 Without much further ado what I'm going to do now is I'm going to talk about Kind of a little small history, but really just how domain of one's own as a system came together So the main of one's own is a kind of it can be somewhat of a term It's a term we first used at Mary Washington in 2008 to talk about WordPress multi-site The idea was when you got a WordPress multi-site instance You had your own space and why couldn't you take your domain? Whatever was professor X comm and map it on top of that site and that be your domain as instructional technologists at Mary Washington, we all had our own web See like basically cPanel web hosting our own domains And that's how we introduced WordPress and Media Wiki and all these things are on campus was having our own cPanel So the dream out of that small WordPress multi-site was how do we build a System that allows every student of faculty to get their own cPanel and their own domain name So that became our quest since 2008 up and until 2012 2013 as Alan referred to when Tim Basically started to say I think we can do this and I think we can do it in an elegant fashion Which would allow us to really support this at scale of what was four thousand people at Mary Washington And that's the short history Tim came along He had a sense of how the system worked and he integrated them to make them easy What I'm going to do right now is show you how that happened Basically give you an insight to how these three systems work This is all work of Tim and Martha Burtis who were sitting around a conference table in Dupont Hall at Mary Washington Saying I think we can do this and one of the cool things I'll tell this little anecdote before I go on and so they were figuring out web hosting web hosting is an industry, right? And it's kind of a seedy industry in some ways It's like a little shady like you'll get an email like your databases are hacked You have to pen $200 to clean it up, right? That's all you know So they were trying to break into this industry to figure out how it worked and they would go on forums and it said yes We want to set up web hosting, but we don't want to charge anyone anything and the people like what are you? Communists like you don't want to charge anyone anything like you're hacking the system They give away free web hosting so they thought these people were crazy But the idea was we didn't need any of the kind of financial infrastructure of domains All we needed is a way to provision. So that's what I'm going to talk to you about now How do you provision domains? How does the system that you either will have or currently have or want to get rid of? How does it work? So let's take a look at that. So I Do want to say that everything I'll talk about I am more than happy for you to kind of play along and play around with So for those of you who have your accounts currently Hey How are you? Very good. Okay. Hold on trying to look for my This one. So are we on a new? I don't really know how to use the computer. Oh That window This one. Thank you, Tim big fan. You shouldn't have done that to me. Okay, so I Actually Yeah, if you don't know I'm the technical genius behind the main one's on as you can see I'm not just a good looks. I'm not just a client Okay, um, so let me start here For those of you who don't have an account Or have a domain of one's own at your school, which you have the credentials for You can play along as we do this over the next two days with state you and there'll be a lot of reasons to state you What is state you state you is basically like our dummy school to let people see What a domain of one's own on their campus would look like some of you this portal is very familiar, right? I'm some of you hate looking at it some days. There's like a shibboleth era. What happened, right? This is that? This is actually WordPress, right? We came up since 2004 2005 at Mary Washington We were one of the early really pushers of WordPress We love WordPress and it's no surprise that the first piece of the puzzle that is the main of one's own is a WordPress face and that's kind of how we use WordPress WordPress is Extensible we can get a theme that works for us And the other thing is we have a certain set of plugins in the WordPress that acts as the face of domain of one's own That make integration easier a shibboleth plugin if you're running shibboleth that allows us to single sign-on with your IT department, right? a switch user plugin which allows you to switch to see what a user sees in your system when they sign in to Domain of one's own so WordPress has been very useful for us to actually build in functionality to make the management easier So our deal is we weren't going to build a system from scratch We're going to build it on top of and using WordPress as what Tim says and I think it's right the rapper For cPanel so that's the infrastructure it starts with WordPress now We'll look at this in more detail, but I'm going to jump to the next step. So I click here to dashboard and Some of you will be very familiar with this next thing This next thing is choose your domain, right? And I really do I can't say this enough I love how elegant Tim has made this right Tim and Martha really did work together to build This and I don't know too many systems that are as elegant to make cPanel simple when people say cPanel are too hard I feel like saying I have very little hair left But let me rip it out because it's not that hard to get up and running with it See panel