 Hi everybody How's it going it's Friday Friday thumbs up across the board. Yeah So this is our Domain of One's own WordPress multi-site Panel we actually did a version of this at the live at the conference But the there was some issues with the audio and the recording So we we're going to take the opportunity to do it again basically So thank you to all three of you for coming back Lee and Shannon were original panelists and Tom did a great job as the moderator I'm here to moderate this time just so that we can give Tom a chance. You've worked with Domain of One's own and WordPress multi-site, but not Simultaneously, I believe so to get your perspective as someone who's coming at it from a slightly different angle Yes, that about sum it up anything I missed me. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah So I have prepped some questions and I've actually swiped a couple from Tom But we are also taking questions in the discord. So please put them in the chat. I will be keeping an eye on that But we're going to just sort of get started with you know quintessential first start of a panel question, which is Tell us a little bit about yourself your institution your History with domains with WordPress multi-site General Context backstory whatever you want to call it. I guess I'll go first I'm Lee Scalar upset. I am the insistent director for digital learning at the Center for new designs for learning and scholarship also known as candles At Georgetown University in Washington, DC We have been doing a WordPress multi-site since 2008 so we were an early adopter of both WordPress multi-site and we were also one of the first adopters of the Domain of One's own project so I've been at my position here at Georgetown for five years. So I have five years of institutional history about this But prior to that I worked for a few years at the University of Mary Washington At the division of teaching and learning technologies So I've had experience both at Georgetown and speak more about that but also have experience At Georgetown. I mean at um w Great, thank you Tom Shannon I'm gonna have to put one of you on the spot if you don't volunteer All right, I'll go. Um Yeah, I'm Shannon Hauser. I'm the associate director of the digital knowledge center here at the University of Mary Washington and uh We I mean I feel like I don't in some ways don't have to give the whole origin story of all this because this is where so much of you know domain of one's own began, um, but UMW blogs to demand one's own and now we're at a place where we're putting them both side by side in In a fun, you know in a different kind of context. So that's and I kind of you know Was there at the very beginnings and then kind of come now on later? I've been in This position for three four years now. Well, we're a long it's been All right, and I am Tom Woodward the director of learning spaces and technologies at Middlebury Previously I had worked at Virginia Commonwealth University where we had a very large WordPress multi-site and now at Middlebury We have the domain one's own Stuff going on and I'm currently going back through The 2016 accounts and now in 2017 Getting them straight and deleting old stuff So I have a lot of immediate experience on some of the some of the stuff that's going on in our domain one's own in the distant past Awesome Yeah, thank you All for this The next question is actually sort of the same question but more which was about how you or your institution Either one or both got Started first experiences with domain of one's own or WordPress multi-site Maybe even just sort of what the history of your school's web presence offerings were If you had something before domains or What you guys were thinking when you adopted it Or I guess before WordPress multi-site. There's no assumption that domains came first Come on unmute. There we go. Um, I can't speak too much about What happened before again because I wasn't there and it was 2008 which is quite some time at Georgetown and One of the we are also in the process right now of Sunsetting our original multi-site and building a new multi-site to launch in the fall It was called and so this kind of gives you the history and evolution I think and and really give you a feel of what 2008 was like versus 2023 so in in 2008 we launched What was called the commons blog right so this concept of the commons was very prominent it was also one of the only spaces where Students and student learning was uh at the center So it wasn't a management system Even though WordPress is a content management system But it was being touted less as a management management system and more as a common space community building those kinds of things One of the plugins that we developed that has proven to be extraordinarily popular And um is going to have to carry over into the into the next one um is we we call it the hub and spoke plugin and so what happens is that We create there's a plugin in it automatically creates a hub Where the faculty member and again we have to sort of do this But the faculty member is the administrator and the students are all authors or contributors on The hub site, which you could say was the central core site and then there are spokes And each student gets their own spoke Um, but the thing about this hub and spoke model is that only students And faculty who are registered in that hub and spoke can see each other's sites So each student is the administrator on their own site and all of the other students are viewers of the site or subscribers You could say so they can see everyone else's sites Um, and they have full control over their own and this is actually proven really popular in uh freshman writing courses Where it's a lot of drafting. It's a lot of reflecting. It's a lot of um iterating And so it gives the students an uh an ability to say well, this is an easy way to share it with my With my classmates, which we know it can be really clunky in lms's discussion boards. Not really so um So it's a space that they can personalize a little bit But also feel safe and sharing that the only people who are going to see it now The nice thing about the word press multi site setup is that if they want to after the class make it public That is up to them to do they can choose to do that um So that is very good for course blogs. It's also proven popular for um e-portfolio courses where it's automatically generated But the the biggest uses for for the commons blog currently as we're iterating to our next one is The hub and spoke course blogs just a general course site um, and then um, and also e-portfolios whereas because we're an r1 institution we do need um A more robust system like domains for digital humanities