A New Model for Domains: DoOO & WPMS

As separate entities, Domain of One’s Own (DoOO) and WordPress Multisite (WPMS) are not new ideas. What’s more, we’ve known for quite a while now that they’re not in competition with each other at all; DoOO & WPMS serve different user groups with different needs. For many years, when taking meetings with prospective schools, the conversation has always been a matter of choice– Do I need Domain of One’s Own or WordPress Multisite?

More recently, the “either or” decision has changed to a dialogue about the value in running DoOO and WPMS side by side. These tools can offer a pretty powerful way to meet the needs of a much larger, diverse group of learners and educators. I’m really fascinated by this conversation, and have enjoyed watching a few schools in our community lay the foundation for bringing these two services under one roof. Before diving further, let me first outline DoOO and WPMS for those that are hearing this for the first time:

Domain of One’s Own:
In short, Domain of One’s Own is at-scale cPanel hosting for a higher ed community. These cPanel dashboards include access to over 100 open source applications like WordPress, Omeka/S, and Scalar, as well as access to key functions for managing a digital presence like DNS, Databases, and File/PHP Managers. cPanel accounts are automatically provisioned to end users upon signup, and all accounts sit behind a custom homepage/login portal that can be branded for a given institution. The beauty of Domains is that end users can login quickly with their campus credentials via Single Sign On, and they can be up and running with a domain of their choosing in a matter of seconds. Domain of One’s Own encourages freedom, ownership, and exploration in a digital space, and cPanel is completely transportable when students are graduating and ready to leave the institution.


WordPress Multisite:
WordPress Multisite offers the ability to run many WordPress sites in a single install. This means that WPMS Administrators can oversee a network of hundreds (or even thousands) of WordPress sites from a single dashboard. Network settings allow admins to pre-approve themes and plugins that users have access to. As with Domain of One’s Own, users can log into a WordPress Multisite homepage with their campus credentials via Single Sign On, and be up and running with a WordPress sub-site in no time. WordPress Multisites work well for showcasing work in ePorfolios, blogs, and course sites.

Both DoOO and WPMS have pros and cons when thinking about onboarding, supporting, and offboarding a higher ed community. For example: Domain of One’s Own, while offering a perfect sandbox to build and explore, might feel overwhelming for beginner users. In some instances, it can even be a bit overkill to offer a full-blown cPanel account to all end users that are only really looking for a simple WordPress site. On the other side of the coin, WordPress Multisite might be a perfect fit for beginners that are dipping their toes in building a digital presence for the first time. That said, end users are only able to build and explore with the plugins and themes that have been made available to them. And if not regularly maintained, that growing list of plugins and themes can become overwhelming for administrators to maintain.

Sustainable growth and account cleanup also have to be considered with working with DoOO & WPMS. We encourage schools with Domain of One’s Own programs to regularly cull through accounts and clear out those that are no longer in use, given DoOO is charged on a per/cPanel basis. By comparison, WordPress Multisite hosting costs are entirely based on server storage and resources, reducing the need to closely watch the number of active users. When it comes time to clean off or remove accounts, cPanel has a built-in migration path, whereas converting a sub-site to a single WP instance can be quite manual.

These are just some of the considerations when thinking about running DoOO and WPMS programs on campus. But by taking the time to understand the value of both, you can further understand what will make the most sense for your community. And for some schools, the answer is clear: both are necessary.

Coventry Domains

I’ve admired the work that Coventry University has done with their Domain of One’s Own program for years, and in fact, I wrote here about their DoOO knowledge base, coventry.domains/learn. I recommend checking it out, as it does an amazing job of bringing beginners up to speed with best practices on the web. Now many years later, coventry.domains incorporates a larger mission around working with Domains in general– both in DoOO and WPMS.

Coventry.domains is now a landing page that delivers a larger “domains” idea, and the opportunities are framed differently for students and educators. Prominent login & signup buttons encourage folks to start by building an online presence with a WordPress Multisite sub-site, which is completely self-service. Alternately, users have the ability to request a Domain of One’s Own cPanel account. This strategy pushes most growth to the WPMS and allows admins to go through a vetting process for anyone interested in working with cPanel.

Domain Structures

OU Create

Similarly, Oklahoma University recently launched their own landing page for Domain of One’s Own & WordPress Multisite at create.ou.edu. The homepage promotes information literacy, digital citizenship, and skills development. Like Coventry, the folks at OU have also chosen to drive most traffic to the WPMS via self-service login buttons, whereas users must request a DoOO cPanel account.

Domain Structures:

I love how OU Create makes use of a .com top level domain as well as .edu URLs for managing their Domains program.

So where do we go from here?

In both examples above, I really like that the “integration” between DoOO & WPMS is not overly complicated. These schools are using a simple landing page with menu links to redirect traffic to one platform or the other based on the goals for each project. By offering both services, admins can be quite strict about what plugins & themes are supported in WPMS, allowing the curated list to be small and maintainable. If users then want to work with a different theme or plugin, they might be a good candidate for a cPanel environment. This also naturally begins to define where and how support is provided. (i.e. Here’s what we can offer vs. here’s what we can support in house.) There’s no doubt that these tools are powerful, and that’s made even more clear when they are running parallel to each other. DoOO programs are able to have intentional, steady growth, and legacy WPMS instances are given a fresh purpose.

One of my goals for Reclaim Hosting would be to help make the marriage of DoOO and WPMS a little bit easier. Can we build on stateu.org demo DoOO theme to incorporate more templates for these landing pages? Can we have a similar demo theme for WordPress Multisites? And even more, how can we incorporate Reclaim Cloud for those looking for a sandbox space outside of the LAMP stack? (This also gets back to the idea of tiered/layered services, which I wrote more about here.) I’m excited to continue tackling these questions, and look forward to hearing how others are doing the same.

3 Comments

  1. Lauren,
    I really love the way you break this down, and the idea of having a demo on stateu.org for us to both showcase but also test would be a great idea.

    Like you, I am very much interested in how the third part of this holy trinity would work with integrating Reclaim Cloud as part and parcel of a DoOO instance at a school. We need to start a planning/deszign committee and build this thing out.

  2. Pingback: WPMS Master Admins Chat: We’ve Built It So They’ll Come – Reclaim EdTech

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Back to Top