short is a learning journey, but getting started has never been easier So this at this point we're in the new we're still in WordPress Hence the rapper, but this connection here is no longer WordPress What we're doing is we're pulling in an application called WHMCS Right stands for web host management client systems or customer systems Something like that. It's I always I couldn't get this acronym right for like the first two years of domain of one's own I'd always say like WHLMS WHCMS. I didn't know what it was, but I think it's called WHMCS This is basically the client manager So this is the software that sits on top of WHM, which we'll talk in a second that provisions accounts so at the point where I go here and I make an account and say the account is Jim groom and I click to continue This is wordpress now reaching out to WHMCS and saying, okay We have this person with this email Jim groom or with this domain or this is the domain They want who has the name Jim and the email Jim groom if this is fine click register now This is basically saying we're ready to create a client account in WHMCS for this client at the point you say register now WHMCS pushes a new cPanel account to the WHM server so think of it this way WHMCS is basically a gateway to create an account on WHM and this is all embedded as a kind of Iframe within a wordpress page and we'll look at this in some detail But that's the flow of this system when we talk about the main of one's own you log in through wordpress That then pushes you to WHMCS and in 10 seconds BAM It has created an account for you in WHMCS that then provisions a cPanel account All of which in a perfect world gets re-embedded within the iframe of wordpress Okay, we'll look at this in more detail, but that's the flow of the system Starts with wordpress WHMCS as the gateway in WHM as the cPanel instance for your user. Does that make sense? Does some degree? Okay, well here. I am This is WHM This is kind of what we would call cPanel, but this is run through the WHM server So how does this work? The thing that happens and this is why it's kind of important for me to look very quickly at the wordpress instance is We're doing a few things with themes and plugins to make this happen. So The the theme you have for state u right is called enfold and Every instance of domain of one has the enfold theme and then a child theme Which is basically called probably like Grinnell or Haverford or UNF and in that child theme We have some custom code that Tim wrote that basically enables you to create an account in WHMCS that then provisions in WHM So when we say to you as administers don't change the theme That's why like the first kind of if you change the theme of Your domain of one's own instance the functionality that provisions accounts will stop right? So that's one thing the other thing is and you can hack the theme You can redesign the theme you can even decide to create a new theme That's perfect But you would need to we would need to consult with you on that to make sure that all the functionality for doing that works So that's just a heads up for those of you who like I don't really want to use your custom portal I want it to look very different and schools have done this you can see Oklahoma if you go to Create dot oh you dot edu. It's a completely different theme. It's a completely different vision And let me just show you what that looks like That is possible, but if you were to do this I Would actually recommend that we quit what that we kind of consult So that all of the theme files that make the integration possible still work So hopefully this will come up in a second so you can look at what that looks like The other thing here it is So this isn't your average, right? That's a domain of one's own instance, but it's using a different theme with different options This is possible. We would just need to talk about this the other thing beyond themes is plugins There's a series of plugins based on how your school is integrating with Single sign-on if it is and most of you are where that plug-in is making it happen whether it's a central author Authorization plug-in like CAS or shibboleth or active directory. So any plugins at least At the time being you can enable new plugins But if you disable something like the shibboleth plug-in your system will stop integrating right with your single sign-on So just this is kind of basic But I want to make sure that in terms of themes and plugins you realize that word press While being the wrapper also controls the functionality of how the three systems integrate So any changes you make to the theme or to the plugins could affect the functioning of your system. Does that make sense? Okay, good. So Here we are in The dashboard of the system so again I said this is wordpress and this is a wrapper of wordpress. We'll talk about these applications We won't really talk about Moodle, but we will talk about Omega scalar the other one that's not there is Grav and Your many of you are very familiar. This is just pulled in I want to actually step back out and I want to look for a second at wordpress here. So let me show you all a trick and Some of you may know this some of you may not but I'm gonna do it anyway. So let me log out here So I'm logging out of state you here. We are back now How many of you know how to log in to your portal instance with by bypassing the single sign-on? Anyone okay a few of you so Let's just stop here for a second because this