Things to Know about Upcoming Website and CMS Transitions to Cloud

05/21/2020

During the past year, the Divisions of Marketing and Communications (Marcom) and Information Technology Services (ITS) have worked to move the University’s web properties and content management system (CMS) from a SLU-owned server to off-site web hosting services.

There are several reasons for these transitions:

• The current SLU server is no longer able to handle the needed security and technology upgrades.
• Cloud-based web services are constantly upgraded and will provide enhanced security and faster content delivery
• ITS plans to decommission the server.

On Monday, May 18, the SLU web properties (slu.edu, slucare.com, slu.edu/madrid, etc.) were successfully migrated to new servers at a cloud server company, DataBank, with minimal disruption.

In June, a second migration, this time of the CMS, will take place. This migration needs to be completed in three phases and over a period of eight days (six business days).

During that time – June 8 through June 16 – University CMS users will not be able to make content updates to their web pages.

This only impacts the CMS. It will NOT impact:

• Website availability
• Email
• mySLU
• Blackboard, Workday and other instructional and workplace tools
• Google Apps, including Google sites, docs, sheets, etc.
• SLUCare web tools, such as Find a Doc or Pay My Bill

Marcom and ITS understand this may inconvenience some CMS users and appreciate users’ understanding. All CMS users are encouraged to make web content updates prior to the migration start on Monday, June 8.

After the migration is completed, CMS users will have their current access to the CMS restored.

Questions about this migration and CMS access can be directed to Mark Rimar, director of web services.