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The Corporate Web Environment

In order to enable the university to offer services and information online, it needs a robust and reliable environment from which to publish electronically. Information Management Services has a responsibility to provide and manage this environment. This includes not just administration of the network and servers, but providing support and advice to members of Curtin's staff who need to publish material by means of this infrastructure.

A three tier server environment (multiple web servers handling different stages of the web development workflow) configured in accordance with industry best practice guidelines has been established. It has been designed to give reliable, robust service, and to do so with a high level of security. A set of standards has been developed governing the publication of material by means of this environment, too.

The server environment is designed to support most relevant technologies web designers use, but is primarily intended for the development of HTML or ColdFusion pages, with optional access to an Oracle database back end. Perl/CGI may be used, FTP is the normal method of transferring files, and Secure Shell clients can be used to log in to web acounts and execute Unix commands. For security, SSL certificates can be arranged on request.

The Corporate Web Environment offers a flexible, managed, robust location for the publication of online material. Staff need no longer resort to the use of locally run web servers, and the resulting reduced fleet size means that the university is better protected from risk.

Although it is still possible to run local web servers for the publication of your web material, university administration needs to carefully manage which servers are able to publish beyond the Curtin network. The Web Server Infrastructure Requirements Procedure requires that web servers be registered with Information Management Services before they are made accessible to the Internet. Registration is conditional on servers being configured according to certain minimum requirements.