Modern Campus Hosting: Go Live

For Modern Campus Hosting users, this guide provides instructions on how to go live with a new website.

Modern Campus CMS is a decoupled system, meaning you create sites separately from the production server that hosts your live website. When you publish a Modern Campus CMS site to your production server, or go live, you are enabling your web visitors to see your website. 

You may need to publish a site following a redesign or when switching from a development domain to your live web domain. 

To go live, coordinate with your Modern Campus project manager to provide all necessary credentials and certificates by the specified deadlines.

Prepare to Go Live  Link to this section

First, determine who will acquire the SSL certificate and change the Domain Name System (DNS) records to go live. In most cases someone at your institution, like your IT department, controls the DNS. Sometimes the DNS is managed at your district level. 

Schedule to go live at a time of low activity for your site. Please contact your Modern Campus project manager to coordinate a go-live date. If you don’t have an active project, contact us via the  CMS Support Resource Portal .  

Production Server Administrator: Two Weeks Before 

At a minimum of two weeks prior to going live, the production server administrator completes the following: 

• Submit your valid SSL certificate to the project manager.
  • For an existing certificate, provide a .pfx file with the private key.
  • For a new certificate, request a certificate signing request (CSR) from your project manager and use it to obtain a new SSL.
• If using a custom 404 page, inform the project manager of its location.
• Transfer existing redirects to the production server.
• Submit new redirects to your project manager.
  
  • Keep the development domain up for one week with a redirect to the live site to prevent indexing and resolve calendar URL issues.
    • Note that CMS page previews may temporarily break until DNS propagation is complete.

Production Server Administrator: One Week Before 

One week prior to going live, the production server administrator completes the following: 

• Incrementally decrease your DNS Time To Live (TTL) record to 300 seconds. 
  • When domain propagation is complete, set the TTL record back to the previous setting. 
• Define the DNS Canonical Name (CNAME), FTP and HTTPS root, and subdomains for the new site. 

Site Administrator: One Week Before 

One week prior to going live, the site administrator completes the following: 

The day before going live, the site administrator completes the following: 

Find and Replace 

This may result in some content with temporarily broken links until the go-live, but helps you prepare for a more efficient go-live the next day. 

1. Go to Content > Find and Replace. 
2. Perform a replace to change any hard-coded links from the old domain to the new one. 
   • Select the checkboxes to include assets and components. 
   • Be careful not to change any system URLs, for example 
     <!DOCTYPE document SYSTEM "http://commons.omniupdate.com/dtd/standard.dtd">
   or   
<document xmlns:ouc="http://omniupdate.com/XSL/Variables">

Dependency Scan 

Convert all links to dependency tags. 

1. Go to Setup > Sites. 
2. Click the More Actions  menu for the site. 
3. Click Scan > Dependency Scan. 

When the dependency manager scanner has successfully completed, you can proceed to the next step. 

Publish Assets 

1. Go to Content > Assets. 
2. Select all assets and Publish. 

Site Publish 

1. Go to Setup > Sites. 
2. Click the More Actions  menu for the site. 
3. Click Publish > Publish Site. 

Go Live Link to this section

Production Server Administrator 

Update DNS and Add Redirect 

Update the DNS record for your live domain to point to the web server where the CMS is publishing.

For subdomains (e.g., "www"), use a CNAME record pointing to the {account}.omniweb.cloud URL provided by Modern Campus.

Set the apex domain’s A record to these three IP addresses for stability:  
  3.209.26.193  
  34.236.193.193  
  52.73.2.219  

If using all three A records is not possible, use as many as you can for improved redundancy.

Site Administrator 

Update your HTTPS Root 

1. Wait until the DNS is fully propagated. 
   • This will take some time. You can perform a DNS lookup using free tools online to confirm the domain has been repointed to the new IP address. 
   • If you are a SaaS customer and wish for us to clear the DNS cache on the CMS servers, let your project manager know. 
2. Go to Setup > Sites. 
3. Click the More Actions  menu for the site. 
4. Click Edit > Site. 
5. In Production Server FTP Settings, update the HTTPS Root to point to the new live domain.

Site and Sitemap Publish 

At this point your new website is ready for visitors, but we recommend you perform one more site publish to ensure everything is perfectly coordinated. 

1. Make sure that pages preview correctly. 
2. Go to Setup > Sites. 
3. Click the More Actions  menu for the site. 
4. Click Publish > Publish Site. 
   • If your site uses absolute URLs, select the checkbox to Use Last Published Version. 
     • You can determine if your site uses absolute URLs at Setup > Sites > WYSIWYG Editor > URL Type. 
   • To speed up the site publish, select the checkbox to Exclude Binary Files. 
   • Add a “Go-Live" publish note so that all files will have this version description. 
5. Publish the sitemap. 
6. Test your live website to ensure the following are working as expected:
   • Content
   • Navigation
   • Redirects
   • SSL certificate

Configure RSS and Modules (optional) 

RSS feeds and some modules, such as Modern Campus CMS Website Search and Modern Campus CMS Calendar, use a site of their own. Configure these modules for your new domain, if applicable. 

Move RSS Feeds and Items 

The XML files in Modern Campus CMS RSS feeds are located on the production server. To display existing RSS feeds on a new site, move the RSS feeds and items to the new domain. 

In the following example, a development server exists in a subfolder (www.domain.edu/redesign ) of the production server at www.domain.edu. 

Update links for RSS feeds, as follows: 

1. Navigate to Content > RSS. 
2. Click the More Actions menu for the RSS feed. 
3. Click Edit. 
4. Change the link from https://www.domain.edu/redesign/   to   https://www.domain.edu. 
5. Click Save. 
6. Publish the feed. 

Update URLs for RSS items, as follows: 

1. Navigate to Content > RSS. 
2. Click the More Actions menu for the RSS feed. 
3. Click Items. 
4. Click the More Actions menu for the RSS item. 
5. Click Edit. 
6. Click the title of the media content. 
7. Edit File  and Thumbnail to update file URLs from https://www.domain.edu/redesign/  to   https://www.domain.edu. 
8. Click Apply. 
9. Click Save.  
10. Repeat for each RSS item. 
11. Click Rebuild Feed.  

If there are too many items to edit manually, contact us via the CMS Support Resource Portal for a tool to automate this process. 

Modern Campus CMS Calendar 

Image paths in calendar events are not updated when you perform the Find and Replace operation and will require manual updates. Go to Calendar > Settings and edit event images to point to the new live domain. 

Modern Campus CMS Website Search 

Once your website loads properly in your browser, index your newly launched content with Modern Campus CMS Website Search. 

1. Log in to Modern Campus CMS Website Search. 
   •  Modern Campus CMS Website Search has a separate login and interface than Modern Campus CMS. 
2. Go to Settings > Basic Walk Settings. 
3. Update the Base URL to point to the new live domain.  
4. Take note of what your current walk type and set Walk Type to "New."  
5. Click Update and Go. 

After the walk is completed, change the walk type back to what you noted down or to the Refresh type.

If you have created Best Bets, you will need to update their URLs manually to use the new live domain. 

1. Navigate to Tools > Best Bets Groups. 
2. For the group, select “Manage Best Bets” 
3. Edit each best bet to contain a URL of the new live domain. 

After Go Live Link to this section

We recommend the following best practices after a site publish: 

• Test the search functionality on your live website. 
• Test any social media sharing links. 
• Verify all robots.txt files have been uploaded or updated. 
• Verify the favicon icon in the browser tab is enabled. 
• Review Google analytics and adjust redirects, if needed. 
• Submit sitemap.xml to Google Search Console to re-index your new site.