Terms of Service

The content and opinions expressed on blogs.rice.edu sites do not necessarily reflect the views of Rice University and are not officially endorsed by the university.

Terms of Service for blogs.rice.edu

Last updated: [December 1, 2025]

By creating, maintaining, or contributing to a site on blogs.rice.edu, you agree to the following Terms of Service and to abide by all applicable Rice University policies and CampusPress platform guidelines.

General Conditions

blogs.rice.edu is a Rice University–supported web publishing platform powered by CampusPress. It is intended for use by Rice students, faculty, and staff for academic, research, and university-related communication, collaboration, and reflection.

Use of blogs.rice.edu signifies agreement to Rice’s official IT policies:

All site owners are responsible for complying with these policies. Violations will be referred to the appropriate university authorities. Any public-facing website that fails to meet accessibility standards may be removed from public view.

Eligibility

Use of this service is limited to current Rice University faculty, staff, and students with an active NetID.

Content Ownership and Responsibility

You are responsible for the content you create and publish. Rice University does not claim ownership of user-generated content but reserves the right to remove or restrict access to material that violates university policy or law.
By posting content, you affirm that:

  • You own or have permission to use all materials (text, images, media, etc.).
  • Your content does not violate the rights of others.

Data Limits and File Uploads

  • Each site has a total storage limit of 10 GB.
  • The maximum upload size for individual files is 50 MB.
  • Files with certain extensions (e.g., .zip, .exe) are blocked for security reasons.

Privacy

Newly created sites are automatically set to private by default. To change the visibility of your site from private to public, go to your Dashboard > Settings > Reading. On the Reading Settings page, scroll down to the “Site visibility” section and click the “Allow search engines to index this site” option. Then, click the “Save Changes” button.

Choosing the “Allow search engines to index this site” option will make your site publicly accessible on the internet. It is the site owner’s responsibility to understand and manage privacy settings. Do not post confidential, private, or personally identifiable information.

Site Management and Retention

Rice University reserves the right to:

  • Remove inactive or abandoned sites that have not been updated for at least a year.
  • Archive or delete sites when a user graduates, leaves the university, or upon request from university administration.
  • Review and remove content that violates these terms or university policy.

Site owners are encouraged to regularly back up important content. For graduating students, NetIDs and all associated blogs will be deactivated approximately six (6) months after graduation. Departmental or organization blogs administered by students must have at least one Rice faculty or staff member as an administrator to ensure continuity after graduation.

Accessibility

All sites created on blogs.rice.edu should strive to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standards. Users must read the Digital Accessibility Campus Initiative page to learn about best practices for accessibility, and are responsible for ensuring that their content is accessible to all audiences.

Commercial Use

Use of blogs.rice.edu for commercial purposes, advertising, or for-profit activities is not permitted unless explicitly approved by Rice University.

Limitation of Liability

Rice University and CampusPress are not liable for any loss of data, interruption of service, or damages resulting from use or inability to use the platform.

Updates to These Terms

These Terms of Service are subject to periodic updates. Continued use of blogs.rice.edu after updates are posted constitutes acceptance of the revised terms.

Maintenance & Hosting

Rice’s blog service is hosted on the CampusPress platform. As a managed cloud service, CampusPress handles all updates, security patches, and maintenance windows.

While Rice does not control the exact timing of these updates, we will notify the university community of major changes via:

By creating a site on blogs.rice.edu, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to these Terms of Service.