Teachers Make the Worst Students!
Launching a new website for the
Cherokee County School District
The way we were...
- SharePoint 2007 public website and intranet all-in-one
- Very little content on pages - primarily PDF document libraries
- Many users with design rights
- Permissions all over the place - permissions down to the library and list level
- Site overly-customized - no upgrade path, even to SharePoint 2010
The way we were... PDF Document Library
The way we were... PDF Document Content
Decisions, decisions...
But we love SharePoint!
- Make SharePoint not look like SharePoint
- Spent 2 months theming SharePoint
- Developed a theme, but each change broke something.
- Drank copious amounts of alcohol.
Decisions, decisions...
Going Rogue
- Set up Windows 2012r2 VM with WordPress
- Developed child-theme prototype based on the Enigma theme.
- Chose Enigma because...
- Based on the Bootstrap responsive framework
- Drastically different look-and-feel from SharePoint 2007
- Shiny features which could be modified through WYSIWIG options
Decisions, decisions...
Going Rogue
- Presented to Assistant Superintendent of Technology - approval to proceed with WordPress as the new public website CMS!
- January - February: revised design, presented to Administration
- Administration is on board! Final design approval on March 1st.
Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.
- Main school district site "completed" in April; presented to principals
- Subsequently implemented WP Multisite and created 43 subsites:
- One site per school - each school uses the child theme, but has its own stylesheet
- Chose Multisite specifically to keep sites separate - content separate, logins separate
Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.
School Webmasters
- No centralized website department or content team. Public Information has oversight, but content is the responsibility of each school.
- Each school has its own webmaster - usually a teacher or media specialist, that receives a stipend to be the school webmaster.
Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.
School Webmasters
- Webmaster training conducted May 9th - basic logging in, creating/editing pages and posts, and how to post slideshow photos.
- More resistance from webmasters than from administrators. We moved their cheese.
- The webmasters can now login...
Life in the Thunderdome
- Severe lack-of-understanding on responsive design.
- Failure to think mobile!
Life in the Thunderdome
- "Avoid PDFs" translated to...
- Use Word documents instead
- Enough tables we needed a maître d'
- "But we thought we were encouraged to use tables for layout."
Life in the Thunderdome
- Overall lack of understanding on links.
- Links do not automagically appear.
- Using the preview page as a link.
- Linking to the old website.
- Difficulty understanding editing calendar within the Events menu instead of on the calendar page.
- And the worst of all...
- "But I already know a little something about HTML."
Surviving the Thunderdome...
- Created CCSD Webmasters Group
- Regular threads/discussion
- Lots of "How to..." documents
- One-on-one training
Surviving the Thunderdome...
- Lock down visible Dashboard menu options.
- Webmasters need edit_theme_options capability to edit the slideshow
- Created ccsd_customizer_filter() function to hide additional theme options
- Created ccsd_hide_menus() function to hide additional dashboard options
Surviving the Thunderdome...
- Teachers make the worst students...
- Despite hiding the menu options, some webmasters derived the URL to access hidden options.
- Created the redirect_naughty_children() function, which redirects the webmaster to the Dashboard if they attempt to access hidden locations.
- Using Siteimprove (paid service) for analytics.
The Tech Specs
- Running WordPress on a WIMP stack:
- Windows Server 2012r2
- IIS
- MySQL
- PHP
- Running WordPress on Windows is not for Wimps!
- Friendly PSA: The WPI (Windows Platform Installer) will write its own entries to the bottom of your php.ini file!
The Tech Specs - WPI entries in php.ini file:
The Tech Specs
- 4 servers total:
- 2 front-end servers
- 1 database server - centralized database and wp-content directory
- 1 development server
The Tech Specs - Diagram
The Tech Specs - User Managment
Advantages
- Using the Active Directory Integration LDAP plugin:
- Users can login with their regular network credentials
- Users are in their respective schools' webmasters AD group - e.g. SCHOOL.Webmasters
- The SCHOOL.Webmasters groups are in an overall CCSD.Webmasters AD group
- Using the plugin, the users are imported into the main district site through the overall CCSD.Webmasters group
The Tech Specs - User Managment
Disadvantages
- Importing users into the main district site grants them access to the district site
- After the import, user roles must be changed to "Subscriber" to limit their access
- Ideally, it would be nice to have centralized user management through AD groups (e.g., import the SCHOOL.Webmasters group and assign those users only to that school.)
What now?
- Continuing education for webmasters
- Utilizing Siteimprove data to fix sites - primarily broken links and misspelled words
- Still adding sites... School Nutrition, Athletics
- Working through "To do" list
In the future...
- Tables - appropriate use, responsive
- Gravity Forms - move away from PDFs to true online forms
- Custom Post Types for specific pages, like Board Agenda Meetings
- Multisite menu replication - lock root-level items, allow webmasters to edit portions
Thanks for coming!
@suzecampbell
cherokeek12.net
For more in-depth information on this project, including code samples and WordPress set up on Windows, please see Dougal Campbell's presentation, Get Off My Lawn! ...and Out of My Dashboard!
Teachers Make the Worst Students!
Launching a new website for the
Cherokee County School District
cherokeek12.net