The University of Michigan is committed to making certain that all of the institution’s websites are safe, secure, and protected. To achieve this goal, the ITS AFS Website Upgrade Project team is working with AFS website owners to upgrade their websites that are hosted on the ITS Web Virtual Hosting Service to the current version of PHP and Content Management Systems (CMS), ensure all websites are using Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) and migrate websites off of Cosign. While ITS maintains the infrastructure of websites, it is the responsibility of the website owner to make updates to their site.
The diagram below shows the website upgrades that are needed by June 30, 2023. Websites that have not completed these upgrades and discontinued use of Cosign by June 30 will be taken offline.
- Migrate off Cosign by 6/30/23
- Migrate to Wolverine Web Services (targeting 2023)
Unit Websites in AFS
Website owners should regularly check and keep your website on the latest version of the software you install (for example, WordPress or Drupal). Website owners can check on the health of their website on the AFS Unit Websites Dashboard.
Project Communications
The project team will use targeted emails and the AFS Unit Website Dashboard to inform units on what upgrades are needed for their website(s). Targeted emails will use the MCommunity Group and unit leadership that is associated with each website. If you believe you should not receive communications related to a website, inform the owner of the MCommunity Group to remove you from the group. The MCommunity Group associated with a website can be found by looking up the website on the AFS Unit Website Dashboard. If the MCommunity Group that is associated with a website is incorrect, fill out the ITS WebHosting Upgrade Form and indicate the correct MCommunity Group that should be used for communications.
What You May Have To Do
- Upgrade your website's PHP
ITS Web Hosting currently supports PHP 8.1 and PHP 7.3. - Migrate your website to HTTPS
Websites that use HTTP will need to update their website to use HTTPS. ITS recommends that this effort be completed before migrating off of Cosign. - Upgrade your website's CMS
Website owners that use WordPress or Drupal Content Management System (CMS) should ensure their websites are using the current supported version. - Migrate your website off of Cosign
ITS is asking all website owners that use Cosign for authentication to have a plan to get off of Cosign by June 30, 2023. The ITS Web Hosting team recommends using OIDC to replace Cosign for website authentication and to start this effort by March 2023.
Decommissioning
If your AFS website is no longer being used and ready to be decommissioned, fill out the ITS WebHosting Upgrade Form and the ITS Web Hosting team will start the process.