Web Site Administration on the USMS Web Server

If you're just starting out with a new account on our web server, please read the Getting Started guide and the web server policies. All users are expected to follow the web server policies in order to limit our server to it's intended use and to help keep expenses down and the server up.

If you're considering moving your existing web site to the USMS web server or creating a new club, LMSC, or zone web site on the USMS server, you may be interested in some of the details of the server itself. Our server's hardware platform includes an Intel Pentium 4 - 3 Ghz processor, 2 GB of RAM, and dual 250 GB hard drives (RAID). The server is based on the CentOS operating system (an open source Linux distribution) and runs the Apache web server.

Our server has a built-in site administration tool that each site administrator can use to perform routine tasks. Our server is a BlueQuartz server, running open source tools that are based off the old Cobalt server appliances. There isn't much information available on the web today to describe the BlueQuartz tools to those who aren't already familiar with Cobalt systems, but one resource is the BlueQuartz Wiki.

Hosting your club, LMSC, or zone web site on our server is not like hosting with a commercial web host. First of all, our hosting is free to all affiliated USMS organizations. However, as the old axiom goes, you get what you pay for. Hosting on our server is provided to you simply as a convenience so that you can use available USMS hardware and network resources. There is no service provided to you to help you construct or maintain your web site. It is expected that you are somewhat experienced in creating and maintaining web sites and that you can solve the normal difficulties associated with doing so on your own. The USMS web staff is busy maintaining the official USMS web sites and will not be available to assist you with your site. A part of maintaining the USMS web sites involves keeping the USMS servers and all associated tools running smoothly. A side effect of this is that all available tools for your site will be maintained as part of our keeping them available for the USMS sites.