Fronter

[Face-Man]

Just had a demo of Fronter and looks impressive anybody out there using it ?

[webman]

To me it seems like a glorified document server and hardly worth the money you will end up paying for it. Plus it's hosted on their site, and if either your internet connection goes down, or theirs does, or any routers inbetween your and them, then you're screwed. I'd highly recommend a local install of Moodle

[SteveHooker]

I'm a Frontier developer. Since 1997. Manila through and through since 1999. It's a well matured technology, with active development.

 

It's damned fine, when you can throw it about, as I do here. Out of the box, it's a bit plain, but the web wizard set up can be quite quick. Within a few minutes you could have it installed on a local server and created your first blog. There's a good user manual. Educational server at discounted $499

http://manila.userland.com/academicPurchase

 

I've customised my installs. Added thumbs and a range of extras. As a VLE, it would stack up nicely, with CMS features like memberships, and chorts. Its easy WYSIWYG editor and powerful templating are reasons many US schools use the server version. (And price.)

 

It hasn't got the marking and other customised VLE widgets, yet. But as a pure writing to the web tool, it was the first--a few months after blogger which had none of the CMS benefits.

 

As a school blogging and content management system, it's mightily fine.

 

There are several other hosting providers about. You can export your entire site and move elsewhere. Or host it yourself.

[SteveHooker]

Oh, and I totaly forgot the best part. Its RSS capabilities. Podcasting, multiple feeds from departments, and discussion group. RSS was born here. As was podcasting. There's even a WAP feed—god knows why ;-) And an inbuilt RSS aggregator, in the original 'river of news' style.

 

Then there's the Manila API. If you thought Blogger API was basic, but useful, and metaWeblog API reasonable. Manila's API would knock you out!

 

Oh, and I rave about the email-to-blog thumbnails. Great way to tell a pictorial story.

http://www.blogfootball.com/service/2006/03/22/Lifes-a-beach

http://craigydon.educatr.com/2006/03/28/Making-snowmen

[webman]

I'm a Frontier developer.

 

Beam-me-up-Scottie

[NetworkGeezer]

I'm a Frontier developer. Since 1997. Manila through and through since 1999. It's a well matured technology, with active development.

 

It's damned fine, when you can throw it about.

 

Steve do you mean Fronter or Frontier

 

As far I was aware Fronter was a vendor hosted VLE or do you work for the Fronter corporation

[SteveHooker]

Gak! My bad.

 

I thought Faceman had misspelled it. My apologies.

 

I've not heard of Fronter before. I am a Frontier developer. An object oriented scripting environment that is 18 years old. http://www.scripting.com/2006/04/01.html#anniversaries

[dagza]

Does anyone have a ball park figure cost for Fronter? We are a school of about 1500 and this is one of the VLEs that I am looking at.

 

Also I would be interested what features it provides that others don't or why people feel it is better (user interface and so on).

 

Thanks

[localzuk]

http://edugeek.net/forums/showthread.php?t=9678

[localzuk]

To me it seems like a glorified document server and hardly worth the money you will end up paying for it. Plus it's hosted on their site, and if either your internet connection goes down, or theirs does, or any routers inbetween your and them, then you're screwed. I'd highly recommend a local install of Moodle

 

We decided to go with Fronter for that exact reason - because we don't have the time to set up and maintain our install really. Fronter would just do everything for us... And if the internet goes down, well we can't control everything.

[dagza]

http://edugeek.net/forums/showthread.php?t=9678

 

Thanks for the link. As it happens I was reading the thread this afternoon and I still can't see any costs or discussion of features it offers.

 

I will have another closer look when the kids have gone to bed in case I am missing something obvious.

 

Darren

[localzuk]

TeddyKGB said roughly £1.50 per user IIRC.

 

We were told to expect about £2k a year, by our LEA, for our 600 pupils if funding from the government were to stop.