By Petolo on

Hello,

This is my first post here. I did some reading and some searching before posting, but some related topics were already outdated and not likely to receive much attention.
I have been asked to develop a web site for a primary school. This time a much larger school than I am used to. In the past, I have designed static sites, my background is Graphic Design. I have a limited knowledge of PHP and DB design which is not sufficient to create my own CMS, so I started to look for solutions like Drupal, Joomla, CMSMade simple etc.
Although this is a large school, the project needs to be managed by a couple of teachers and myself as the IT guy who comes once a week for assistance.
We are a public school, so I opted for an open source solution to begin with.

After this brief intro, I have a few questions, if someone could share his/her experiences I sincerely thank you for that! my head is about to explode with all these analysis :)

Could someone share some experiences on developing web site for schools using Drupal?
Can Drupal be used also as an intranet and link sections to a Drupal web site?
What is a typical rate for a developer in this forum, if we need assistance with a specific problem solving or we need to develop a specific module?

I could be more specific but I thought, I'll make it brief for my first post.
Any help will be appreciated and if I am in the wrong place, please direct me to the correct forum.

Regards,
Petolo

Comments

benevolent001’s picture

benevolent001 commented

hello petolo

you are on correct place , drupal would be prefect solution for your needs, infact am too making my own collge website using this. just make your self familiar with how drupal works , its the only solution you need for school website

regards

crbassett’s picture

crbassett commented

Greetings,

I am glad to see another person here who is working on a school website. I have some experience in the area. I have developed a small Drupal website for a private elementary school. It is used just as a place for all the teachers to post news, information, and documents for download. It was simple and relatively easy to install something on that small scale.

I have also developed a full-scale public website and information portal for a professional school with a few hundred students. I have not yet launched the site, but I can offer you a few details about it. We use Drupal to manage the public, more static "catalog" information on the website, as well as the dynamic news, calendar, directory, and other website functions.

We also have an "intranet" portion of the site too, that is, features that are available only to the authenticated, authorized users. A few examples are a small online marketplace to post itesm for sale or trade, a job listing section, and a campus news portal that is accessible to just students.

Drupal is a great tool for this, but let me warn you, it can be dizzying at first when you are trying to figure out exactly what modules to use and the best way to do it. I found a way to do what I need to do, but I am 100% sure that there are ways to improve it, or ways to do it better. Finally, you have to find a way that works for you and go with it.

I will be happy to answer any other questions about a project of this scope if you would like.

hintbw’s picture

hintbw commented

I'll share my experiences below, but the answer to your second question is that Drupal can manage being an intranet and public web site very well.

We have been and are continuing to expand our use of Drupal throughout my school district. Like others have commented it can by dizzying at first, because of all Drupal can do. I'm not a very good theme guy, check out nicklewis.org for some great tutorials on bending Drupal to look like you want.

I have found it to be helpful as I work with Drupal to define what I want to do, get those taken care of, and then continue to explore what Drupal can additionally do for you.

For example: (these are for Drupal 4.7)

Surveys or Random Forms for a specific reason: webform module
Intranet/restricted access to items - look at node access arbitrator first - we don't use much restricted access, but I've heard great things about this module and it was integrated into Drupal 5 core
Event - event calendars (calendar module and jstools often go along with this one) - this offers pretty good event management, though it isn't perfect
Views - allows for custom dynamic pages of news/information
Taxonomy - great for organizing content into different areas (i.e. departments of a school or even clubs, groups, sports etc - some use organic groups for this as well)

Easy content creation - TinyMCE combined with the image module and img_assist - makes it much easier for different people to contribute content in a controlled way and even include images

One thing we are working on is using a module called Provisionator (developed by D'arcy Norman) to manage deployment of teacher webpages in an easy(easier) to manage way while still giving them flexibility.

That's probably long enough, but I would be happy to share more thoughts/experiences if you want to contact me about some of the specifics you are looking for.

Petolo’s picture

Petolo commented

Thanks for the replies!

Next on the agenda would be to download and install Drupal in my computer and play with it for a while.
For what I have seen and read so far, it is a bit of an overkill when I consider what the schools are currently expecting the web site to do.

