MIT Drupal Cloud
IS&T’s MIT Drupal Cloud lets you easily set up a website on IS&Ts servers and gives you an easy web-based interface to put content there.
Quick start
Go to the MIT Drupal Cloud website at
https://drupalcloud.mit.edu/ and create your website. If you specify
a website domain ending in .csail.mit.edu, IS&T will coordinate with
us to set it up. The Community
and Help links may be useful, but
the best tutorial-style overview is IS&T’s Drupal Cloud Landing
Page.
This page
explains how to get a *.csail.mit.edu domain. (Short version: instead
of asking for a site named foo, ask for a site named foo.csail.)
More information
MIT Drupal Cloud is a
You can get a non-CSAIL domain name (something like myrandomsite.mit.edu
or a CSAIL domain name (like myrandomsite.csail.mit.edu) just by
specifying the domain name you want. If you ask for a CSAIL domain
name MIT Drupal Cloud will automatically contact us (TIG) to set up
the domain and point it at their servers; that’s explained
here.
MIT Drupal Cloud is especially good if:
- You want something that’s easy for non-techinical users to maintain.
- You already like Drupal
- You want to focus on the content of your site, not the appearance (MIT Drupal Cloud has several themes available, and they’re customizable, but you don’t need to do any customization to get a site that looks good).
- You need to restrict access to certain people based on MIT credentials. (You can also restrict access in other ways, but this is the easiest way to let specific people within MIT access parts of your site and others not.)
- You want to integrate with the MIT (not CSAIL) Events Calendar, or a few other MIT-provided services.
MIT Drupal cloud is not very good if:
- You want to code your own dynamic, interactive content. (E.g., a live demo of your software, or configurable views into a database.)
- You want custom client-side JavaScript.
- You want the content of your site in a standard version-control system like Git or Subversion. (Drupal’s version control is very rudimentary and essentially consists of being able to checkpoint pages and go back to previous checkpoints.)
- You want tight integration with other sites and services like a GitHub code repository or other sites hosted on CSAIL servers.
- You want a site that you’ll still be able to manage in the same way after you leave MIT.
Further documentation and links
- IS&T’s Drupal Cloud Landing Page is a well-organized introduction.
- The MIT Drupal Cloud page is where you request a new Drupal Cloud site. (You need to authenticate with your MIT, not CSAIL, credentials.)
- How can I get a CSAIL.mit.edu hostname?