digital scholarship computer science all of these kinds of things and so Domains is a little bit less for course work and a little bit more for research institutional things larger scale projects um, a great example is that our um, the slavery and reconciliation um, uh project at georgia university is hosting Uh, the slavery archives on domains through a nomeca installation And so just to give like that's probably one of the biggest most, um, visible Or important projects that's going on on domain of one's own But that just gives you an idea of like the difference versus very public large projects versus smaller course And so that's sort of the the the differentiation and kind of the evolution Um of what it's been at uh at georgetown community versus a sort of Not individual but like private community versus public one-off projects and sites Yeah, or not even one off but like longer You know that that these are the you you require you require the capacity of going to be on a word what a WordPress multi-site can can provide for you Right, but that you need a full hosting account for instead. Yeah Something more customized specialist. Yeah, exactly. Great Tom or Shannon, um the History of your your work your institutions work with either domains WordPress multi-site both I'll give the quick version. Yeah. So, I mean we have uh, uh, we'll just do middle bear Um, we had the till day accounts. I think at some point in the past. We had a centrally Created kind of its managed multi-site setup. We have two of those. Um, they've been migrated now I think the campus press they had the usual kind of things that go on with its managed stuff where it's like Not enough plugins not enough themes Uh, what if I don't want to use single sign-on in my own name and that led to the demeanor one's own stuff And that's kind of where we sit now Um, and that we still have to uh, WordPress multi-sites We still have some till day. I think Personal account type of options and then we have the demeanor ones own I think what we're seeing is like do we have need for the cloud stuff? Do we want a third multi-site? What would where would it fit in this continuum? I think those are all Questions that start to come up around this stuff. It's like how much duplication is too much What degree of freedom do we really want to support? How many people does that take? So that's that's where we sit now lots of questions yeah and Shannon, I know you said the history of domains at um w is pretty well known and well documented so Do you maybe well I'm not going to say like don't talk about that. But do you maybe want to talk a little bit more about how WordPress multi-site? And domains have sort of integrated with each other over time sure um Yeah, I mean it I think Came up, you know because of the iteration and kind of experimentation that happened at mary washington, right? Like multi-site was like, you know the the um DTLT was playing around blue hosts and WordPress itself and they were like, how do we I don't make this easier, right? And like multi-site gave them a way to do that and then from that it's like, you know the Getting to be in one's own giving, you know, then being like, okay What if we wanted to really give people like that that full kind of blue host experience that we we had right and Moving on from that and there was I think a decision at some point too to like, all right This is more powerful why you know, like let's let's let's really push people on domain in one's own You know, because you know, honestly, it's work to manage two systems, right? Like there's a reality that if you're going to run two things in parallel It's work for somebody to do. Um, but for us, you know, there's partially like Costs thing but part like WordPress multi-site has its place. Uh, it's it's simpler to get started with right and We found that like people were kind of avoiding domain of one's own because they're like that's it's just too much Onboarding for students like that my goal is to have them just right. I don't I don't want all this extra work Um, so we were like, I think for us it would if we can get people to engage in those things It was going to be worth that extra work. Um, and that also meant we probably were going to scale down domain of one's own Which would mean less work in that area. So we're hoping and so far it's like that work While having that means there's more of that. Maybe there's less like way We're down to two servers instead of three at this point, right? It's like one less thing So um and multi-site seems to I mean Just because it's limited people's things don't break in crazy ways not yet at least, uh, you know, I guess On the the downside is multi-site once something breaks and usually breaks everybody's stuff versus like, you know Oh, just one person's like that aspected. But um, I think that's what we're like, you know, hoping that these things can be two different needs Going going forward that we have Yeah, that's actually a very good, uh, sort of transition point into my next question Which is about the differences in users both both in terms of like where you are sort of guiding people to go talking about WordPress multi-site as a sort of low Whatever the opposite of steeper is shallower learning curve um Versus domains. Um, Lee you talked about sort of those community private spaces versus um the Uh larger projects that need more resources Have you seen that Difference in what users Prefer, I guess, um In demographics. This is maybe more towards, uh, tom and shannon for students versus faculty or by department Um, things like that. But since lee you already touched on that Um, I don't know if it if it breaks down for me between students and faculty It's more like individual orientation You know, like we have certain faculty who are very aggressive and need a lot of freedom and choice in their environments We have some students who've fallen that bucket as well And at the same time we have other people who aren't interested in any extra complexity there or our challenge They want whatever the simplest way to get from point a to point b for them is and they don't want choice They don't want a long discussion about merits of certain things. They want to get down to business And those are all valid positions. So it's not as easy for me Usually as being able to go like, all right, we're going to shunt this group here. We're going to shunt this group here Uh, it it unfortunately gets down to individual discussions and some nuances and what you really want to do but that alignment of expectation and environment Is the key thing and how much of that can you kind of give to them at the? Support tier zero level so they can guide themselves