Site@School is a Content Management System (CMS) to manage and maintain the website of a primary school.
It is Open Source Software, licensed under the General Public license.
Site@school main features are:
Here the features are described in general. See also the list of features for all Modules
Site@School comes with a comprehensive manual with over 290 screenshots, describing every operation in detail. The manual can be installed in S@S, enabling easy consulting while you are working.
Managing S@S is extremely easy. Within an hour you know the basic operations. A guided tour is available in the manual.
Simple installation. We tried to make the installation as easy as possible by supplying a GUI (Graphical User Interface). All available modules are installed. In the GUI you fill in some text boxes and you have the choice of:
1. Installation with demonstration data: This means all modules are functional. A test teacher and a test pupil are in the system and ‘everything’ is functioning. The demo installation is useful to see a lot of the possibilities of S@S.
2. Basic installation: Here you have to do everything yourself. Ideal when you build your site from scratch or start with your own template.
Whatever you choose, you do not have to edit complex configuration files. And if this is still too complicated, help is available. The installation is done only once and help can be found in Linux and Windows newsgroups or local user groups and, when you take our limited time in consideration, sometimes with us at our S@S4US Forum.
S@S is Open Source Software licensed under the General Public License.
S@S is LAMP and WAMP compatible. It runs under Linux with Apache, MySQL and PHP and also under Windows with the same software. S@S also runs on Windows 2003 server with IIS 6.0, PHP 4.3.1., MySQL 3.23.49.
S@S runs fine on old hardware. We use the system with Linux on servers of 133 - 200 MHz and 64 Mb RAM for schools of 2-300 pupils.
S@S code, variable names, etc. and comments in the code are in English. This makes further development in other countries possible and easy. We assume that most people who write code in PHP know English.
S@S can be coupled to an existing website-design. For the coupling of our CMS to your site you must have a fair knowledge of HTML and know how to integrate PHP code into HTML. The standard template is your example. However, we might be able to help you when you take our limited time in consideration. See the ‘Creating templates’ chapter of the manual. In case of problems, use the S@S4US Forum.
A S@S site can be easily reorganized, i.e. change locations of sections and pages.
S@S is multi-lingual with an easy user interface. This feature enables translating S@S ‘on the fly’. Adapting linguistic elements of S@S to your school habits is simple. All textual elements in S@S are in separate language files that can be translated via a transit interface.
S@S is modular: When a school needs a facility (a chat, a newsletter, etc) you have the choice to add functionality of a module to your school site. The modular design makes future modules easy to develop and integrate into your CMS.
S@S is managed via your browser, and can be managed everywhere when an Internet connection and a browser are available.
A ‘Tips & Tricks’ section. Here you find useful modifications to further customize your S@S with very simple means. This section is continually expanded by the users of S@S.
Easy backup facilities: With a few mouse clicks you can make a local backup of your MySQL database. This feature is extremely useful for safety, because you have a local copy of your database. And it’s also very useful when you migrate your school site, for example to another ISP.
Extensive E-mail alerts functionality throughout the site and in the modules. For site maintainers and and visitors interested in a particular item this means: notifications by E-mail when something changes on the site. This feature also greatly reduces management time.
When users (teacher, pupils or other users) login to S@S a PHP session is used, for this reason cookies must be accepted on their client PC’s.
Features for teachers and pupils
Pupils can publish their personal pages. The total number of pages a pupil can have is 99. When a pupil makes or modifies her/his personal page an e-mail message is sent to the teacher. The teacher can check the page and approve, disapprove, delete, or make the page visible. This feature can be enabled/disabled for every individual pupil.
Projects. A group of pupils can have a project with pages that are accessible and editable by all group members. When a page, in use by a group member, is accessed by another member, a warning message is given. When the page is ‘released’, another group member can edit that page. In conjunction with the chat, collaborative, or project based learning becomes available.
A teacher does not need to enter the Site@School Managemant system to manage the pupils pages of her/his group. This makes managing pupils pages by teachers a simple job done in minutes. Multiple teachers can manage a class. Adding pupils to a class can also be performed from the site.
Teachers can also have their own webpages, together with the class and/or together with other teachers.
An intranet for teachers. This is the ‘Protected Area’ in Site@School, where only teachers have access to. The Protected Area can have its own theme (site design). Giving the ‘Protected area’ a different design prevents errors like putting ‘teachers only’ material on the publicly accessible part of the school site.
Easy management of classes: it’s possible to move all pupils in a class to a new year.
The possibility to couple teachers and pupils to modules. This feature is used for example in the Forum module where teachers and pupils have a closed forum that’s password protected and not accessible to the public. The general forums are public-access. This feature can also be used in the development of future modules.
Admins (they are called ‘users’ in S@S) can have various access rights on the system regarding their tasks. Every single user can have or be denied rights to:
Page management, including/excluding the ‘Protected Area’.
Section management per section.
File management.
Module management in general and per module
Configuration management (and, separately, for every option under Configuration)
Tools section (and, separately, for every option under Tools).
Statistics section
These features, in combination with the E-mail alerts makes it possible, for example, to make one pupil responsible for looking after the guestbook and removing undesirable entries. Or give parents the management over the section ‘Parents’, etc..
With one mouseclick teachers and/or pupils can be made users (admins).
You can copy a user’s properties to a new user. This simplifies adding new users.
Two What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) Editors with a high ‘word processor look-alike’ design in which it is possible to write and format text, upload pictures, etc..
The Javascript editor is a simple editor, usable under Windows with Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher.
The HTMLarea editor is usable under Linux (Mozilla 1.3.1. and higher, Firefox 1.0), Windows (Internet Explorer 5.5 and higher, Firefox 1.0) and Mac ( Netscape 7.1 and Mozilla 1.5.1 and higher, Firefox). It has extensive table functions.
In both editors the number of lines the editor shows before the right vertical scrollbar appears is adjustable.
A plain HTML editor is available. When pupils want to learn HTML, or when you are a HTML diehard, this is the one for you.
Pages on a Site@School site can be made visible and invisible; an indispensible feature when linking pages to pages, or easy for pages you only use once a year or on special occasions. Or, when you need a lot of time to make a page, you can work on it every now and then and no one will see your work until it’s ready.
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