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Building a successful website on Oli.education.lu will require taking some basic steps, and on this page we offer a list of some basic things you'll have to do or you'll have to think about.
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First you'll have to think about how many environments and websites you'll need. |
- If you're a single school, then it's quite easy, you'll need one environment and one website. You may create further websites for special projects in your environment though.
- If you're a district or a school consisting of different entities, then you may opt for one website for each school/entity, plus one portal site for your entire community for example.
- Only create more than one environment if you really need to prevent your different websites from sharing users and information.
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Make sure to discuss all of this before creating or building anything – you'll need some kind of a plan before you start building something complex as a website! |
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Think about the structure of your website – what kinds of content shall be published, what are the pages you'll need and what kinds of features will you need? |
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Think about the looks of your future website(s), make sure that everything will be consistent and make sure you'll have all required files ready (logos, graphics, etc...) |
And so here's what you'll have to do to get started: - First, you should set up your virtual classrooms and your virtual school(s), as this will greatly simplify things later on.
- Make sure you have created a virtual classroom for all of your classes, and make sure that your teachers have an account on Oli.education.lu and that they have been added to their classrooms.
- Make sure that your virtual classrooms will be interconnected by creating one or more virtual school(s).
- Open the School Web Manager and create an environment. The user creating the environment will be the owner of the environment, this user will have access to all of the environments's websites and this user will also be able to add further administrators.
- Create the websites you'll need. Either just one website if you're just one single school, or a number of websites if you're a community of schools.
- Go to "Users & Classes" and add your virtual school(s). This will allow selecting your school(s) and linked classrooms in some tools later on.
- Add further administrators if needed. Go to "Users & Classes" > "Administrators" and add teachers who shall be able to make changes to the basic structure of your website(s). Make sure to grant access to specific websites to your administrators.
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Note that not all teachers will need to be website administrators – most teachers will simple post news, photos, files and texts using their virtual classroom(s) later on, so it will be a good idea to limit the number of website admins. |
- Go to "Website" > "Templates & Design" and enable the option "My own design". Then click the "images" button and upload a header logo for your website. We recommend to use one single large JPEG file (1600 x 240 pixel for example), which will look good on both computers and mobile devices / smartphones. Don't forget that you'll need one header logo for each of your websites.
- Update websites' structure(s). Go to "Website" > "Pages" to add further pages you'll need, and rename or delete pages you won't need. Don't add too many pages you don't have any content for yet, as nobody likes sites with lots of pages that will be "under construction".
- Update your websites' menu(s). Go to "Website" > "Menu" and modify your menu(s) in order to make sure that menus will match pages on your website(s).
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"Pages" and "Menu" are independent screens / features. Adding, moving or removing pages on the "Pages" screen will not necessarily also update your menus, which means that you may have to manually update your menu(s) on the "Menu" screen. |
- Next you should add static content to your website(s), such as text elements, photos, and files such as PDF documents for example. Add a new website paragraph for each larger text element. Website paragraphs offer lots of options, so please take some time to explore those.
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Files (photos, images, documents, ...) you'd like to use on your website should be stored in the website's Media Manager, you will find it on the "Website" > "Media" screen. |
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Teachers will post news messages, photos and files directly in their virtual classroom, which will allow them to post content without being websites administrators. In order to make this work you'll have to add dynamic paragraphs / widgets to your website: |
- Adding a news / blog paragraph / widget will allow teachers to post news messages using their virtual classroom tools. The blog widget's setup screen will allow to add schools and classrooms your added in the "Users & classes" section.
- Adding a gallery paragraph will allow to create an automated feed that will display photos and images posted in virtual classrooms (including photos and files added to blog messages). Add a gallery paragraph and add the desired school(s) or classroom(s). Then select the "add empty folders", "feed" and "recursive" options to make the feed work.
- Add a virschool paragraph / widget to display a list of virtual classrooms that may be sorted by name or by activity. You may configure this widget to allow clicking on classrooms in order to open virtual classroom websites.
- Add a virtual classroom paragraph / widget to display a virtual classroom's website.
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You may password protect specific pages by adding "protection" paragraphs / widgets on the desired pages. |
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Note that protecting a page may not necessarily also protect all files that will be displayed on that page – you may have to store those files in dedicated protected areas in the Media Manager(s). |
If you completed all (or most) of those steps then your school website(s) should now be ready to use. Continue to explore the Website Manager's tools and features and don't forget to check out other schools using it in order to get inspired.
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Don't forget that you may also connect own domain names to your websites. |
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