versus it having to happen at say tier one Or unfortunately later on say at tier three when they're unhappy um, so trying to trying to manage that that that uh escalation of of conversations in a sustained way Yeah, I don't think I have anything to add because it's basically the same at our institutions like what are you trying to do? You know, and there's plenty of classes we go to where we will present both options to students as well It's like you your professor says you can make a choice about this. So and sometimes that works, you know For what their needs are sometimes they want them to each one over the other But it's like if you're the kind of student that wants to learn a bit more like this is try this If you're like, I just want to do what I need to minimally for this assignment. Go use that, you know so um That education kind of process We also have the like the thing about georgetown too is that there's the issue of branding Now that might change now that we're going to course sites dot georgetown dot domains But our old address to the comments blows was blogs commons dot georgetown dot edu slash whatever it is It's going to come afterwards. Um, which can be kind of a mouthful for any portfolio Whereas student name dot georgetown dot domains a is much easier, but b carries that georgetown Name front and center and so features the student and saying I went to georgetown Which is again an important branding thing for the students part of what they're paying for um, so there was also that decision that maybe Commons blog would have been would have been better for their purpose because they don't need a huge site But they wanted the domain name Right that they really wanted that and needed that because that was something that was really important to them And that would differentiate them on the job market. Um, so we kind we also have that added layer of complexity that comes along with it When it comes to that and again because we're changing to something Simpler in our new iteration where again georgetown is is very much centered and we've we've streamlined that That might mean that students Will go for their portfolios more so to the commons blog rather than Or not the commons blog what we're calling course sites rather than Domains, but that's still something that a lot of students and even faculty really want is they want that georgetown front and center in the domain name Yeah, that's really interesting. I also hadn't even thought about that as like the Shannon you mentioned in the chat that umw is offering top level domains to their users as This sort of way to put your own name on it or whatever it is that you want Uh, but I hadn't actually thought about it from the angle of users wanting their name to be attached to The university one of the things that we have for domain in one zone is This is for the for the university for the institution. This is a branded portal You can put your name on it and say this is what we're offering but I hadn't Come to it from that angle of On the user end Sort of the same But mirrored Yeah, um Let me sort of scroll we keep touching on things that I already have on my list. Um Which is maybe the sign of a good discussion just how it's evolving But I guess maybe we'll jump to Working with the administration And sort of where these fit into the larger culture Lee you've talked about the wordpress multisite as a sort of Common space for people. Um, but you've also talked about how Georgetown is a relatively large institution. So Domains is relatively small by comparison. Um domains and wordpress multisite seem Quite embedded into umw And I really have no sense of uh where Where press multisite fit at vcu and domains fits at middlebury in the larger campus ethos, I guess We're so Yeah, so Coalescing all of that Working with the administration and campus culture Around the projects, I guess um It it's uh, it's still to my mind a hidden gem at uh, Georgetown We just started a digital research initiative, which is a collaboration with the library again huge right um And so uh, the the library has a digital scholarship unit We support digital pedagogy and some digital scholarship as well Obviously through domain in one's own a lot of the times people will go to the digital scholarship unit and it takes a website So they recommend domain in one's own but um We we just started a more in-depth collaboration called the digital research initiative And just about every single digital project was oh, hey, you should use domains um and three quarters if not You know eight tenths of the people Didn't even know that domains existed um, I was at wordpress campus and it was there was a um a former uh UIS which is our IT unit at Georgetown who is doing some consulting work with uh, contacts He still had at Georgetown University and he even had no idea that domains existed um Where he was talking about these faculty who wanted to make research websites and that and I was like Oh, well, that's what domains is for and he's like tell me about domain so again, it's so big that a lot of people still don't know about domains and I think the same thing about our WordPress multi site is we have As we sort of gone through we lost a lot of um Users once we switched from blackboard to canvas a lot of people you're using our multi site because they hit a blackboard and then canvas was You know Not as bad and it had the integrated grade book and all these kinds of things So they were like they kind of abandoned it So we have a core set of a small core set of users on the core sites Um, who are very dedicated to it and use it for their purposes. And so again, we're interested to see Once we streamlined it updated it modernized it to see What kind of reaction if it's going to grow in terms of Um of its current user base. So, you know, it we're we're um We're a small part of the institution on both sides, but I think it there's there's room for growth But and the people who are using it are quite robust users and use it quite frequently and really like it. So Well, you you ask kind of a big and fluid question at least for me You know with with administrative turnover and kind of changes in strategic priorities It can be difficult to say where stuff sits at any one moment. Um You know, like, uh, I'd say at a larger institution like bcu. There's a lot more involvement with uh legal Office of counsel and and kind of making sure our ducks weren't around there And with certain administrative supervision like when gardener was there, we know we could take certain risks We would have backing to certain conversations but when That that leadership changes things can change pretty dramatically pretty quickly. So That terms are overall