www3 Web Hosting Retirement
Signing off...
The www service launched in the early 1990s when the world wide web was still new, littered with under construction GIFs and blinking text and the internet screamed when you connected to it. Our platform hosted tens of thousands of faculty, staff, student, and department websites for research, classes, projects, and even family photos. Whether you managed your site with FrontPage or Contribute or vi editor, the web was a different place back then. While most sites moved off long ago, we recognize all of the site owners who have relied on this platform over the years. Thank you.
Status of www3
The www3 platform was retired on February 2, 2026. Any websites or files remaining on the platform have been archived and are no longer available. The server remains online for the purpose of redirecting traffic for sites that moved to new URLs. The redirects will remain active until the server is formally decommissioned on August 3, 2026.
What is www3?
The www3 platform was the latest version of a web hosting environment that Notre Dame launched in the mid-1990s to provide a place for faculty, students, staff, and departments to host websites. These websites typically appeared as www3.nd.edu/~netid and allow site owners to upload HTML, CSS, and other files to the server using FTP.
Why was www3 retired?
The www3 platform had been deprecated since 2017 as it did not meet current University standards. In that time, the number of websites on the platform dwindled from over 1,700 to about 180 websites. Many of these websites had not been updated recently and presented security risks to the University.
Modern websites are usually developed in a web Content Management System (CMS), making it easier to update content while adhering to the University's brand standards. Due to the ready availability of supported CMSes and approved web hosting vendors, the traditional web hosting service was retired.
I was on www3 but I still need my website. What are my options?
Start with this question: Do you want to build a new site (using a platform such as Conductor or WordPress) or do you prefer to “lift and shift” your site to a different hosting provider, continuing to maintain your content by editing the files and code directly?
| Content Management Systems (CMS) | Approved Web Hosting Providers |
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Conductor is the University's CMS, powering 600+ websites from colleges and schools to student clubs and faculty websites. Price: Free. WordPress (sites.nd.edu) is ND's offering of WordPress, ideal for individual sites, course sites, events, and more. Price: Free. |
Academic Web is a new web hosting offering from Engineering & Science Computing (ESC). Netlify is a hosting platform which offers a free tier that is ideal for static websites. Dreamhost offers both shared and dedicated hosting plans with a wide range of associated services. Great for moderate to advanced users who want more control over their hosting or need server-side functionality. |