Chris Salmon Technologies

Building a site for Lisa Byrd's classes is going to be an interesting and fun project.  Out of all the sites I've built, which number over 100 for sure, I've never built one for a classroom, public school teacher.

Lisa is a friend of mine from college, she was a "'lil sis" in our fraternity (I'm a Sigma Nu) and her husband is one of my fraternity brothers.  So I've been looking at doing some new things, and when she mentioned frustration with her school's technology situation and her ability to use the web in her classes, I said, "hey, why not let me just build you a site?" I'm happy to say, she agreed, and thus this project was born.

In the discussions about the site, I wanted to know what specific features she wanted, here is what she said:

"ok the thing i like about schoolfusion (where i have a page) is i can have a place for all my classes separately and i can add stuff and choose which page it appears on. while i dont completely understand how a page works i can learn. i'm just saying technology doesnt frighten me like it does most old folks. present compny excluded. i would like
- a calendar to add assignments/info to
-a place for a blog
-a way/place to upload documents to and download documents from
-a way someone can contact me within the site
-a place to put helpful links
-i know this is six but a place kids could upload homework

how's that?
lisa"

Well that should be simple enough, Lisa!  Let's get started.  We are building this site TOTALLY from scratch, using Ubuntu Linux, the LAMP stack, (linux apache mysql and php) and Joomla, Artisteer, and various Joomla extensions.  Plus good ol' writing and coding of anything we can't find that we need.

First, let's put together a plan, an outline of the various things we will need to do.  Keep in mind, at this current time, we have NO website, NO IP number, NO domain or URL, NO nothing, not one single little thing is done.  So, let's look over our todo list:

1. We will need to register a domain name for Lisa's site.  She suggested as follows: "as far as domain name i like "lisabyrdsclass" or even "baldmisery" which is an anagram of my name."
2. We'll point the domain name to my own name servers, and set up name service for it, giving it one of my IP numbers.
3. That IP number will be assigned to a brand new, blank server we just recently installed, and the Apache webserver will be configured to treat traffic to that IP and domain as a "virtual host" with it's own root directory and so forth.
4. Ubuntu's now pre-packaged mail service (dovecot and postfix) will be configured to serve this domain's email (but that is actually not necessary at first, for the website to function)
5. Once the virtual host is working, we'll use phpMyadmin to create a new database for the new site.
6. we will then install and configure Joomla using the new database
7. A basic design, ("template" in Joomla terminology) will be created using Artisteer - or we may find one we like on the net.
8. At this point, I believe it might be prudent to purchase or assign an SSL certificate to the site, and install encryption.  This will make the site secure from prying eyes and "man-in-the-middle" attacks.  We're working with school children here, we need to absolutely minimize all risk that any of their passwords or anything they write to Lisa might be intercepted.  And it's better to do this from the start rather than back-install it later.
9. At this point, Lisa will need to decide her sections and categories layout for the top, main, and user menus for the site.  A basic information design is needed here.
10. Gcal, a calendar extension for Joomla, will be installed and she can use Google Calendar to keep the classes calendar and post it to her site.
11. LyftenBloggie, a blogging extension for Joomla, will be installed so she can start blogging.
12. We will search the Joomla extensions for a good file management system, so she can distribute files and students can upload their homework.
13. Jforms or other, similar form management extension will be added to Joomla so that the students can contact her and send her files.
14. A comments extension will be installed, so that when she writes an article, the kids can comment and ask questions.
15. There is already a section for links in Joomla, so that is taken care of.
16. After that, we're pretty much done.  We will train Lisa in the use of Joomla, how to add and manage users, so that her students can have their own accounts on the site, and she can also let parents join the site to view children's progress.  
17. Once all this is done and Lisa is ready to start adding content, we might do some security scans and probes, to attempt to break into the site without a username, and generally to check security.  A school site, dealing with children and possibly some of their personal information and their writings, needs just as much security as a bank, in my opinion.
18. Also once the site is up and going, and Lisa and the kids are adding content, we will want to see about adding in some web analytics to see the traffic to the site, adding a sitemap, and making sure that the (public) site is visable through Google and the other Search Engines.

OK well that is a good list ... I am taking a short break right now and will get back on this ... more to come!