and there's also some complexions complications like bcu got sued For accessibility issues and so you had an office of civil rights investigation And then rampages ends up getting pulled into that with all the accessibility complications Lucky guarantee etc etc. So You know, I think it's it's hard to say there's some good things like uh at one point all students participating in the first year kind of English type class got a rampages site Which was awesome Also, that's a lot of people all of a sudden when they're starting the first year of college and It's also a highly mobile um and level of instructors, you know, a lot of adjuncts a lot of temporary people So, you know, you kind of have to think through the ramifications all this stuff um, and it certainly had some uh performance implications for the site, which is why we went to reclaim In the first first place. Uh, so they saved us from me waking up in cold sweats all the time with disasters, but um You know, I think it's it's complex and you're trying to think about strategy You're trying to think who should be using this. How do we optimize certain things to be better used? that's one of the things I think I've like almost gotten right a couple times, but not really it's never Filled itself like if we had standardized portfolios for the environmental sciences thing or degree of fluidity there Certain data and then we had a mother site that could, you know, parse through the data and show in certain ways How cool would that be? you know, there's lots of Big procedural things that you could work through that could be really amazing but getting those conversations Uh to happen at the right time and getting the right people on board Long enough to actually come to fruition can can be really really hard I think I've lost track of what the question is exactly But I will say briefly because I think I remember Tom kind of asking this to like What like what is the role of what you do like of of your demand one zone where press multisite? Is it infrastructure? Is it experimental and I think on the that that side of like I think we're lucky at our small institution that Our stuff has always kind of fell into that that space more and really Really nowadays it's focused on students' classwork. We don't like have like you know, Lee talked about like There's like this faculty research like those kinds of things where the library is very involved We don't really just have that at Mary Washington. They're just like not that faculty don't engage with it in that particular Way, right? They're generally Like a lot of we have playing faculty who do not engage with it, but they make their students engage with it, right? They don't have any interest but they're like, I think this is important, right? Like so they're like, okay, like you know Help them do this thing. Um, and I think We a lot of that happens because we have things like the dkc where they can send their students for help, right? Like they don't they're like, well, I don't need to know this I'll just send them along so that we get a lot more engagement I think on that kind of front where it's student work Which has a completely different vibe and it simply is kind of easier to also not worry about long term If you need to like, because they're gonna be gone after a certain amount of time So that kind of calling that that that could happen. I mean, that's what happens domain one zone. We just We give them some time and then we're like, okay. Bye. Like we're not paying for yourself anymore And so that like that makes at least on the domain one zone side very easy to be provisioned people It's like mass majority users are students. So bye, uh, you know, get out That's actually a very good pivot to something that's been popping up in the chat repeatedly in the past a couple minutes, um And also again a question that I sort of swiped from tom, which is talking about Sunsetting things at your institution on a regular basis on a larger scale For li and shan and you guys are both sunsetting a very large project but talking about sort of On a smaller scale user Annual deprovisioning keeping track of who's leaving So for all three of you particularly on wordpress multi site keep for for both but wordpress multi site sort of Has different ways of keeping track of how many users how many sites what's active what's going on So how do you guys Set those policies think about those things and approach deprovisioning archiving Sunsetting small scale on large scale. I mean currently to be honest, we don't Um Because again And this is this is this question of infrastructure, right? Like this is a small part of our Um support for digital pedagogy. We also You know uis and this is the only one that that candles our unit actually administers And so we are also working with faculty on the lms and we are working with on with the lms integrations and other tools and We help them with zoom, you know, whereas uis takes care of the administration of those sorts of things We still support them in terms of their implicate their implementation in the classroom setting and so You know domains in the commons blog is no one person's primary responsibility Right, um, which is which is an issue, right? And so now I am the closest person to having that be One of my main or primary responsibilities and even then I have A lot of other ones and competing ones and so one of the things where we are actually getting a team um of people who can help with these kinds of things and to administer and so really Um, we're we're having to rush through the process of building our new word press multi site because our old word press multi site is broken and insecure and a whole host of other things which Lauren will tell you all about trying to get me to to shut it down because it's running like PHP 4.5 or something ridiculous like that. Yeah, I know everybody makes that face when I say that it is not great It's not um And so we're we're going through to to make sure that we have a functional word press multi site To launch in the fall for new classes so that we're not adding anybody new on the old one and the goal is is that um We kind of have three again because of its long term use and it's been around for so long Most of the users its course blogs but we do have a not insignificant number of Uh units on campus and we found this with um w blogs as well Shannon, right? Like there are some units on campus who are using who have been using it since 2008 as their units blog and website Um a couple of major units on campus. We have faculty who are using that as their um as their faculty page as the professional page um, so while we're not going to create any new users We are planning on