[html] School Website

[pritchardavid]

Ok im redesigning my school website

 

Currentlly there are no recent news on this site, has no one is able to post any news on to it

 

So this is one of the major things I want to change with the redesign

 

I know I could use joomla, but im not liking it that it is very hard to design it from scratch, so if was to use one of the edugeek templates and come later I want to chance it all about, I'll find this very hard to do. So i'll prefere to use html instead

 

 

What best methods would you suggest of allowing staff to post news onto the website?

 

I am currenlly trying to design the website in Serif webplus x4, it does have its own cms, so I can add boxes anywhere, logon to their site and add the news from there (Or any staff)

 

 

But was also thinking of maybe useing twitter for the updates instead, has thats extremlly easy to use, and no one should complain of not knowing how to use it.

 

They have a widget you can make, which I have done, doesnt look to bad but there is a very annoying problem. My username for twitter is ockendon school, and the name is The Ockendon School, both of these show on the widget on the site, is it somehow possable to just have the ockendon school on there or a title saying news

 

Thats the html code they have given me

 

new TWTR.Widget({

version: 2,

type: 'profile',

rpp: 6,

interval: 6000,

width: 250,

height: 300,

theme: {

shell: {

background: '#000000',

color: '#ffffff'

},

tweets: {

background: '#000000',

color: '#ffffff',

links: '#4aed05'

}

},

features: {

scrollbar: false,

loop: false,

live: false,

hashtags: false,

timestamp: true,

avatars: false,

behavior: 'all'

}

}).render().setUser('OckendonSchool').start();

 

 

 

Unless anyone can think of a better idea? would be good, need to get this finished in 4 weeks i believe

[CSNM-Carl]

You could use something such as Cute News which you can integrate into the site for news, it allows different logins.

[Edu-IT]

I would steer clear of Cute News. Look at Website Baker or WordPress.

[dpittaway]

Here's an idea.

 

What I did for one of my school's websites was to build the site completely with Dreamweaver. Then I created a blog at blogger.com, and made all the teachers and staff authors for that blog. I then used a bit of HTML code from FeedWind so that every time someone posts a new entry to the blog, the title and a bit of the content appear on the front page of the website. This way, the site and the blog are linked 'kind of' seamlessly, and teachers get to post what they want while I still have full control over the website to ensure it doesn't get messed up!

 

It's an idea anyway, and a cheap alternative to buying into a CMS website.

[dpittaway]

Sorry for the double post (forum won't allow URLs posted in your first post understandably), but you can probably see what I mean easier by having a look:

Moor Hall Primary School

[alunmjones]

im starting to re-write our website internal and external, im writing it all in html with php for all of the menu and anything else i want it to do, ive started on a news section that will interact with a MYSQL backend and an admin page that will allow diferent sections of the school to see different things, also going to include most of the pages on MYSQL were i can so that i can change them from home without having to much problems.

[dayzd]

If you're happy adding the jQuery library to your page (Assuming you're not already using it), there are a few plugins available that should help get a Twitter feed into your page easily:

3 jQuery Twitter Plugins – Add Tweets To Your Website

[pritchardavid]

Thanks for your suggestions guys, I'll try lost last two sugguestions, really want to just do it from twiiter, so hoping the last sugguestion will work great, twitter is so simple, no staff *shouldn't* say its too hard to post news

 

 

Im gonna try and expermient making a siverlight website instead, may be better, just need to finish getting this one work up to a sate of where I need to copy text and pictures I get from the departments and other staff for the school information and about us pages.

 

Any one tried making a silverlight website?

 

Problery gonna have to do a lot of reading and watching videos about it

Edited March 13, 2010 by pritchardavid

[pritchardavid]

im starting to re-write our website internal and external, im writing it all in html with php for all of the menu and anything else i want it to do, ive started on a news section that will interact with a MYSQL backend and an admin page that will allow diferent sections of the school to see different things, also going to include most of the pages on MYSQL were i can so that i can change them from home without having to much problems.

