A Drupal ProjectStage 6 Preliminary IPT Unit of Work

Ross Parker with Peter Stidston, Chris Dam & Nirvan GeldaFor the NSW CTSA

26.10.2009

This presentation outlines a NSW Stage 6 Preliminary IPT project

based on the Drupal CMS

http://tinyurl.com/adrupalproject

All the materials used today are available online

http://tinyurl.com/cstadrupal

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...

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)

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

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

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)

Student Work

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

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

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

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!

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 )

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

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:

XAMPP/Drupal Installation II

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

• Configure XAMPP

XAMPP/Drupal Installation III

• Create a database for Drupal

XAMPP/Drupal Installation IV

• Run the Drupal config process:

Another Teacher’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.]

Another Teacher’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]

The End

• Please tell me, are you:– Excited?– Exhasuted?– Confused?– Bored?

• Closing remarks• Q & A

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.