and we have to keep student work for three years, which is the the law everywhere so We're giving ourselves a year of time to sort of make sure that anyone Who still needs web space? Is migrated to the the right place be that on an official georgetown.edu be that on domains Maybe it is a new course site Right and just to really make sure and do that hand holding and then we're also going to have to take the time to Create the policies. We're kind of putting the cart before the horse because of the circumstances unfortunately, but our plan is to develop a plan and have a more consistent cycle of of deletion and Removal part of that is again made complicated by the fact that student work has to be kept for three years And so we have to kind of think about that cycle and how that's going to work um And and build that into our all our Our way of dealing with domains as well, right? What do we do with graduation staff leaving all of that kind of stuff? so there's there's um An increased capacity now that in the fall We're going to be once this is all built up and we're ready to go with it We can sit down and have a longer conversation about okay. How how do what's the life cycle? Right. What is our year look like? How do we make sure that this doesn't become? um Something that's going to break And and compromise reclaim servers in the future Sorry reclaim We love you Yeah, I wish I could say that We had a a hard and fast policy right now with our WordPress multi site. Um We like definitely went into it like yeah the problem with the um, don't he blogs is that like we never deleted anything And then like you get around to thinking about like what it takes to actually do that effectively And you're like, oh, this is probably why they never got around to figuring this out like besides like The value of like having that stuff. Uh, it just it's it's a little trickier. Um, because You know, it's an individual student owns a site That's easy, but like what do you do about like do you get rid of if you got rid of a student's Signed you get rid of the user. They might have been blogging on somebody like does that content go away? When they were blogging on their professors It's like it gets Because those things can be a little more connected. It gets a little bit harder to untangle. So I think we still Will definitely like I do I think we'll do the low hanging fruit of like if it ever only said hello world That seems like an easy thing to get rid of But we we are I think still figuring out what it means to Like, you know, it's not even just like the practicality ability things But like what do diligence do you need to do in notifying people and like, you know that that kind of Those things that we we are still wrestling with like on what might be best practice for us so Yeah, I think if it was an easy answer people would would have one and it would be consistent But it's not And it's nuanced and there's lots of hassle even within a multi site And I think you know, I'm like I said digging through 2016 and 2017 tomato one's own accounts right now So I know that any student contact in there is not going to work And so what we are doing is uh me myself am Hand backing up any installed applications looking to see if the public html Uh directories have been added and archiving those if they exist And just pulling it all down locally before saying delete the account. So just in case We'll have all the stuff in case someone cares And I'm hitting all the like a lot of mine do pretty quick, you know, a minute and a half two minutes Um But then you hit somebody that's like six applications installed in like five folders and it's like Plus i'm saving them all to my google drive so Eventually, I'll have to like move them someplace and we'll have to document like where they are Share that folder. So I mean like it's it's you know, it's nutty stuff And you don't have to care. That's the other thing you could do is just say You've been gone for x amount of time. We're going to delete your stuff But it depends on the culture of the institution and Middlebury's culture is not we're going to delete your stuff in tough luck. It's Oh dear, you're unhappy. We will do anything to make you happy. So You know, no know the vibe of your institution and trying to line stuff up to support that yeah, I I always like hearing about what different institution cultures are around the projects because that's part of what i'm Trying to do and yet sometimes it can be hard to get a sense for these things So thank you guys for sharing that um Yeah, I would say like for anybody who you know is thinking about this or trying to spin up it's like it it's so hard to feel like to have these conversations because it is so dependent on what what What is your culture? Like what are the goals of your institution around these things? Or do you think you're gonna go so it's like What works for Lee's group doesn't work for us because that doesn't make sense. So I don't know. There's there's lots of ways to do it, which means there's lots of right answers But um, you know sometimes feels like well, nobody else is doing this. Is this okay? Like I have had many moments. I'm like nobody else is doing this. I don't know if this is a good decision or not. So I would say an added layer of complexity that I just remembered in terms of our WordPress multi site is one of the reasons why the hub and spoke model Uh, was popular with with some faculty in some programs is that you can't add external users or viewers to the lms But you could add them to the hub and spoke model of our WordPress multi site And so if they had external experts coming in to evaluate student work to comments um to to sort of not guest lecture but guest sort of mentor Um, there was no way to do that in the lms And then but there is a way to do that in the hub and spoke model. So it's still private But you can bring as you choose external users Um, that makes it complicated because now we don't just have Georgetown users on our WordPress multi site But external users we actually have um, I mean, I don't know how many of them are really active at the moment But a couple hundred external People that then we have to to account for and figure out. Well, what do we do with them as users in their content? And and how do we reach out to them and hope they're hope hope that hotmail address still works? So it's again, it's it's it's that it's that very um And that's and that's also what happens though is that it's going on in the chat and we talked about it here Each each place is so dependent, but so many of us um spun up multi sites or domains And um, you know it's saying in the chat. We just sort of went okay. Let's see what people do with it