Hey Alex,<div>It is like pulling teeth from a tyrannosaurus :-)</div><div>I was sole developer/designer/administrator for Empire State College's "Commons" <a href="http://commons.esc.edu">http://commons.esc.edu</a></div>
<div><br></div><div>It was a long road to get an instance set up, and once I did I had to approve all development decisions with non-technical director, which restrained most of my ideas. A little side note... this was developed and launched a year and half ago, and I've left my position since, because of the experience. ESC's Commons has Buddypress (really old version) installed, but most of it is disabled, and if I remember correctly I ended up hacking the core of Buddypress to get rid of some of the functionality, which was totally against my better judgement, but just wanted to get something a little more user-friendly for faculty to use and experiment with (deadlines). I launched it and then left my position, and will soon be leaving the education sector all together. </div>
<div><br></div><div>Our school has been using ANGEL for LMS for several years and has been investigating the next move to another LMS for over a year with a recent announcement that the next contendor will be Moodle. As far as CMS we had been running on Lotus Notes, which was a half-baked homegrown CMS solution. If you can call it that. ESC is finally moving to a commercial solution (Terminal4), which is almost a year in on transition and there are 1 or 2 live micro-sites, but nothing official yet.</div>
<div><br></div><div>ESC's instance of WPMU (v 2.7 if I remember correctly) is running on an internal server, which was hell setting up. Authentication was a huge sticky point as our systems were antiquated (Lotus/LDAP/Active Directory). We ended up using LDAP plugin, but still wasn't working the way I would of liked to. There have been no updates to the platform, and it is still running on the WPMU 2.7.</div>
<div><br></div><div>My advice would be to get ready to contribute code to WP community. Perhaps try to get a part-time or full-time developer to help get the system running. Depending on how many customizations you'll need. The CUNY Commons is a great example of what can be done. Also, check out Stas' progress on LMS-like functionality for WP: <a href="http://sushkov.wordpress.com/">http://sushkov.wordpress.com/</a></div>
<div><br></div><div>Good luck!</div><div>feel free to email me if you have any further specific questions: damonDOTcookATescDOTedu</div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 8:00 AM, <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:wp-edu-request@lists.automattic.com">wp-edu-request@lists.automattic.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<br>Today's Topics:<br>
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1. Making the Case for WP in University Setting (Alexandre Enkerli)<br>
<br><br>---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: Alexandre Enkerli <<a href="mailto:enkerli@gmail.com">enkerli@gmail.com</a>><br>To: "<a href="mailto:wp-edu@lists.automattic.com">wp-edu@lists.automattic.com</a>" <<a href="mailto:wp-edu@lists.automattic.com">wp-edu@lists.automattic.com</a>><br>
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 22:08:01 -0400<br>Subject: [wp-edu] Making the Case for WP in University Setting<br>Hi,<br>
<br>
Been using WP in diverse contexts, including some of my activities as<br>
an instructor.<br>
After talking with diverse people needing advice about Web solutions<br>
for all sorts of things, I came to the realization that it'd be<br>
incredibly useful to have a university-supported install of WordPress<br>
(Multi-Site and hopefully BuddyPress-enabled).<br>
<br>
It's a big institution, so it can be difficult to request such things.<br>
Actually, the communications department is in the RFP phase of<br>
implementing a new (commercial) CMS, so energies are spent elsewhere.<br>
<br>
We use Moodle as the main course management system for most of the<br>
community, though the business school uses FirstClass for the same<br>
purposes. Many faculty members are dissatisfied with their course<br>
management system and, clearly, there's a need for something which<br>
goes beyond individual courses. This is a university with a strong<br>
involvement in the local community and there are many projects by<br>
students, staff, and faculty which could use an online space as a kind<br>
of “university commons”.<br>
What's more, it'd be interesting to have some people do innovative<br>
work through WordPress. A dream I have is to use WP as a repository<br>
for “learning objects”. Such projects can be done independently, but<br>
they're more interesting if they're hosted on university servers.<br>
Way back when, universities had “personal homepages”, for all<br>
affiliated individuals. Why can't we have WP sites and BuddyPress<br>
profiles?<br>
<br>
Does anyone have advice on getting an academic institution to accept<br>
WP on their servers? I'll try to prepare a dossier, pointing to work<br>
done at diverse institutions (good thing Boone paved the way), and<br>
describing practical cases from faculty initiatives. It even sounds<br>
like the fear of having sensitive data held off-site could be a<br>
factor. But any insight as to how such a process went at other<br>
institutions would be very useful.<br>
<br>
Thank you.<br>
--<br>
Alex Enkerli<br>
<a href="http://Enkerli.com" target="_blank">http://Enkerli.com</a><br>
<br>
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