is gets to the idea of the management looking at wordpress Wordpress when you click on the dashboard will immediately in this instance Send us to a single sign-on. Let's pretend. This isn't Google LinkedIn or Facebook. Let's pretend This is your shibbler. Let's pretend. This is your cast or whatever So this page knows to direct you there But say you want to get into this wordpress as an admin to actually do something other than open your c-pal How do you do it? Well, there's a URL you need to know to do that to get in the URL is and Let's see has anyone memorized it took me a while Yes, wordpress login dot PHP Question mark WP I'm sure you've memorized that what this is is it's basically a little bit of a workaround to get back and Bypass the single sign-on so that you can get into the wordpress admin And this is important for you all as administrators because you'll see we have the og WordPress login, but we also have The actual single sign-on log and Facebook Google LinkedIn Now if all things are equal my one password should have this and it does Let me do a little Test here. How many of you use one pass last pass some password management? Okay, I'm gonna say here if you don't get anything out of this Conference in this workshop, and I hope you do but if you don't run to the app store and buy one We'll even figure out of like we can like you know help you in some way like one password changed my life Right Kuban codes. No, I'm actually not giving you anything but I mean really like we have hundreds and hundreds of logins and I Was in the bad habit for years of using the same username and login password to remember them But one password has basically changed the way we as a community and as a team work And I think if I were back in schools right now doing ed tech which sometimes, you know, I long for I wouldn't be talking about WordPress I wouldn't be talking about scale. I would be talking about I'd be like do you have one pass Let's sit down for the hour, but we do anything about managing your It is one of the basic literacies of managing a system like the main ones own But I think just about anything to do online. So let that be my aside that if you're not using a password manager I Would recommend at least considering it. I don't want to push too hard because then you won't do it She'll be pushing me comfortable, but it's really nice to do it So here I am I bypassed a single sign on I'm not right So I'm not here. The C panel might not be working, but look at this This is the point where the veil that this is WordPress and not just an integration machine is in and we'll see here with the admin All the things that I was talking about So here we made a very conscious decision Tim and Martha when we built this system To make it a system that people were familiar with and I just want to take a kind of a litmus test of the room right now How many of you have used and are familiar with administering WordPress? Right, that's why we did it the idea that 30% of the web now is driven by WordPress WordPress is a familiar Tool now for many where we in 2005 were saying this thing WordPress is going to change the web people like get away Give me front page, but like we want like that was over we can put the WordPress flag on the moon and say Right, so like that has been done So when we say like we use WordPress as the administration for this there's a reason We know that the people who'll be administering are somewhat familiar with it when they see this dashboard They won't freak out. It won't be new to them and we built some basic features in Now one of those features I talked about are the themes and plugins Another one and probably the one you'll use most often and Lauren will talk about this in detail So I don't want to talk too much about this But there is when you see the users in your system, right? There are the ability From those users to actually once it loads to switch and see what that user sees For me, this is like one of the most basic beginning admin tools your ability to say, okay Aaron Sullivan called having a real issue with Omega or whatever. I want to switch to Aaron Sullivan's Account and I want to be able to see what he or she might see, right? I switch I see their cPanel. I'm embedded. So that's basically ghosting as the user and 99.9% of your issues of Resolving that stuff will begin and end there you logging in as an admin you switching to that user and you're working with the other 1% of issues usually There's a blank cPanel or there's none as a white screen or we can't seem to get the username and write or This student can't create an account for this reason or that those are all fine reasons to say hey Tim Don't say Jim Tim. It's a T not a J. We're having a problem Houston we're having a problem or that's when you would submit a ticket But what we want to do now is we actually want to take a look though at how WHM and WHM CS work in some detail We don't expect you to come away from this and we encourage you to to really dig in and get more and more Familiar with this as you can but we're doing this because we want you to feel like if there is an issue And you want to follow up on it? Here are the tools to manage WHM and WHM CS in more detail We do think it's useful But as a kind of system most of what you might be doing from the beginning is a quick switch to this user and That would actually Be enough for you to get into that student or users and this isn't working because I logged out but Nine