right, and so we have this 15 years of data Right of like this is how these sites have been used and so in the next iteration We can kind of say we know this is how people have used it and so we can tailor Our build towards how our users are are are using it like I said, that's why you know We're trying to create this hub and spoke plugin because it has become such a central part of The word press multi site experience at Georgetown University um, and so that that's the kind of You know as as we all move into the 2.0. We are better able to respond to what our campuses want and need because We were able to do such an open-ended version of it at the beginning Um as unsustainable as that turned out to be and maybe we should have predicted that But now we can take this knowledge of our campus of the community of the of the needs and our own capacity And say okay, here's how we're going to do it moving forward, which I think is a really uh fantastic element of both the word press multi site and domain of one's own is that we do have the flexibility to adapt it and adopt it to our own campuses needs and capacity Which is it the case of the lms right the lms is just like here you get canvas and it's your solution Regardless of how big you are regardless of what your needs are regardless of Of anything else whereas this is the exact this can be the exact opposite of it, which I think is is phenomenal Yeah, that's actually what you guys have sort of been talking about Differences also in campus culture which is heading back a second is Related to something I have on my list, so we're going to go to that next Which is Things that you've picked up from other institutions So if there's differences in campus culture it can be maybe Hard to say oh what works for you will work for us But are there other schools out there using domains using word press multi site using both where you've looked at and said Maybe we try that Maybe we can maybe we can bring that in or maybe we can adapt to that Oh, well, certainly. I think oh use Creates like having an actual physical ceremony to celebrate digital stuff is one that's always stuck with me is something that I really liked you know making it to like Uh an occasion It's a hard thing to maintain clearly, but like always like that idea I like the pushing back and forth of digital and physical that it kind of pulls off And the idea of creating community You know that extends the digital community that might exist So that was one that that really has always stuck out to me But you know, I also went through and looked at I don't remember how many The domain of one's own pages in terms of like getting ideas and thinking things through so like While I can't call out individuals I can say that I do look across at all this stuff and how it's happening To try and get ideas to try and better frame language You know and I guess the other one that a number of people have done in different ways Is that idea of how do you show examples of what happens in the space to people at the right time? To help kind of inform their choice of spaces if they were choosing between domain of one's own And say multi site but also kind of inspire them to go down different paths in different ways I'll say I'll quickly give credit like early on we I took a lot of stuff from Coventry just around their Their guides and then like they were the first group that like I you know, I think when we were contemplating what we were going to do I'm sure as Lawrence my gym is like Coventry is figuring out how to put their they're going to offer both things I was like, oh, I like that thought that never occurred to me like we could offer both things like it seemed like false dichotomy that I had in mind And I'll say like one thing I think Yeah That like we wrestle with that we did end up choosing not to go that direction But like part of my heart still wants it Like let's get a third word personal things. I is like like what CUNY does with like they use comments in a box like that kind of more um That feeling of like you're part of a a network more right like some people really approach the word personal It's like as a network of like groups and you discoverable I mean the way we we've decided to approach our word personal They say there's really more of like this is an easier way to build a site rather than it's a way to network even the network among people So but I I really love the idea like that's what I loved about early UMW blogs Like I would just I would spend time like looking at what people were writing it felt like, you know Comments and I guess there's ways we could do that on our multi site But we really not focused on it in that particular way that I think is a missing an element I miss but is like we we've kind of focused it is more of a tool than to accomplish a thing rather than maybe a community which You know, uh, that doesn't have to be like that forever, but it's like I kind of I missed that aspect. I think when I was it When I was at UMW one of the things that we tried to do is we tried to capture Um, and the early histories of Domena ones own at various institutions And I'll share I just I was looking for the article while they were they were talking And so it's kind of interesting to say to think of like, what have we taken from other places? Um, and I I want to say like everything Right where it's just thinking everything from plugins to usage to Um to themes to approaches to for faculty development. I mean even just going to Um the reclaim open conference and I just got the notification for the st. Norbert domains camp Um, you know where you know taking the idea of of how to do faculty development differently how to integrate Students and then thinking about it is as The the biggest challenge is is how do I adapt and adopt this for our particular? institution and situation um So it's everything from like, how are we doing the infrastructure? Uh with the first person I reached out to when we were rebuilding our multi-site with shannon and being like You just went through this. How did it go? Um to You know, so the the very nitty gritty technical questions and if you're on the discord You know, I'm on there a lot and tom always answers me. Thank you tom Um to you know, again, how do we do faculty development? How do we involve students in this? How do we? Um, you know, how do we scale you know from from the nitty gritty to the existential? I think it's it's just um I I've taken so much from the community in that sort of sense and learning from what everybody else has done That's really lovely I I don't know. I like that. Thank you. Um Now I have to figure out how to pivot off of that great note and Ruin the moment and I'm so