Introduction

Contents

1. Introduction
    1.1 History

2. Design goals
    2.1 The first version

3. Features
    3.1 General features
    3.2 Features for teachers and pupils
    3.3 Features for users
    3.4 Features for developers

4. Available modules

5. Supported languages

6.Requirements
    6.1 Server
    6.2 Clients

7. The installation
    7.1 Upgrading to a new version

8. After the installation

9. Wish List

10. What Site@School is not

11. Contributing team

12. Useful links

1. Introduction

Site@School is a system to build, manage and maintain the website of a primary school.

1.1 History

Site@School's foundations are at the Public Primary School Rosa Boekdrukker. It was designed by teachers, parents and a secondary school student in Holland. The first version of S@S appeared in September 2002.
Its main design goals were born when we looked at numerous primary school websites. Many of them looked dull, static, dusty, unmaintained, sometimes years old, without any changes. And, more astonishingly, we could hardly find any input from pupils, teachers or parents on those sites.
The school sites seemed to be the result of a one time design by someone (webmaster, designer?) where, after the glorious opening of the site, time came to a halt.

This search brought us to thinking about some device to make a site easy to maintain. We found out this device is called a CMS (Content Management System). We looked at many CMS's on the web but could not find the CMS that fulfilled our wishes. Their main drawbacks were: too many useless features, too complicated, too little functionality for a primary school, too hierarchical structure, management assumptions that do not reflect the structure of education, etc..
They were all wonderful CMS's, but not for a primary school.
So we decided to design a CMS ourselves by formulating our design goals.

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2. Design Goals

These were our design goals in 2002 (in no specific order):

2.1 The first version

When we had our design goals we gave the assignment to a secondary school pupil proficient in PHP coding to build the CMS: Mark de Haan. He already had many ideas on the construction of a school CMS. He finished version 1.0 in September 2002.
The initial version 1.0 was financed by the Local Municipality Council "De Baarsjes" of Amsterdam, Holland. (Stadsdeel de Baarsjes) (info@baarsjes.amsterdam.nl). The price of this version of the CMS at that time was EURO 1500.
We gave the CMS the name 'Site@School'.

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3. Features

Out of our wish list, design goals, wishes from others, continuous rethinking and improvements, the following features of Site@School emerged ( updated for S@S v2.4, May 2006).
The features are listed in no specific order.

3.1 General features

3.2 Features for teachers and pupils

3.3 Features for users of S@S

3.4 Features for developers of S@S

Since beginning of 2005 we try to get standards into the system. The manual is made following 'Guidelines for writing ServerAtSchool-documentation' (courtesy of Mr. Fokker).
The code of S@S follows the 'Coding guidelines' (courtesy of phpBB2).

Please follow these guidelines when contributing to Site@School.

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4. Available modules

Site@School comes with a number of modules that's continually expanding. All available modules are included in the Site@School download. Modules that are developed between releases can be separately downloaded at our Sourceforge download area.
Detailed descriptions of the features of each module can be found in their corresponding chapters. Below is a list of all available modules. The links link to the chapters.

  1. Advertisments module
  2. Agenda module
  3. Album module
  4. Calendar module
  5. Chat module
  6. E-mail module
  7. Formsbuilder module
  8. Forum module
  9. Guestbook module
  10. Links module
  11. Message module
  12. News module
  13. Newsletter module
  14. Pupils pages module
  15. Search module
  16. Template editor module
  17. Sitemap module
  18. TV module
  19. Up/Download module

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5. Supported languages

At this moment (May 2006), Site@School is available in the following languages:

  1. Bulgarian
  2. Chinese
  3. Czech
  4. Danish
  5. Dutch
  6. English
  7. Finnish
  8. French
  9. German (German users guide available)
  10. Hungarian
  11. Italian
  12. Japanese
  13. Norwegian
  14. Polish
  15. Portugese (Brazilian)
  16. Spanish
  17. Swedish
  18. Turkish

These languages are incorporated in Site@School version 2.4. Check our Sourceforge download site to see if new languages are available that are not yet incorporated.
You can help primary schools in your language to translate Site@School. The system provides an easy translating facility for 'on the fly' translations.

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6. Requirements

6.1 Server

Site@School needs LAMP or WAMP compatibility (i.e., Linux or Windows server) with:

S@S also runs on Windows 2003 server with IIS 6.0, PHP 4.3.1 and MySQL 3.23.49.
Site@School runs perfect on old hardware. We have S@S running under Linux with computers of 133-200 Mhz, with about 64 MB of RAM, serving primary schools of 200 - 300 pupils. Of course, more memory is better.

Clients

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7. The installation

To install Site@School you need a bit of Linux or Windows experience, depending on the platform of your preference.
The installation process is explained in detail in the Installation chapter of the Site@School Users' Guide. This manual can be downloaded as the file 'S@S Manual<version-number>.tar.gz' or 'S@S Manual<version-number>.zip' from our Sourceforge download site. The 'install.html' file is also included in the program itself, see ../starnet/install/install.html.
The installation process is completely done via a Graphical User Interface.
At the Sourceforge site you can also find language versions that were sent to us after finishing the latest version. The manual and modules that are not incorporated in the .tgz or .zip file and must be downloaded separately from the same site. Please install the manual in the Site@School program. In this way you have your manual online when working with the program.

7.1 Upgrading to a new version

We try to upgrade once a year. See section 6. Upgrading to a newer version of the Installation chapter for detailed instruction on how to upgrade.

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8. After the installation

When you have successfully installed Site@School there are a couple of things to do:

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9. Wishlist

There are wishes which we hope to get fulfilled in the near future:

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10. What S@S is not

When we receive requests for features in S@S, they are carefully considered and sometimes rejected.
Gradually it became clear what S@S is not:

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11. Contributing Team

At this moment (May 2006) Site@School is used on many schools worldwide. Site@School has a small but enthusiastic development team and a wide user base that support us with proofreading, testing, bug reports and fixes, code, requests for features, etc.
The core team: Karin Abma, Dirk Schouten, Fred Stuurman.
Graphics: Barry Faas.
Translations by: Stepen James, Gabriel Campos (Spanish), Dener Brito (Brazil), Henry Jovik (Norway), Juergen Goldmann, David Prousch (Germany), VACANT (Japan), Jinhe Pei (Peoples Republic of China), Thomas Karlsson (Sweden), Jean Peyratout (France), Massimo Pipolo, Enrico Centenaro (Italian), Christopher Lojowski (Poland), Ylker Turen (Turkey), Timo Tervo (Finland), Ole Bang Ottosen (Danmark), Stefan Stefanov (Bulgaria), Gabi Beni (Hungary), Mirek (Czech) and us (Dutch, English).
Proofreading and corrections of English Users' Guide: Alex, Alice, Amy Morgan, Angela, Ann Kallyn, Chelsea, Julie, Matthew, Micah and Taylor; pupils of "The Christ School", Orlando, Florida, USA, Douglas Bell
Translation of Users' Guide in German: David Prousch.
Contributions by: Aad de Vos, Peter Fokker, Remco Bruijne, Arne Maletzky, Matthijs Koopmans, Peter Matthijssen, Kees Schroijen, Gerard Roos, Jürgen Goldmann, Alain Riffart, Jan Meijer, Gerhard Smit and many, many others.

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12. Useful links

Our primary Sourceforge download site
Our Homepage on Sourceforge. Check it out for latest news
An educational background to Site@School
The primary school in Holland where it all started

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Author: Dirk Schouten <schoutdi (at) knoware (dot) nl>
Last updated: 2006-04-01