We have separate documentation based on each version of SiteNow. If you are unsure which version your site was built on, feel free to contact us.

SiteNow v1  - also known as "SiteNow Standard".

SiteNow v2/v3

"SiteNow Custom" websites can refer to SiteNow v1 documentation for some things, but ultimately, these sites were developed based on custom requirements from the site owner and may differ from SiteNow v1. Contact us to find out if any documentation was written specific to your website.

The web team offers SiteNow v3 tutorial sessions via Zoom. Each session covers the basics of building effective digital content in SiteNow v3. It's also an opportunity to ask questions and address any feedback you may have regarding the new Layout tool. In future, the sessions will become a workshop space for site users to discuss digital content ideas and works-in-progress. 

More training information can be found on the UI Web Community website.

If you need assistance with a particular issue, first check out our documentation and if that doesn’t help, we suggest contacting the ITS HelpDesk and describing what you are trying to do. One of our team members should be able to respond to the issue.

The SiteNow v1 Standard service will be shut down August 1st, 2024. Learn more.

The SiteNow v1 platform is built on Drupal 7, which was released on 01/05/2011. Drupal 7 will reach its end of life (EOL) on 01/05/2025 after 14 years of support. After the EOL, Drupal will no longer receive security updates from the Drupal Security Team. Drupal 7 cannot be directly upgraded to Drupal 8 or a more modern version of Drupal (the current version is Drupal 10) because Drupal 8 introduced a number of breaking changes and never provided a direct upgrade path for previous versions. Therefore, the only option we have is to transition every Drupal 7 site that we manage to the SiteNow v3 platform, which runs on Drupal 10.

We are working with SiteNow v1 Custom service websites to transition them to SiteNow v3 before 1/05/2025. Please contact us if you haven't heard from us.

The current recommendation is to request a SiteNow v3 and begin manually moving content over. Once you have migrated all your content and are ready to launch, we would make the new site live and remove the old site.

Webmasters within a website can add and grant access to other users that have a valid HawkID. See User Management and Roles. Please try to reach out to the website owner first to obtain access.

In order for us to step in and provide access, we will reach out to the most recently active webmaster on the site and ask for approval before granting access.

In cases where the site owners are no longer with the University of Iowa and are unreachable, you must provide us with certain details that prove you are associated with the department/organization/group related to the site before you are given access.

We currently do not support the placement of social media timeline widgets like Facebook and Twitter. This was available on SiteNow v1.

While we haven't ruled out supporting them in the future, here are a few things to consider:

• There are accessibility issues with both the Facebook and Twitter widgets.
• More browsers and browser extensions are blocking the render of these widgets by default through "do not track" concerns.
• There have been some usability studies that suggest website visitors don't care to scroll through external content and that if they are interested in a website's social media presence they connect through links on the website or directly through their platform of choice.

Alternatively, we do provide embed options for individual Facebook and Instagram posts, Youtube and Vimeo videos and Twitter "tweets." Also, we provide a "Social Media" menu where you can provide links/icons to social media pages that is displayed in the footer of the website.

We have noted on our Request Site form to contact us you want to transition your site from SiteNow v2 to SiteNow v3.

We can either wipe your v2 site and reinstall a v3 website on top of it or we can install a v3 site on an internal-production domain which will allow you to reference and manually move content from your SiteNow v2 website.

Currently, moving to SiteNow v3 would require you to manually recreate your content on the new platform. We are exploring potential automated migration tools to assist you in this process. We will communicate with site owners if/when an automated process becomes available.

This is a generic message displayed by our hosting provider. In most cases, this just a temporary situation that should be resolved by itself, however in situations longer than an hour, please contact us and provide the website or specific URLs affected.