sorry. Um, I think what we're going to move to next is Another question that I swiped from tom. So thank you tom, uh, which is just Real quick elevator pitch Difference between a domain of one zone and wordpress multi-site how you would Talk about them to a potential user. All right. I'll give you my spiel. It's it's about how much complexity you want Um, so here a wordpress multi-site route is going to be um Kind of it's managed to you to a degree We're going to be able to provide you this level of support here technically We're going to have pre-chosen themes pre-chosen plugins which you can choose from so there's choice. There is flexibility Um, we're kind of building it to solve say 80 90 of the things that most people want to do Um, and with full-site editing and some other options we might apply, you know, you can have something that is unique within the space But if you're going to be wanting to install software That's different if you want to look behind the curtain and start to look at like databases if you want to be doing things That kind of start to push the boundaries. Um and you're Possibly dealing with something that might have a degree of scale and might need to move someplace else This is probably a better place to go for that So we won't be able to provide support in terms of x y and z whatever that is at your institution Our stuff is not defined. It's super fuzzy. Um But from here, you would also be able to move more easily to say a cloud environment or a virtual full-on virtual server or something like that. So Try and talk about it in terms of the complexity they want or don't want The technology complexity they want or don't want the support they want or don't want and then The scale that they anticipate the thing having. Yeah, I mean I could come kind of put it the way we often Talk about that. Um You know, we we have the our very fancy Apartment versus like plot of land thing that we go that like, you know, it's kind of the way I easily break it down Like if I'm doing a class visit, right? Like, you know in front of people Uh, so I don't know if I have anything else to add Um to what to what tom just said I think it's a lot of In a lot of cases Again, just given the scale of our project and the size of the institution in a lot of cases people are coming to us About wanting to build a website Um, and then it's or having a web presence or doing something publicly or and then it becomes, um, you know Sometimes it's no you don't actually want a georgetown domain This is actually you should be on georgetown.edu and you need to contact uis like your department You know have a department website. Um, that's so much easier conversation to have since we shifted it on our official georgetown.edu from drupal to wordpress It's much easier to have that conversation now because um, they're not trying to avoid drupal like the plague which cool I get that And then sometimes it then it becomes is it for a class project? What are you trying to do? What's the What's the scalability? I think I put it in the chat It's like do you want to use wordpress? Yes or no And then what do you want to do with wordpress because if they're not going to use wordpress And they want to mech our scaler or something like that. Well, then we're gonna have to use domains even if it's for a class Right because that's the whole purpose of it. Um, and then if it's You know, if it's a business program and they want to create e-commerce sites Well, then we're going on domains and not on common. So in a lot in a lot of cases it's kind of uh, So you want to build a website? Okay What kind where how are we doing this and so there's almost like a decision a decision tree of like what it is that we want to do so it's It's less of a pitch and more that they come to us and that's again something that we have to work on in terms of of of promoting Domain of one zone and wordpress multi site is like how do we pitch this rather than just use it as as something that's a reaction great our Next question is actually going to be from the chat Uh from mark corbett wilson. Thank you mark, which is about Uh, the role of students in these discussions He asked any student input in these institutional discussions democratically elected leaders might have different points of view I I mean georgian is so big and so varied Where what kind of students are you talking about you're talking about the undergraduate students or the graduate students? Are you talking about continuing studies students at the school of uh at the school of conditioning studies who are professional students? I mean, are we talking about the medical students or the law students? It's it's georgian is so big and and again because anyone can use it right You know, you could say the same thing as what a faculty want because you know our faculty are probably The bigger more long-term users of domain of one zone than they would be of the wordpress multi site Right and or maybe not right like again, I'd have to crunch those numbers um But again like understanding who our user base is and who are we serving and and you know It's one thing to say Anyone with it with a net ID faculty students staff because staff is in this too and gosh we've got Thousands of staff as well at our institution like who who is if everyone is our constituents We're never going to be able to make everyone happy and that's completely unsustainable so in a lot of cases it becomes really hard to respond to um To to just students in terms of what what their needs are Versus needs of the faculty versus possibly needs of the staff so that becomes you know it it gets a little bit um muddled and very complicated and again different student populations want very different things as well within it with even within our student ecosystem at a at a place as large as george shown My quick answer would be no No, no, they're not really involved in a lot of those discussions And I think it is for all the reasons that we just mentioned I feel like to some degree when you're trying to get at the food water shelter type of thing then the student input Almost feels like it's going to add extra complexity when you can't support the complexity you already have and I also recognize that's like a Cowardly self-injurious type of position to take perhaps you know, so I can kind of appreciate it on both sides that we really should have students talking through this stuff with us on a regular basis But at the same time it seems like an almost insurmountable Hill at the moment like I wouldn't even want to talk to faculty in general about this Just because that's going to open up another ball of wax that That we just don't seem to have the the financial personnel or