it will work that that person see panel will show up. This is a bad example, but that's exactly how it worked okay, so Questions about anything I said thus far In terms of the integrations How many of the of you Have a better sense now of what these three we're gonna talk about it But does it make sense in terms of how the three might integrate what word presses function is of? Okay, so I think at this point. We want to take a deeper dive any questions about wordpress and yes That's definitely another way it is the same thing This is a way where you can just write through wordpress without going into WHM and WHM CS do that same thing You could click to that user know their email search them and then switch to them and you will see their seat So it's another way the same issue, but good point Yeah, absolutely, so this is what Haro you just mentioned this so I'll just piggyback on you Here is WHM. What is WHM and this is where the? America's kind of predilection towards acronyms starts to get us into trouble because I know some of you are like WHM CS Yes, like what is it? WHM is basically the provisioner of C-Panel accounts This is the admin of C-Panel. So when you go in here pull out your Mountain Dew move into your parents basement Yours is admin It's official put on your green screen sunglasses. This is it. You've made it You're administering a C-Panel server, right? And this is what Haro you just referred to so let me do it If you want to find an account through WHM The tool you would use is list Or loss No, I thought I said lost. I'm sorry. It's list and you would have list accounts You click on that and right here all of the accounts on that server would be available to you You can see them. So I'm gonna look for the account. I created just now There we go. It should be Jim groom Dot State you dot edu there it is So I hit list clicked on list accounts and then I searched for a specific account now You'll notice here is a big C-Panel icon as Haro you mentioned if I click on that icon just like with the switch user in WordPress on here in In WM right so it should go up here in a second and everything saw as an embedded iframe with in the word Right here. Okay. So WHM is where you can list accounts It's also where you can do a lot of other things For example, and again, I'll tell us I'll kind of step a little bit on Lauren's toes and she'll be like Stop, but there are some other options here, right? So say you have an account for a faculty member and that faculty member deals with video Right chances are, you know 500 megabyte quota will not cut it, right? You might have to change a quota on a per user basis. You would do that in WHM, right? So that's something you can do here say and we had this recent issue with Andy rush Just last week say they no longer wanted the domain Jim groom that state you dot org they wanted the domain Jgroom that state you daddy afford you would change that here under modify account And we'll go into that in detail But this is the space where you can actually modify the specific C-Panel account, right? Now that's the end result. Let me show you the gateway This is the W. This is the WHM This is the WHM CS if the gears don't make it more confusing That's a C That's a C as told by Fritz Lang's metropolis Time labor time. Okay, so This is basically as you can see Right, this is you got the car This is what Tim and Martha were trying to say we don't want any money in here and people are like commies Right, but this is the whole thing. You can see no money has changed hand because this is just a gateway This is basically middleware between WordPress and WHM We're gonna look at this in some detail, but to just give you a brief overview if I wanted to look at Clients in this I'll use my account that I created as an example if I view search clients, right? What you'll see here is a whole list of people who signed up So say for example, and this is a really good search tool in WHM actually I wanted to look for this account gym group right Here and then it will go up click on it. It will take me to WHM CS is client details. So let's look at that Okay Working you think so yeah, maybe Okay, so couple things here. Here's the client and then here's the product service This is actually good to keep in mind you can have a client and them have no products or services So they would still show up But this is the specific product or service if you have the additional thing of actually giving people unique domains It with a product service and underneath. They're also domain So this is basically Breaking up how WHM CS sees a user and it's useful because as I click that second one look at this This is my information I put member in that middle where I put Jim groomed that state you org Here's where it's recorded. It created a username and password right that you'll never see Right when people and this comes up again when people log in this isn't their username and password We don't have any of their personal information. That's all on shibboleth or your single sign on this creates a Username and password that nine times out of ten that usually will never need to know when is the one time they might need to know anyone Bueller Euler FTP Exactly, that's the only time and we do include that in the email at the bottom when you see that password username That's why Because that is where they will go SSH and FTP We don't ever hold any of their personal information. In fact, you'll look at you won't see it here But