Best approach to building a school website?

Report · Nov 30, 2010

Hello all.

The school in which I previously worked as a teacher has asked me to develop a website for them. The static pages are no problem.

I thought it would be great if the various departments - English, Maths, Sciences, Humanities, Business, etc - could have their own 'blog' pages to which they could post content for their students' use.

I thought about simply setting up a blog for each department (Blogger or Wordpress, for example) and simply linking to those individual blog pages from the school's main site.

It would great, on the other hand, if the school's site was self-contained, built using PHP/MySql. In other words, that it had its own CMS.

In the main, I envisage that the school departments would have only one 'poster' (i.e. a teacher) who would post entries consisting of text, photos, and possibly (links to) videos.

I know quite a bit about PHP/MySQL, although I am not an expert. Does this sound like a hugely complex job? Do you have any thoughts or observations? How would you go about it yourselves?

A final but not insignificant point: the school has no budget. I'll be receiving an enthusiastic 'thank you!' rather than any remuneration for doing the job if I take it on for them.

Thanks in advance.

Hugh

Report · Nov 30, 2010

hughanagle wrote:
I thought about simply setting up a blog for each department (Blogger or Wordpress, for example) and simply linking to those individual blog pages from the school's main site.
It would great, on the other hand, if the school's site was self-contained, built using PHP/MySql. In other words, that it had its own CMS.

It is perfectly possible to integrate a WordPress blog into a site without all pages being generated by WordPress. I have done so with the blog on my site at http://foundationphp.com/blog/. The blog directory contains WordPress. All other directories are non-WordPress.

Since you want each department to have its own blog, you need to create what WordPress calls a network of blogs, which WordPress 3.0 now supports. I have no experience of creating a WordPress network, but you can find details at the following location: http://codex.wordpress.org/Create_A_Network.

Report · Nov 30, 2010

Thanks for your help, David.

But I'm intrigued... Given that you're completely au fait with PHP/MySQL solutions, what prompted you to integrate a Wordpress blog on your own site when you could have built one for yourself quickly and easily?

Why would any of us mortals bother building PHP/MySql blogs if guys as adept as you are using Wordpress?

Hugh

Report · Nov 30, 2010

hughanagle wrote:
But I'm intrigued... Given that you're completely au fait with PHP/MySQL solutions, what prompted you to integrate a Wordpress blog on your own site when you could have built one for yourself quickly and easily?

Several reasons:

I originally installed it in 2006, because I wanted to find out what all the fuss about WordPress was about.
I wanted to learn how to integrate a WordPress theme with the CSS for the rest of my site, so they would have an integrated look.
I don't blog very often (only six times so far this year).
The commenting and moderation system is very well organized. I didn't see much point in reinventing the wheel.
It's only a small section of my site. Most other pages aren't database-driven, but they do use a lot of PHP includes and conditional logic.

Why would any of us mortals bother building PHP/MySql blogs if guys as adept as you are using Wordpress?

If you want a blog, WordPress presents you with a ready-made solution that's very easy to set up. What's not so easy is modifying and styling it. That's where a good knowledge of PHP and CSS are essential. Also, I'd say that WordPress is not suitable for a lot of sites. That's why I don't use it for the other parts of my site.

Report · Nov 30, 2010

Thanks again. Very informative for me.

Report · Nov 30, 2010

I have recently spent quite a bit of time with Wordpress and Joomla. I also know how to code in PHP / SQL.

If I had your problem I would use Wordpress as by CMS. Yes WP will perform very well as a CMS. But you need to understand how to do it.

Your knowledge of PHP is the bedrock of manipulating WP to the ends yu seek.

My best advice to you is go to Lynda.com where they have a major section on how to build out WP with some simple PHP.

Lastly, why WP over Joomla ? Joomla is great particularly with the new version, but for everyday users wanting to manage their own world (like teachers) WP wins out by a long margin !