Digital UIC

The Sign-Up Process

• Go to https://digital.uic.edu/ Click the “Login” Button.
• You will be redirected to login for verification. You will use your Net ID and password to log in.
• Fill out the Interest Form.
• The UIC Library will respond to your request as soon as possible. If you have any questions, email digscholarship@uic.edu 
• Review and agree to the Digital UIC Terms of Service.
• You are now ready to create a domain. To start, you must first sign up for a free subdomain (i.e. yoursite.digital.uic.edu). Directions for purchasing a Top Level Domain (i.e. yourdomain.com) will be provided further down.

Option 1: Free Subdomain

For no cost, you can create a subdomain of digital.uic.edu.

• To create a free subdomain of digital.uic.edu, leave this default option selected and enter the subdomain name you want for your website. When you’ve found an available subdomain, click the button labeled “Continue.”
• Confirm that you like the name you selected. If you do, click the “signup” button. (If not, click the “start over” button, and repeat the above step.)
• You should now see a screen confirming that your subdomain is ready. After a few seconds, you will see the regular cPanel options.

Option 2: Buy a top-level domain from Reclaim Hosting

It is easy to create your own top-level domain. This allows you to select a URL for your website that is easy to remember and share.

While you are at University of Illinois at Chicago, this is available for a nominal cost (currently $15/year). UIC will not pay for a top level domain, and it is the individual account holders responsibility to purchase and maintain the domain. You can continue to use this domain after leaving Digital UIC, although the cost may increase.

To register a top-level domain log into your newly created cPanel, navigate to the Domains section, and click Register Top-Level Domain.

This panel offers a step-by-step guide to registering and adding a new top-level domain to your new cPanel account.

Option 3: Connect an existing domain to your cPanel

If you already have an existing domain that you’ve previously registered elsewhere, simply point your domain’s nameservers to ns1.reclaimhosting.com and ns2.reclaimhosting.com.

Choosing your domain name is the first step in getting started with staking your claim on the web. Your domain name is a unique Web address (e.g. yourname.digital.uic.edu) that can be used to build out your own digital presence. As you make your choice, there are a few considerations to keep in mind:

Your Domain Name Must Be Available: Domain names must be unique, which means in order for you to claim your own, you need to be sure that it is currently available (and not being used by anyone else at UIC). There are lots of tools to check on domain availability, and when you sign up on digital.uic.edu, we will check the availability of your choice for you. If you’d like to spend some time thinking about your choice and checking availability before you actually sign-up, we recommend using whois.com.

Choose a Domain You Can Live With: You should choose a domain name that you feel you can live with for quite some time. You should pick something that you won’t find embarrassing in the future. A good rule of thumb is to pick a domain that you would be comfortable putting on a future job application.

Choose a Domain Appropriate for the Purpose of Your Account: If you plan on using Digital UIC to host your personal digital scholarship projects or digital portfolio, it might be appropriate for you to select yourname.digital.uic.edu. If you plan on using your account to host collaborative student projects for a specific course, it may be more appropriate to select a domain based on the course name or description

One aspect of Digital UIC that users may find a bit complicated at first is understanding the different accounts (and associated passwords) that you can manage as part of your participation in the project. This article outlines the types of accounts that you are likely to have, what they are for, and how you go about resetting passwords on each of them.

Your cPanel Account

When you first sign-up for your domain and hosting, a cPanel account will be generated that provides you with access to your slice of the digital.uic.edu web server. Your cPanel account is automatically associated with your Digital UIC username. Therefore, your Net ID and password will grant you access to your cPanel account.

Your Application Administrator Accounts

Every time you install a new application in cPanel, an Administrator Account for that application will be created. You will likely use these accounts very often – every time you need to login to your application to manage the associated website, you will use this account.

For example, if you install WordPress to manage your Web site, every time you need to add content to WordPress, change your theme, approve comments, etc. you will use this account to login.

Usually, you will be given the opportunity to choose the username and password for that account. We recommend choosing something that you are likely to remember but that is strong and secure.

Upon installation, you will likely receive an email confirming the user-id/password combination you chose. It will also have information about how to access the login page for that application. You may wish to make sure you don’t delete this message.

Depending on the application you’re working with, managing and resetting the password for this account will vary. If you’ve used Installatron (in cPanel) to install the application, however, you can always review the account credentials:

• Login to cPanel through https://digital.uic.edu/dashboard/
• Click the Installatron icon in the Software/Services section.
• Find the application you installed under My Applications.
• Click the Edit button (this looks like a blue wrench).
• Scroll down to find the Administrator Username and Password.

In addition, most applications should have some kind of password reset link on the login page. For more information on resetting your application password through Installatron, read this Reclaim Hosting Support Article.

Other Types of Accounts

In addition to the account types outlined above, there are a few other kinds of accounts you may have as part of Digital UIC:

When you sign up for subdomain/top-level domain on digital.uic.edu, cPanel will automatically create an FTP account for you by default. You’ll also have the option of manually creating your own FTP account. You can learn about their differences here.

Application User Accounts: In addition to the Administrator Account that you set up when installing an application, most applications will also let you set up user profile accounts within each application.