Welcome to the Neighborhood

So, you want a Sites@UMW account? We are glad you are here! Before you get started, we wanted to tell you a little bit about the platform.

What is Sites@UMW?

Sites@UMW is a website building platform available to any member of the University of Mary Washington community. Built with the open-source software WordPress, it allows any faculty member, student, or staff to create a blog, a course site, club homepage, or project site to begin building their web presence. We invite you to create an account and start exploring!

Where can I get help?

Your best place to start would be the Get Support page there you’ll find:

  • A form for general questions.
  • Links to booking appointments for one-on-one help.
  • Links to our guides to see if you can find an answer to your question.

Is this the same thing as Domain of One’s Own?

While both are ways to publish to the web Sites@UMW is not Domain of One’s Own.

Here are some ways that Sites@UMW is different:

  • Sites@UMW does not let you have your own domain. Any site you create will be a subsite of umwsites.net, for example, myawesomesite.umwsites.net.
  • You can only activate themes or plugins that we’ve already installed and made available. This means if you are looking to do fancier things you might not be able to do it on Sites@UMW.
  • We handle all the updates. The upside of this is, you don’t have to worry about security of things because we’ll do that all for you.

For more details about the differences see our Features Comparison chart or the in-depth guide on the difference between the two.

Terms of Service

As part of using Sites@UMW you will have to abide by our Terms of Service. We encourage you to read it, but here are some key things to note:

  • The honor code, our ASPIRE values, and the network and computer use policies apply to Sites@UMW.
  • You can use Sites@UMW as long as you are an active member of the UMW community. If you are leaving and want to take your stuff with you we can help you with that. You can also delete anything you don’t want us to hold on to.
I agree to the Terms of Service