About

Set up in the fall of 2009 by the Office of Arts and Sciences Information Services (OASIS) and iblbio, the UNC Digital Commons Project allows anyone with an Onyen to create FREE websites without any programming, or web design experience.  The project has quickly grown to over 1500 sites, 3200 users, and as much as 100,000 pageviews a day from all around the world (August 2011).  People all around campus are using it to create class websites, personal portfolio’s, group project sites, event sites, and much much more.

Introduction Video

Domain Names

All websites choose an easy to remember URL like http://john.web.unc.edu, http://classname.web.unc.edu, http://project.web.unc.edu or anything else you would like.  You can also set up custom domains outside of the standard [name].web.unc.edu such as http://honorscarolina.unc.edu, http://carolinaasiacenter.unc.edu, and http://chasingthemadlion.org.

Features

The services is run on the backend by open-source software giant WordPress. Here are a few of the features that are available in our installation:

  • Over 150 themes (or web-site designs) to choose from with many configuration options, including the campus federated design.
  • Flexible content: create pages and sub-pages, or a blog type post with an easy Microsoft Word like editor.
  • Meta-data like categories and tags to help with search engine optimization, and building web databases.
  • Privacy options that allow you to hide the entire site, open it to just students, or even the whole world.
  • Onyen Authentication (Shibboleth)
  • Multiple users and user roles.
  • A comprehensive blogging, commenting (and spam protection) system.
  • RSS-enabled so you can push out new content to email, facebook, twitter and other sites.
  • Create custom forms to gather information
  • Multimedia support – photos, documents, and video embedding.
  • Events calendars and Registration System
  • Social Media Integration for Sharing content
  • Unlimited number of sites

Getting Started

If you are interested in creating a site check out our getting started guide, documentation, faq section, or attend a free training or webinar.