infrastructure to support Um, and so you just limp along with what you have. I think in many cases, which isn't an aspirational model But I feel like that's where where it is sometimes But before Shannon goes sorry just to add to that We were talking in the discussion earlier about how You know, the students want something dot georgian dot domains and then tom asked. Well, how long does that last? I go only six months Um after they graduate and there's that, you know So if students had their say because I've gotten the feedback from students when I do class visits Because that's always the question they ask how long do I have this for and then well, why can't I keep it forever? um and You know the the the the answer is is that it is not sustainable Right as we just talked about with the WordPress multi sites being able to be kept forever So I mean if we ask the students what they wanted they're like I want that domain name forever Um, that that's sort of like okay, we can't do that Right like it's it's it's again. It's it's this What are we actually and it once you ask and they tell you it's hard to say no Right, it's hard to kind of justify the infrastructure and all that kind of stuff Whereas if we build within the limitations that we have and we know of Um, it's not necessarily democratic But it's the the best that we've got within the institutional constraints that that we all kind of deal with both culturally But also in terms of resources Right if we want something that does everything for everyone, then you've got canvas It's like have the lms Yeah, um, yeah, I'll echo that we we don't either, uh, you know, we barely bring faculty into some of our decisions Like the people who know understand these things, uh, you know, uh, we certainly like We bring in I think the stakeholders we think Can represent those kinds of things right we have faculty we bring in faculty who understand those things And then can maybe speak uh to their interaction with students around this I think because I actually really Don't like I I've actually seen too much bad use of like let's involve students to like by just having a Inviting students but not helping them Actually be useful people in those conversations at all and it's hard to Actually make make a student understand enough right like they're they don't understand how institutions work, right? You know, they complain about like Tuitions too high, but then why don't we have this thing? You're like well that costs money Like that's like, you know, they to to have meaningful integration of students into conversations Which I think is worthwhile in places you have to help them get there and it's just like not priority I think and for me, I rather spend my time with students Talking about how can we do interesting things with the tool that I know Domain one's own is complex enough that we could spend all their time like let's talk about You know, how can what does it mean to be online your digital identity? Those are the conversations I'd rather have spend time doing with students like meaningful Interrogations of the tool rather than them maybe giving input about like some of the machinations that go on behind it Like let me let let's like yeah, you want to put on this workshop around accessibility on the wet Like let's I rather do that than do other things and there's always so much time in the day It feels like for for things Yeah We have oh God just about over two minutes left Great. I have so many questions still on my list. Um, and I have a couple that I can bring in But first I just want to say like is there anything that I didn't get to That you would like to say and if the answer is I don't know. That's too open-ended and I do have I have stuff Okay, we're gonna say that's too open-ended my bad. Um So we talked about past we talked about present we talked a little bit about future I want to go a little more into that You have a minute and a half What is your crazy dream for your projects in a world with infinite resources and infinite support? No more wordpress and flat html Like small like my minimal computing thing go watch that talk that's my dream for the future That um, we're not I'm not dealing with wordpress unless I absolutely have to in the same way We now only deal with drupal if we absolutely have to it's like let's just get it small Let's go back to flat html. Let's just simplify this whole thing So much more I have still more questions if I put you on the spot I don't I I'm unmuted, but I don't know if I have an answer. Yeah, I think I'm just Very I I think you know Basically what reclaim open was about like the what is going to happen with the open web into the future? I think Right, we often get caught up in these tools. But like what is going to be next I don't know. Maybe there's going to be crazy tools that are like Well, now you just have AI generate your site by telling you get to what to do, right? I don't I feel like like but how do we Stay in those conversations with the tools that are going to be the next thing to make sure we are ethically and responsibly You know building and authoring on the web and using these tools So I I don't know if I have an answer or so much is like, I don't know I'm just prepared to like where where are we going next trying to keep the eyes open also to prevent Bad actors from like being like this is how we should do it and we can resist whatever Awfulness may come One I think it's just having the time and space for the conversations to enable choice That's informed like wordpress is great for being wordpress There's lots of reasons to have database back websites We just often like using a hammer to eat your lunch You chose the wrong tool It's a great hammer It's good at that But like you wanted a fork and the hammer just doesn't make sense you can make it work But it's awkward and people look at you funny You know, so I think I think it's like it's more around the time To have the conversations and to help people learn and to have those people actually Have the time themselves to do that and want to do it. And so like that's that's the tension and all this The tools and the choices and all the complexities there are usually an afterthought And they're a penalty rather than being part of the process. So I'd like to change that Great. Well, yeah, we're at time. So Thank you all so much for taking the time to be part of this panel. Um for the second time For doing it twice over this has been a really good conversation From my perspective and I hope it has been for you guys as well. Um, happy friday, by the way I'm gonna just We're gonna say goodbye. We're gonna end the broadcast and Have a great day, everybody Have a great day. Have a great