My basic set of requirement would be something like this:

The following would be editable by authorized users

- News section for the whole school
- Image galleries
- Calendar of events shown throughout the site.
- Announcement section.
- Pages for particular grades for teachers who want to publish their own work online
- Document repository (upload/ download)

That would be my basic wish list.

There are also many tools that we can think of and that might be useful within the school context, for instance a booking page in which teachers can book or check availability of school items like a projector etc.

Are there some essential areas that I am leaving out, like surveys and quizzes?
How would you go about architecting a primary school web site with provisions for what is in the horizon for the next, say... 3 years?
Would you consider building a database through online forms to collect informations from parents, students, reports online, academic progress monitored online by parents etc?

Again...thanks and thanks for putting up with my unusual English style, it is my second language and I am still struggling with it :)

Petolo

Petolo’s picture

Petolo commented

I have been reading a lot in the last couple of days.
I have downloaded and installed Drupal...well, I just read my first warning message so I am not quite there yet

Warning: Table 'drupalo.sessions' doesn't exist query: SELECT sid FROM sessions WHERE sid = '074bd75d459b68357fc07b9ffea977f3' in E:\wamp\www\drupal-4.7.4\includes\database.mysql.inc on line 121

I will go through the documentation and do my searches until I get it to work.

Regards,
Petolo

crbassett’s picture

crbassett commented

I would recommend posting new errors in a new thread, otherwise people might not look here since the name of the thread is "school web site." As for the error, I can't offer much help on error messages. I am generally dependant on the forums when I run into errors. Sorry. :P

Petolo’s picture

Petolo commented

Thanks and sorry I meant to show that I was right in the middle of getting it up and running.
I finished the installation in my computer and It works now, so I guess that I will be reading the manual and looking at "planning your web site section" in detail. looks like there are a few differences in Drupal, at least from the point of view names, like nodes etc.
Regards,
Petolo

jwalling’s picture

jwalling commented

Drupal+Moodle
Search subject Moodle at http://drupal.org/ or search subject Drupal at http://moodle.org/

Also checkout the DrupalEd-Distro group:
http://groups.drupal.org/drupaled-distro

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John

crbassett’s picture

crbassett commented

Yes, Moodle is best to be used as an academic tool rather than Drupal. We are using Moodle for courses and Drupal for website and portal.

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

A friend used it for his wife's site
http://www.ericwoodford.com/complete_write_up

Also a seach shows other sites and topics.

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

Minna’s picture

Minna commented

I am using Drupal for a grade school. We are hosted at site5 which made installing Drupal and updating versions very easy. So far two updates without any problems. They offer gallery and webcal and many other scripts.

I am using flexinode module to create class pages, where teachers can add assignments, projects, resource links, etc. We are also using gallery for pictures. I am working on tablemanager module to post a list of AR quizzes and lunch menus. Drupal is a good way to get the faculty and staff to post content themselves. Other modules I use are event and eventrepeat. I am waiting for Drupal 5 version of flexinode and tablemanager. Have Fun!

nishitdas’s picture

nishitdas commented

Moodle is definitely the best available open source for educational site and you can easily have a single user database for both Drupal and Moodle.

Features which are available in moodle but not in drupal
1.Quiz
2.Storing students database like marks on particular test and like so.
3.Easy integration of Hotpotatoes – which I think is the best for making online study materials.
4.Creating courses and assigning teachers to them
And there are many other features
Though making your own modules and customization is not easy in moodle and its too heavy(more than 40mb) I have used it for one of my site but now I have transferred to drupal (http://cat4mba.com still not complete)drupal lacks many features but provides many others w/o which I just cant live. And I believe in feature all things will be available in drupal

jimmygoon’s picture

jimmygoon commented

I'm developing one for my highschool. You can contact me if you'd like. Email or AIM for best contact (jimmygoon)

saniyan’s picture

saniyan commented

please if u can help me idea on how to develop site for my highschool
speak2saniyan@yahoo.com
regards

bonobo’s picture

bonobo commented

http://drupal.org/node/137745

Cheers,

Bill

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

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http://www.funnymonkey.com