Mapping a custom domain for your school gives you a branded view of WAOL ANGEL that you customize yourself. Users will not see WAOL ANGEL, but whatever branding you create that will associate their experience with your colleges. Setting up http://angel.yourschool.edu for example, would make it appear that you were hosting ANGEL yourself.
Once a college has set up its custom domain, WAOL can grant ANGEL admin rights to the ELC account. Check out the following FAQs for more information.
Q: How do I setup a custom domain for my school?
A: Follow the “Instructions to configure your ANGEL domain ” instructions below.
Q: When can I setup a domain for my school?
A: Right now. Just follow the instructions in the “Configure Your Domain on WAOL ANGEL” e-mail that was sent to the ELC listserv. These instructions are also included below and at this URL:
Q: When can I administer my ANGEL domain?
A: Right after you set up a custom domain for ANGEL. Notify the WAOL staff by sending an email to wa-online@sbctc.edu, and they'll complete the setup for you, granting admin rights to your ANGEL domain.
Q: What does it cost to setup a custom ANGEL domain?
A: Nothing (although it takes a bit of your time and an IT staffer will need to spend a few minutes making the needed edits).
Q: Do I need a custom domain to brand ANGEL for my school?
A: Yes. ANGEL applies branding depending on what domain was used to access it.
Q: Can I login to another school’s domain with my ELC admin account?
A: No, because of the extra admin privileges, admin accounts are restricted to the school's domain. Faculty and students, however, may login via any ANGEL domain; see next questions below.
Q: Where should I send students and staff to login to ANGEL?
A: Send your college users the custom ANGEL domain for your school (if you have one).
The custom domains in ANGEL are mostly cosmetic, and it doesn’t matter by which domain someone comes into ANGEL. An instructor logging into WAOL ANGEL, at your domain would see all WAOL courses he/she is teaching, along with any college-private ANGEL courses that your college created and assigned to him/her. The same is true for students. And the reverse also holds: Users logging into ANGEL at http://angel.waol.org see any WAOL courses they are enrolled in, along with any private courses from your school.
Q: What account should faculty use to login to my ANGEL domain?
A: Instructors should use whichever account to which their classrooms have been assigned. For Winter quarter, that is likely their 'waol_' account. The plan for Spring quarter is to allow faculty to use their school-prefix account (e.g., pierce_xxxx) to access their WAOL courses. See question above for related information.
Q: If an instructor from my college logs into http://angel.waol.org will they see their college ANGEL courses?
A: Possibly. It all depends on what account they used to login. Courses are assigned to accounts, and it doesn't matter which ANGEL domain is used to access a course. See question above for more information.
Q: If my students log into ANGEL will they see both their WAOL and college courses?
A: Possibly. If you've used the SID-based accounts, as WAOL does, to assign students to your private college courses, then yes, they will be able to access both WAOL and your college courses with the same account. For this reason, we recommend that you use the SID-based accounts for students.
Q: Does it cost more to have a custom ANGEL domain for my school?
A: No
Q: If my faculty logs into angel.waol.org will they see their college ANGEL courses?
A: Yes
Q: Will my WAOL logon work on my college ANGEL site?
A: Yes
You can now assign a custom domain name for your college to WAOL ANGEL. That’s right, you don’t need to access ANGEL
via http://angel.waol.org but can instead use http://angel.myschool.edu or http://myangel.myschool.edu or other sub-domains beneath your school’s base DNS domain.
You can start with your school’s base DNS domain, for example, pc.ctc.edu, and add ‘angel’ to the left side, resulting in angel.pc.ctc.edu. And you don’t have to add ‘angel’, but could go with ‘lms,’ ‘angel_lms’ or other variations--whatever makes sense for your school.
One caveat is that your college will need to registser the ‘base’ domain. For example, if you want your
ANGEL domain to be ‘angel_at_myschool.edu’ you may very well be able to do this, but will need to talk to your IT staff
who in turn would contact Educause to see if this domain is available and can be registered for your school.
Most likely, you’ll be building on the existing school domain, and that requires a simple addition to your DNS records.
1.) To do this, contact whoever manages DNS services for your school (Domain Name System, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System) and have them make this addition.
Some schools manage their own DNS and others use the State Board Bellevue, but your IT staff would know who to contact. If your school uses State Board Bellevue,
your IT department will need to send a message to Sandi Gruver at sgruver@sbctc.edu to add the domain.
Once you decide on a name and know who to contact, here’s a sample message to send. Edit the domain portion here in italics but leave the IP address as entered.
FYI: Yes, we’re all hitting the same IP address which is bound to a load balancer at the ANGEL datacenter.
Hi, we’re mapping a sub-domain for our school to the ANGEL learning management system, so I have a DNS request for you.
Please add a host record to map "angel.myschool.edu" to 208.40.252.44
2.) Once this is configured, you can browse to your new domain and see that you reach the WAOL ANGEL system.
Then send your new domain information to WAOL staff at
wa-online@sbctc.edu.
3.) WAOL will complete the setup process, and you’ll be able to brand and configure your ANGEL domain.