The week started off with a meeting between myself and Brent to talk more about the project. The need is for one or more templates that can be used by various community groups, e.g. schools, health clinics, etc., to create their own web pages or sites. My job during the first couple of weeks is to research various content management systems and try to determine which one/s would work best, as well as looking at existing websites of this type to see what information is commonly included.
I checked out some elementary school web sites, and found their basic content to be fairly uniform (contact info, academic calendars, faculty lists, and lunch menus are typical). I also looked at an open-source CMS specifically geared toward primary schools, called Site@School. It provides templates for schools to create and maintain their own sites for free. I installed it on the WiderNet server so I can try it out. At first glance, it looks like a good option.
The rest of the week I spent tackling Drupal. After getting it installed on the server (which was a bit tricky, but helped me brush up on my rusty command line and SQL skills), I played around and tried to figure out how it can meet our needs. There are a ton of modules to download, and I added a few that seem useful. I also did more reading and watched some online tutorials. My feeling is that Drupal can be used to do just about anything, but that very fact gives it a steep learning curve. I have a feeling I won't fully understand how it works until I have a concrete draft of the template to plug in. But it will help that WiderNet is going to start using Drupal for its website, and will be bringing in an "expert" this week to teach staff the basics.
In the coming week, I will begin working with Site at School and look around for other CMS's we might be able to use. I also need to get started on another ongoing task, which is to create documentation for the project.
