Web development server for students

[jslate1980]

Hi really interested to know what setups different schools have for web development for students? The previous network manager setup a Centos box with blue onyx(open source web hosting platform), which provides php/MySQL, ftp access and individual sub domains. I have found the tool useful but a bit long winded when creating accounts for students. Does anyone suggest any other useful open source platforms?

[angrycomputingteacher]

We have PHP dev server or something with a similar name.

[Cw2k]

WHM/cPanel offer an educational licence for a one of fee of around £25. Run ours on CentOS 7, setup a vanilla server, ran the whm/cpanel installed script and it takes over the running and updating. You can also install Config Firewall for extra security: http://www.configserver.com/cp/csf.html

 

 

Created reseller account for our tutors that use it so that they can create accounts for their students that need it.

 

You can also install Installatron on it (runs on one domain without license), this allow students to self install web apps and also keeps them up to date.

 

I emailed [email protected] to request the educational license, they then added it as an option to my account to allow purchase.

[Stuajnht]

Hi,

 

We have a Ubuntu VM set up running Virtualmin GPL version (https://www.virtualmin.com/).

 

It's just a case of creating a new 'server' on it and it looks after setting up home directories, FTP, MySQL, etc... and then creating a new DNS record to point to this VM.

 

An additional bonus is that you can look after the server (via Webmin, Webmin) through a web interface if you don't like CLI stuff as it's based off it.

[sonofsanta]

Did it with Windows and mapped drives for PHP/MySQL. Takes an afternoon. Easy as pie. Wrote it up in full on here

 

Installing a PHP/MySQL Development Server for students on Windows Server 2012 - Part1 - Blogs - EduGeek.net

Installing a PHP/MySQL Development Server for students on Windows Server 2012 - Part2 - Blogs - EduGeek.net

[Norbert]

Debian LAMP server which we've integrated with AD for logins and restricted those who can login to a particular AD group (something like Student Web Developers) - works well.

[Marci]

Another cPanel / WHM user here - I've got a cronjob set up on the server that auto-creates / updates accounts for any students within a specific list of AD groups.

[zag]

I'd just do it on IIS with MYSQL and phpmyadmin installed. Should be pretty easy.

 

Just give the students access to a shared folder then to put their files under their own names.

 

Have a centralized mysql user/pass to use as well.

[markwilfan]

Another cPanel / WHM user here - I've got a cronjob set up on the server that auto-creates / updates accounts for any students within a specific list of AD groups.

Share the wealth @Marci that sounds awesome. I set up virtualmin in my previous job. Creating accouts and deleting accounts is 1 liner in the cli. Will post tomorrow

[Marci]

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8532304/execute-root-commands-via-php and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13404337/how-to-get-list-of-users-from-ldap-directory-using-php

 

Should be enough for you to work it out.

[steveking]

Depends for which year group. For year 9 (the first time I get them to use a web server) it's a shared ftp account with a directory for each pupil, and part of the setup instructions are to put their username in the directory box. It's not yet been abused (touch wood, although it's backed up daily so if it was it'd be easy to go back). We use dreamweaver in y9 which is easy to set up with the ftp site. To create the directories it's one line of bash to make a new directory for each username which the network manager gave me as a text file. It's running on a very old box, it'll be some version of Debian and it works just fine. As a teacher it makes marking their work dead easy as I can connect to it from my laptop and then it's one sub-directory per pupil.

 

For A level I have a linux server which runs php, mysql, etc. which is perfect for our A level. As part of our gcse/a level course pupils get accounts on there as I much prefer teaching cs in linux not windows. They can connect to it through putty from the windows clients, or boot into linux directly on the classroom computers. The linux server is running on the old school server, again running Debian.

[Blue_Cookeh]

For the sake of £25, cPanel and WHM are well worth it