I'll show it to you. We even use a dummy address for your students and faculty Usually the address of say one of your college It will never be a personal address the only bit of personal information we pass between is the email It's it So just so you know this is the client a couple of things down here. We'll talk about eventually is Here is how many of you have ever been in this situation where you've had a client go through everything looked like it worked And then it stopped Right, and then you go to WHM CS which would be your first place to go and you might see here the status say not active but an Active or pending right which means it pushed to WHM CS, but it never finished the job For some reason that sometimes happens. It's not always, you know usually doesn't but there are cases If that were pending in fact this module command of create Would actually allow you to push it through to WHM So these are the commands in that middle area that were saying go create this domain And basically this function create is being run automatically and it's creating the instance on WHM Again this information most of it is not even relevant the username and password might be it But that's the product and service. Let's look at the domains tab quickly here Absolutely So usually and i'll let tim jump in here at any point But usually when someone goes in and they create an account right so they sign in through single sign on That point they will have an account created in WHM CS automatically If they don't go through and fill out the subdomain and click create It will remain inactive meaning they never went through created the domain and pushed it through So it should actually be active if they did that if it's inactive That was And can I ask you heroia was the inactive here in this status is where where is showing inactive or was it in the profile Because we can look at that like there's another place where sometimes it shows up as inactive And we will look at that in some detail underneath the profile So we can look at that but hold that question because we will come back to it. Um, so here is the product Here is the domains for many schools the domains will be exactly how it looks like in state U Empty So if you have for example Domains So let's say your domain is unf.domains and you have andy rush dot unf.domains That's not considered its own domain. That's a subdomain So no domain instance will ever show up there, right a domain would be if you got andy rush.com If you got a top level domain that product would show up here And I want to be clear here, but I don't think any school here is doing top level domains. Am I correct? You are you're doing top level domains as an option. Yeah, so absolutely So you you have them too Yeah, so some schools do it like direct where everyone gets a top level domain other schools are able to choose I want to do a subdomain or as haverford and what are you doing? I want to pay for You know gym groom dot com or whatever it would be So you will see it for those schools when you're looking for a top level domain For you and her royal a domain will show up if the student has one and it's not a subdomain here The final thing we should look at here is The summary and the profile now tim mentioned this we can look at the log too so you can see that but here You'll see all the information notice State university 101 state university drive fredericksburg virginia. This is all basically stock information Thing about privacy here and kind of hold up for those of you who own a domain on your own You'll know that if you don't get it private id protect Right within days sometimes within hours you'll have someone emailing you like Hey We see you got a domain. Can we develop for you or even worse? We've had people call Some students who signed up with reclaim hosting directly and say look i'm from reclaim hosting. My name's john Your payment didn't go through Can we get your credit card information? We've had it happen. It's why everything we do on reclaim hosting shared hosting is always id protect now We don't none of that and I recommend if you have any domains that you're going through any registrar do that Um, but beyond that we don't have to do that with schools who have domains Because none of this information is there save the email right and if they do get an email Doing saying hey, there's a scam. I would just make them aware that that's that but none of that information is divulged And you'll see profile page. This is where you see the overview But whmcs summary profile product service domains You'll never have to worry about invoices Unless your students are buying domains and the final one is let's see emails and logs Every email that's sent out to your students or faculty Will be captured here What's that? So here's that and then You have your log Which will actually record everything that's Happened so when tim said earlier if you wanted to see what exactly happened with the creation of it All of that information is stored here on that particular account, which can be very useful All right So that's as tim is warning me in his very jovial way But he said you can send a little resentment underneath underneath there like you can seal it right under right underneath that placid lake There's a giant crocodile And who knew it could live so far north for so long But anyway, um, that's an overview of the three systems We will now take a short break And then we'll do a deeper dive into whmcs and whm