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Cornell University

Get Support for Blogs

This article applies to: Blogs

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The Cornell Blog Service is a cloud service managed by the vendor, CampusPress. Cornell's Custom Development group acts as an intermediary between the Cornell community and the vendor, and provides the support and services outlined below to facilitate use in the Cornell environment. 

CampusPress will perform all WordPress core, plugin and theme updates, general improvements, and server maintenance during the following weekly window:

  • Primary Updates – Tuesdays from 3am – 6am EST
  • Secondary Updates – Thursdays from 3am – 6am EST

Note: CampusPress is not a direct replacement for a full individual installation of WordPress, since the service is based on one standardized set of options across the entire CampusPress user base. If you feel you might need design or functionality beyond a standard range of choices, a better fit might be a hosted full installation of WordPress or another web publishing environment.

Included No-Cost Support

The following features and support are included at no cost with free course blogs and paid blogs. 

10GB of storage per blog and 50MB per file maximum upload size.  Have bigger files? CIT offers free hosting for video or audio in Cornell's Video on Demand service, or documents through Cornell Box or SharePoint. Content hosted in these services can then be embedded or linked in your blog. 

Use of the Cornell-Branded Theme. The theme is both responsive and accessible and is free to use in its default configuration (modifications can be requested for a fee). It is available in addition to the themes provided by CampusPress, for which there also is no fee to use. See how to use the theme. 

Note: As with any new theme, when applying a different theme to your site, there may be conflicts with the current plugins or settings you have in place.  If you are unable to resolve these conflicts, Custom Development can be hired to help resolve your issues.  

Other no-cost support 

  • Monitoring and assistance with CUWebLogin issues signing into the Blog Service. 
  • Escalation to the vendor, CampusPress, when there are problems with broken CampusPress themes, plug-ins, and widgets. 
  • Escalation to the vendor when the service is slow to respond or non-responsive. 
  • Addition of non-Cornell contributors to the service. 
  • Guidance when CampusPress is making changes to the service (such as theme updates or removal of plug-ins) that will affect your blog.  
  • Ability to request custom domain names for a paid blog, and support for issues with custom domain names.
  • Assistance with sorting out the type or issue or question you are experiencing, and identifying if it requires basic support, support from the vendor, or paid support.

Support for Course or Thesis Portfolio Blogs

Blogs that are used for a course that has an official Cornell course number or is listed in university Courses of Study, or a blog that is to be used as a thesis portfolio, are supported by Academic & Support Services.

For-Fee Services

Custom Development offers the following services at rates based only on recovering the cost of the work rendered:

  • Training
  • Design, development, and quality assurance
  • Support
  • Consulting services for websites and web applications
  • Custom code troubleshooting
  • Website content entry

Contact Custom Development

Custom Domain Support

The annual $100 fee for blog sites with a custom domain includes all of the no-cost support, along with implementing the SSL Certificate, DNS change request, resolving domain name issues and any problems relating to use of provided themes, plugins, and widgets. The fee does not include custom development of themes, since custom themes are no longer offered for CUBlogs. 

The following articles describe Cornell requirements and processes for domain name registration:

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