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.
Getting Signed Up
You have two choices when getting started
Just a user account:
Choose this if you only want to join someone else’s site on the network (like a professor’s class site). Once you login for the first time your account is automatically created. You can make a subsite at a later time.
A User Account & Site:
Choose this if you want to get started on your own site right away.