 

 

Could you give me more info on how your doing this, this is quite intresting way of doing it, I would try and use SQL Express 2008

[mossj]

im starting to re-write our website internal and external, im writing it all in html with php for all of the menu and anything else i want it to do, ive started on a news section that will interact with a MYSQL backend and an admin page that will allow diferent sections of the school to see different things, also going to include most of the pages on MYSQL were i can so that i can change them from home without having to much problems.

 

To me it sounds like your reinventing the wheel, there are plenty of CMSes out there that allow permissions.

 

Thers a pdf sticked at the top of this forum, that would make interesting reading for you I suspect.

 

@Dave whats wrong with simply changing the name to something else?

 

I.E

U/N: Ockendon School

Name: Thurrock, Essex

 

But a quick google for twitter widgets should provide you with plenty of ones that don't use the name/username fields.

 

As for the silverlight have you made any consideration to how google and the like would see the site? as well as the WAA requirements. If it's anything like a flash based website you will have no end of issues.

Edited March 13, 2010 by mossj

[duncane]

In the past I've tried Joomla and found it quite hard to get it to do what I wanted to do - ending up making compromises to get things to fit in with it's way of working.

 

I'm using FrogCMS at the moment - it seems to give me a good balance between customising it with PHP code to do what I want (it's almost a framework) and wysiwyg editing for content. It has three levels of user - administrator, developer and editor. Editors can only edit pages that haven't been marked as locked, but can add new pages (such as news items... finally I get to why this is relevant for you! )

 

It's allowed me to start with basic HTML and CSS, then move it across to FrogCMS. I can use PHP to select links/pages for building menus, sitemaps etc automatically, snippets to re-use code, and page part forms to set up specific types of page (making sure submitters of job vacancies, galleries etc, keep to a specific structure).

 

I would probably go with WolfCMS (a fork) if I started again, because it seems to have more life in it.

 

Hopefully it won't be too long before we go live.

 

*Edit* There's also a twitter plugin: http://ajcates.com/projects/twitter-plugin-for-frog-cms that looks like it may be of interest to you. I like the idea of a real-time twitter feed for something like "Latest sports results" when the school's competing in football or something... unfortunately our authority blocks twitter feeds...

Edited March 13, 2010 by duncane
Added stuff about twitter plugin...

[Arthur]

Any one tried making a silverlight website?

Making a website entirely in Silverlight (or Flash for that matter) is a bad idea. Firstly it won't work on devices which do not have these plug-ins (like mobile phones) and secondly, you could get into trouble due to the DDA which makes it unlawful to discriminate against disabled visitors.

 

http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog/index.php/obligations-under-the-uk-dda/

http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog/index.php/accessibility101/

 

A disabled person can make a claim against you if your website makes it impossible or unreasonably difficult to access information and services. If you have not made reasonable adjustments and cannot show that this failure is justified, then you may be liable under the Act, and may have to pay compensation and be ordered by a court to change your site.

 

Personally, I would use a CMS so you have more time to spend on the design and content.

Edited March 13, 2010 by Arthur

[mossj]

Making a website entirely in Silverlight (or Flash for that matter) is a bad idea. Firstly it won't work on devices which do not have these plug-ins (like mobile phones) and secondly, you could get into trouble due to the DDA which makes it unlawful to discriminate against disabled visitors.

 

I don't think the DDA has ever been used in court against a website to date, the only records I have found of the DDA being used against UK websites is some idle threats from a Blind People Organisation to a few very high profile sites.

 

I do however subscribe to what your saying and refer you to the WAI, as a school you should be aiming for Level 2 at least. This will pretty much ensure you are within the DDA guidelines.

 

Their are several tools that will automaticly evaluate your site.

[pritchardavid]

Would love to do a silverlight website, just seems to really advance, it seems you need to know how to do all the coding for it, so thats out of the window Really wanted to do that, silverlight website look way good

 

Ok for the twitter feed im gonna eithier just put a link on the website for twitter

 

Try what you you said about change the name & username

 

or try this flash twitter extension I have found

 

Damn need to get this looking good for tomorrow, got a meeting tomorrow with a few staff member and also the head

[sdcards]

Can you share the link of your web site? So let me check it.