General Process

Either a current existing site admin or a department network liaison should order a site using Web Hosting’s support ticket link: https://webapps.es.vt.edu/support/
Please include the following information in your ticket request:
- your reason for the site,
- requested site domain name (including the authorizattion from your network liaison for the site)
- the webadmins (pids not aliases)
- and whether or not you already have a site in web hosting.
Expected time of delivery for staged site and site repo is typically 1-3 business days.

We (Web Hosting personnel) will start the process of getting your site ready by ordering a ssl certificate, and creating a git repository for the site.
After the initial site repo is created, each site admin will get an email invitiation to code.vt.edu for your repo. (If the invitor’s name happens to be Vishal Akula, it is legitimate, as he is one of our happy Web team members.)
Expected time to completion of site creation depends upon the ability of the site admins with coding static sites or using a static site generator.

Each site admin should login to code.vt.edu to setup your personal password specific to code.vt.edu or a ssh key.
Expected time to complete login and setup of code.vt.edu account is typically less than an hour.

Once you have logged into your repo, (if you are not migrating an exisitng site), you can either upload the files one by one via code.vt.edu application or use git (preferred method).
There will be four files in the repo:
- README.md - a file about S4 and your site
- error.html - an error file
- 404.html - a 404.html file
- .gitlab-ci.yml - |DO NOT REMOVE THIS FILE| a file that makes your site available via the internet.
Expected time to completion of site creation depends upon the ability of the site admins with coding static sites or using a static site generator.

Editing your site will be using your choice of software you have on your laptop/desktop/workstation and using “git” to push the files up to the git repo. If you only have one file to edit, you can edit that file in code.vt.edu.
Here is a link for general basic git commands: Basic Git
There are now two ways one can “edit” in code.vt.edu: via the web ide or just an individual page. Choosing “web ide” will allow one to edit multiple files, and has an interface similar to vs code or atom. Gitlab Web IDE

After you have uploaded your files, you should be able to see them at the stage url, which is listed on the README.md file.

Once the main site admin has added all of the site files and are happy with they way they look and feel, the main site admin should open a new ticket requesting a site “launch”, prior to the time you want it launched.
Launch days are typically on Tuesdays/Thursdays in the afternoons between 1pm and 4pm.
Request the launch here: https://webapps.es.vt.edu/support/
Expected time of launch completion depends on when the request was submitted and is typically 1-3 business days to at the most, a week. If a specific date was requested, that will be a factor as well.

Click this link: [https://webapps.es.vt.edu/support/] (Support Web App)
Click on the “Request this Service” button on the far right hand. If you are not logged in, you will need to do so.
Make sure to put your domain name/url for #3, and to describe the issue at hand

Click this link: [https://webapps.es.vt.edu/support/] (Support Web App)
Click on the “Request this Service” button on the far right hand. If you are not logged in, you will need to do so.
In the form:
1. choose for #2 “Other”
2. for #3 put the corresponding url/domain name
3. for #4 put “Decommission Site”
4. for #5 “Please decommission " xyz " site. A backup is/is not needed”. Replace xyz with your site/domain name and choose is or is not in order to let us know if you need a backup.
Once we get the ticket, we will go through the process to decommission the site.

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