A Drupal Project Stage 6 Preliminary IPT Unit of Work

1. A Drupal ProjectStage 6 Preliminary IPT Unit of Work Ross Parker with Peter Stidston, Chris Dam & Nirvan Gelda For the NSW CTSA 26.10.2009

2. This presentation outlines a NSW Stage 6 Preliminary IPT project based on the Drupal CMS http://tinyurl.com/adrupalproject

3. All the materials used today are available online http://tinyurl.com/cstadrupal

4. Introduction to Drupal • What is Drupal? • Web-based content management system • Why was Drupal chosen? • Free (speech & beer) • Generative • Challenging • Highly Productive • Collaborative • It can do (almost) anything...

5. Server Environment • Ubuntu LAMP stack • Initial success (inconvenient) • My laptop (AMD Turion X2 64-bit, 2GB RAM) • Epic fail (lag) • Moved Ubuntu to VirtualBox on Vista 32-bit • Old VB only supported 1 core • Redemption (convenient) • School desktop (Intel Peritum D, 1GM RAM) • XAMPP • Thanks to Mr. Chris Dam (resident guru)

6. Introduction to the Project • CC BY-SA • Please feel free to take, adapt and share • http://tinyurl.com/adrupalproject • Project Aims • Pose significant challenge • More like industry than school, including • Produce effective written communication • Consider user perspectives • Meet syllabus requirements

7. Project Highlights I • We learnt: • How to use Drupal • How to alternately design a website (without hand coding) • How to manage a project as a team • How to communicate with other team members

8. Project Highlights II • How we worked as a team: • Assigning roles for individuals • Communicating with team members • Using the Shatin College website for off school communication (http://rp.shatincollege.edu.hk)

9. Student Work

10. Drupal Hands On • You are now my students! • This is the quickest unit of work ever. • BTW, it’s a race! • Activities: • Split into 6 teams • Number teams from 1 to 6 • Connect your laptop to the Wifi network: • SSID: drupalpresentation ; PSK: drupal123456 • Access your Drupal installation: • E.g. http://192.168.1.20/team1

11. Drupal Hands On II • Log in to your installtion: • Username: root ; Password: drupal123456 • Change your root pasword • Collect a thumbdrive with Portable Apps • Create two page nodes • Create a menu item for your page nodes • Install a theme • Enable core modules • comment, profile

12. Drupal Hands On III • Install modules • token, pathauto, jcarousel • Configure jcarousel: • Example code! • Enable breadcrumbs • Create taxonomy • Create second-tier page • Place in taxonomy • Create a role • Establish permissions

13. Drupal Hands On VI • Create an account for each team member • Have each team member login and comment • Stop, breathe, relax • Each time should now have a working read-write website!

14. More Advanced Tasks • Finished Early? Try: • Panels moduleLinking primary and secondary menus • Theme customisation • CSS, XHTML • Google analytics module • Ubercart module (tricky) • CCK (yeah, right!) • Views (impossible )

15. What is XAMPP ? • A free, open source server stack to allow you to run your own web application server • XAMPP: • X: Cross Platform • A: Apache HTTP server • M: MySQL database server • P: PHP scripting • P: Perl scripting

16. XAMPP/Drupal Installation I • Here we give an outline of the process: • For more details, see the guide. • Download a copy of XAMPP and Drupal • Run the XAMPP installation:

17. XAMPP/Drupal Installation II • Once XAMPP has been installed unzip your Drupal files and place them in /htdocs. • Configure XAMPP

18. XAMPP/Drupal Installation III • Create a database for Drupal

19. XAMPP/Drupal Installation IV • Run the Drupal config process:

20. AnotherTeacher’s Perspective • The arrival of Mr Parker • Fitting an intensive, hands-on assessment task into the IPT programme • Be prepared. Have everything ready (and tested) prior to first lesson. • Teaching tips. [Many concepts quite complex/technical in nature, especially for lower-ability students. Chunking is highly recommended, accompanied by softcopy instructions.]

21. AnotherTeacher’s Perspective #2 • Useful Drupal modules  [Students wasted time on downloading not-so-useful, ‘buggy’ ones. Some useful modules are: admin menu, pathauto, panels, Google analytics, realname, table of contents, webform, taxonomy breadcrums, ubercart] • Note on impact of having a Linux server in a Windows environment [When start-up default set to Linux, may cause mild irritation to other teachers who share the classroom.] • In summary [A valuable, hands-on experience for students across a wide range of abilities. A change from staple diet of FrontPage/Dreamweaver.] • Websites: [http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-xampp/ http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html]

22. The End • Please tell me, are you: • Excited? • Exhasuted? • Confused? • Bored? • Closing remarks • Q & A

23. Licensing • All original work used here is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. For more details please look at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. • This license has been chosen to permit a high degree of sharing, whilst protecting the author’s control as to how the content is used. • Please respect this license and use accordingly! • Recycled and borrowed works from other sources are used under appropriate licenses, which are not affected by this license. The original source is always given. • All original work created by Ross Parker (Sha Tin College, English Schools Foundation, Hong Kong), except where specified.