By bonobo on

On my blog, I just finished a post that links to a download for a pre-configured web site designed to support one class.

The site is based on 4.6.3, and comes with several contributed modules installed and configured for academic use. The site uses the Taxonomy Access Control module to limit access to specific areas of the site, and to prevent anonymous users from viewing any student-created content.

The site also comes with documentation designed to provide a general overview of how the site functions. With the documentation, the site can be useful both for educators who want a site for their individual classes without the hassle of extensive set-up, and for users who want to learn more about the possibilities offered by different configurations in Drupal.

The full blog post is available here.

Cheers,

bonobo
------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

Comments

mdroste’s picture

mdroste commented

I think is a great idea to distribute pre-configured drupal sites.
I would like to distribute your teachers site in germany for german teachers. I would use another theme. Is this possible?

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bonobo’s picture

bonobo commented

We shipped it with four themes (bluemarine, box grey, box cleanslate, and friends electric), chosen because they display cleanly in the most commonly used browsers -- basically, everything except IE 5.2 for the mac.

If you want to add a theme, go for it.

We had a couple goals in setting this up, aside from configuring a site that would work as a class site out of the box. We wanted to stick as closely as possible to solutions that were available out to people with little or no programming skills. We wanted the documentation to cover the general details of anything we did that required more technical knowledge, such as the php snippet that generates the home page. By limiting ourselves to solutions accessible to most users and still creating a site that is useful (if I do say so myself :), we wanted to show some of the options available in an unmodified install using both core and contrib modules.

I this vein, we also wanted to create a resource for users new to Drupal. I don't know how many posts I have seen in the forums where people express various degrees of frustration because they want to use Drupal for a project but they don't know how to set it up. Our hope is that by giving people a site pre-configured with roles, taxonomy, and some of the more popular modules, they can use this site to experiment. A lot of what Drupal offers makes more sense in context, and being able to look at the admin settings and see how they correspond to the behavior of the site will -- hopefully -- ease the learning curve of people new to Drupal.

So, long answer to a short question, I'd love to see a German version of the site come into existence, with whatever themes you'd want to add.

And, if you have the time, I'd love to hear back from you about if/where the site gets used.

Cheers,

bonobo
-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com

mdroste’s picture

mdroste commented

I this vein, we also wanted to create a resource for users new to Drupal. I don't know how many posts I have seen in the forums where people express various degrees of frustration because they want to use Drupal for a project but they don't know how to set it up.

Yes, that's true.
I think Drupal needs more things like your distribution.
Better tutorials specially for beginners.
More templates and maybe pre-configured versions for various site types (e.g. business, portal, personal, community ... ).

If you have the time please take a look and see what other people do for there products (commercially)

http://www.westciv.com/style_master/hands_on_tutorial_sm/index.html
http://www.westciv.com/style_master/academy/css_tutorial/index.html

Tutorials and resources like that i would like to see for Drupal.

--
www.go-with-us.de

--
mdwp*

bonobo’s picture

bonobo commented

and I like the combination of a tutorial with a hands-on example that can be reverse engineered, or altered, by the user as they are learning.

Also, based on some of the comments I've seen on this thread, I get the impression that other folks are thinking along similar lines.

Cheers,

bonobo

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com

mdroste’s picture

mdroste commented

In the meantime I setup a site with your pre-configured site.
meine-klasse.de (At this moment the site is protected with a webserver login).

As I setup the site I play around with the argeebee theme.
It's great for users with little or no css knowledge.
I changed the style.css so that everyone can understand it and change the color theme.
Here's the code:



/****************************** aea574 ****************************/
body {
	
	border-color:#aea574;

}

#leftnav, #rightnav, #content {
	
	border-color: #aea574;

} 

#top, #footer {
	
	border-color: #aea574;

}

div.node {
	
	border-color: #aea574;  
	  
}    

#search .form-text {
	
	border-color: #aea574;
	
}


/****************************** fbfaf4 ****************************/ 
#top, #footer {
	
	background-color: #fbfaf4 ;
	
}
    

/****************************** c20508 ****************************/ 
#footer, #footer p, #container a {
	
	color: #c20508;
            
}

#top ul li a:hover {
	
	border-color: #c20508;
	
}

#top ul li a.active {
	
	border-color: #c20508;
	
}


/****************************** 333333 ****************************/    
#container p, #leftnav p, #rightnav p {
	
	color: #333;
      
} 


/****************************** edebd5 ****************************/
#leftnav {
	
	background-color:#edebd5; 
    
} 


/****************************** 8c8c8c ****************************/
#leftnav div.block {
	
	border-color:#8c8c8c; 
    
}    


/****************************** ffffec ****************************/    
#rightnav {
	
	background-color: #ffffec;
	
}
    

/****************************** f00000 ****************************/ 
#top h1 a {
	
	color:#f00000;  
    
}
    
    
/****************************** 000000 ****************************/  
#top ul li a {
	
	color:#000;   

}    


/****************************** 000000 ****************************/ 
/****************************** efefef ****************************/ 
#search .form-submit {
	
    color: #000;
	border-color:  #000;
	background-color: #efefef;
	
}   
	
	 
/****************************** 000099 ****************************/       
strong.blue{
	
	 color:#000099;   
    
}

I think everyone can change this for his/her needs.
If we have more clear coded css for the drupal themes more users would have a chance to see the secrets of Drupal themes and css.

My Suggestion: put the argeebee theme to your package.

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