How we did it: Twynham 6th form Internet facing website using SharePoint 2007 – Part 4

Guest Authors
Mike Herrity, Educational SharePoint Architect
Chris Mckinley, Senior SharePoint/SQL Developer
www.sharepointineducation.com
Twynham School, SharePoint Internet

Admissions Journey

The admissions journey uses the java script that the courses tab uses. Content slides across as the user journeys through the six steps of the admissions process. The Steps are stored in a simple list with rich text, this also allows for expansion as more steps can be added simply by adding them to the list.  Using the rich text field in the custom lists was chosen to allow the insertion of hyperlinks, something that is required in almost all of the steps. This makes editing simple for any admin user and broken links to external sites can be rectified quickly if they occur.

Options Block editing

Many of the pages are based on custom layouts. We created several simple layouts; Full page width content, left content/right web part zone, right contect/left web part zone, Full page with content with webpart zones above and also below. In the end we only used the full with and the left content layouts but we have built in flexibility. This allows us to easily add web parts to the page as well as use the Page Content placeholder. In just a few clicks this gives staff (with the appropriate permission) a simple WYSIWYG way of editing the page content.

Editing pages with ease for specific end users

The user can then edit the content within the browser. The SharePoint publishing features enable the user to publish or check items in for others to approve before editing. The page shown here has the option block information on it. With our old site this was a pdf as the data was supposed to stay static and only chance once a year. In reality the information was always being tweaked meaning the pdf had to be changed and re uploaded. This time we added the information into a table in the content placeholder. Now any tweaks can be made in the browser and maintained by the people making the changed to the blocks.

Newsletters

The newsletter sub site is a document library containing some pdf documents. A view of this library is then rendered using xslt so as to keep the look and feel of the whole site.  We made sure that our site collection had the pdf icon associated so the icon would be automatically pulled through by sharepoint. The rendering of the document library is then almost identical to a standard sharepoint document library, just with a custom skin and custom view.

Linking the Internet facing site with the Extranet

From the Student gateway section pupils can easily log into the Twynham gateway where they can get their email, programmes, subject and revision areas as well as getting data based on their school progress including timetables, attendance and grades. The login button opens a new window and then takes the user straight to the ISA 2006 login page for the gateway.

Ask us a question

The Ask  us a question page is based on another custom layout page on the left is a WYSIWYG editing area and on the right a web part zone containing a web part we developed to enable messages to be sent from the web to the 6th form office. The web part here was developed in-house using C# for our year 9 options site. As the web part was all packaged up it was simply a case of installing it and adding it to the page. Modifying the web part properties allows site administrators to set the email address for the form to mail out to, in this case the 6th Form office.

Gallery

The gallery section of the site uses a Silverlight picture viewer that we have modified to read directly from a SharePoint picture library. This makes uploading pictures really easy as they are just uploaded into the picture library and they show immediately. We have four picture libraries; work, rest, play and latest. The first three albums contain a selection of images that give a general feel for life at Twynham 6th Form, the latest gallery is a place for recent pictures to be uploaded. This required using sub galleries so users can browse to a particular event. For each new sub album a folder is created within the ‘latest’ picture library and the images for the event placed in the folder. The sub menu on the left is created with xslt and reads the folders in the library. Once clicked on the name of the folder is passed into the web part and the desired gallery shows. This makes uploading new galleries as simple as dropping a folder into the picture library.

In his next, and final article, in this series Mike takes us "under the hood".

Guest Author: Mike Herrity
www.sharepointineducation.com

Mike Herrity is the author of SharePoint in Education www.sharepointineducation.com the leading authority on the use of SharePoint in a school environment. He works as an Assistant Headteacher at Twynham School in Dorset UK with a development team of 6 creating educationally focused SharePoint resources. Mike is also a educational SharePoint Architect and consultant for a number of school districts around the world who are moving over to SharePoint as a flexible Learning Platform.