Domain of One’s Own (DoOO) is a project that was developed by UMW’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies. The program was launched at UMW in 2013, and has since been adopted by universities all over the world!
DoOO allows UMW students, faculty, and staff to register their own domain name and associate it with a hosted web space, free of charge while at UMW. With their domain and corresponding web space, users will have the opportunity and flexibility to design and create a meaningful and vibrant online identity.
Users may choose to map their domain (or a subdomain) to other services, such as Medium, Squarespace, Google Sites, Wix, or Tumblr.
