Request a Site

• Benefits-eligible faculty and staff employed by Harvard.
• Currently enrolled, degree-seeking graduate students.

Please review our Terms of Use for additional information and requirements. Faculty of Arts & Sciences (FAS) groups, individuals, and departments should review the Creating and Stewarding FAS websites guidance on the FAS website.

To request a HarvardSites website, submit a site request through your School or Unit’s established intake process, typically managed by your local web governance group or portfolio manager. 

You will be asked to provide key details such as the site’s purpose, audience, ownership, and anticipated lifespan. This information allows governance teams to review and approve the request in alignment with local policies and institutional standards before the site is provisioned. Note: the site request and provisioning process can take 2-4 weeks.

After you submit a request for a HarvardSites website, it enters a governed intake and review process rather than being immediately provisioned.

Your School or Unit’s web governance group reviews the request to confirm the site’s purpose, ownership, and alignment with local policies and portfolio priorities.

Once approved, HWP proceeds with provisioning the site on the appropriate platform and notifies you when it is ready for use. 

Timelines can vary depending on governance review cycles and completeness of the request, but this process is intentional. It connects site creation to clear stewardship, accountability, and long-term sustainability across Harvard’s web portfolio.

Your site’s domain follows standard conventions based on the HarvardSites platform you are using. 

• For WordPress, sites are typically created with a default URL in the format sites.harvard.edu/sitename
• For Drupal, sites follow default specific naming conventions unless a custom domain is requested for the site
  • For academic profiles, the default domain is firstnamelastname.scholars.harvard.edu/
  • For other sites, the default domain is sitename.hsites.harvard.edu. See below for custom domain sites.

These conventions support consistency, governance, and long-term maintainability across Harvard’s web ecosystem.

Custom domains

• If your website requires a custom domain, it can be requested as part of the launch process and is subject to review and approval by your School or Unit’s web governance group. 
• Third-level domains (sitename.harvard.edu) require authorization from the Trademark Office. Fourth-level School domains (sitename.fas.harvard.edu) require authorization and approval from the respective School or unit.

Custom domains should align with institutional naming standards and lifecycle policies to ensure clarity, reduce duplication, and support sustainable portfolio management over time.

Your site becomes publicly visible in two stages.

1. First, HWP completes a technical launch, which includes applying your official domain and making the site accessible using that domain. At this stage, your site visibility is set to private (usually set to Harvard Community). Only site administrators and editors can view the site. While the site visibility is set to Harvard Community the site is not yet discoverable by search engines.
2. After this step, the site owner can update the site’s visibility settings to allow indexing by setting the site visibility to Public. Search engines can then begin to discover and surface your site in search results.

HWP does not engage directly with individual departments on bespoke website builds or content strategy projects. But we do provide comprehensive support to help you successfully build and manage your website, including training, documentation, office hours, and guidance on platform best practices.

For departments seeking deeper, project-based support such as content strategy or specialized implementation, we maintain partnerships with trusted external vendors, including Lullabot, who are well-versed in HarvardSites and can provide tailored services aligned with HWP standards.

Possibly, but not by uploading the AI-generated site files as-is. Harvard Web Publishing’s managed platforms are designed for websites built in HarvardSites Drupal or HarvardSites WordPress, not for hosting exported AI-generated HTML, CSS, JavaScript, custom apps, generated themes, or unsupported code.

That said, we’d be glad to review what the AI tool created. 

We can use the AI-generated site as a prototype, design reference, or content starting point and help determine whether it can be adapted into HarvardSites Drupal using approved Design System patterns, components, and platform features. 

The final HarvardSites version may not be a pixel-for-pixel copy, but the goal is to preserve the useful parts of the concept while making sure the site is maintainable, accessible, secure, and aligned with Harvard standards. 

What HWP can help with

We can help you:

1. Review the AI-generated site or prototype to understand the goals, audience, structure, and features.
2. Map the design to HarvardSites Drupal components, such as pages, cards, lists, people profiles, news, events, publications, resources, FAQs, and layout components. 
3. Identify what can be rebuilt in Drupal and what may need to change because of accessibility, security, branding, content governance, or platform constraints.
4. Recommend the right HarvardSites platform based on the site’s needs. HarvardSites Drupal is intended for Schools, departments, centers, initiatives, and academic profile sites; WordPress may be a better fit for smaller sites such as blogs, event landing pages, or individual academic profiles.
5. Connect you with the appropriate School or Unit website request process, since the process for requesting a site varies by School or Unit.

What HWP can’t host or support as-is

We are unable to upload and host an AI-generated website export as a live HarvardSites Drupal site. This includes static site bundles, custom codebases, custom themes, unsupported scripts, generated templates, or applications that require their own build process, database, server configuration, plugin system, or ongoing code maintenance.

HWP also does not provide ongoing development or maintenance for custom applications. If a project requires capabilities beyond what HarvardSites can support, an approved custom Drupal or WordPress site may be considered through the appropriate School or Unit governance process. 

For approved custom projects, HWP’s Pantheon agreement covers managed hosting only; it does not include application development, customization, content management, or ongoing support for the custom application.

Before the site can be published

Any AI-generated content, images, files, or design recommendations must be reviewed by the site owner before they’re published. Harvard’s generative AI guidelines note that AI-generated content can be inaccurate, misleading, fabricated, or contain copyrighted material, and that you’re responsible for content you publish or share. 

The guidelines also state that confidential data, including Level 2 and above data, should not be entered into publicly available generative AI tools unless the tool has been assessed and approved for that use by Harvard.

The site must also meet Harvard’s accessibility requirements. HarvardSites themes and components are designed with accessibility in mind, but site owners remain responsible for the accessibility of their content, including page structure, link text, images, documents, and media.

How to get started

Please share the AI-generated site (via the helpdesk, ithelp@harvard.edu), prototype, screenshots, or exported files with your School or Unit website contact, along with a short description of:

• the purpose of the site,
• the intended audience,
• the pages or sections you need,
• any special functionality, such as directories, events, publications, forms, search, filtering, restricted access, or external integrations,
• who will own and maintain the content after launch.

From there, HWP and your School or Unit can help determine whether the site should be rebuilt in HarvardSites Drupal or evaluated through an approved custom hosting path.

If you are a faculty, graduate student, or staff who owns a HarvardSites website you should review the knowledge base article Your website after leaving Harvard to understand what happens if you leave the University. 

Websites from faculty or graduate students who leave the university will be subject to removal per School and Unit's web governance policies.