README Whiteboard Courseware System v1.0.3 8/8/2003 Description: Whiteboard is a fully-featured and -integrated courseware system, targeted toward colleges and universities. It supports multiple departments and courses (including cross-listed courses); simple migration of courses to new semesters; grade storage, checking, and calculation; assignment submission and testing, and submitted assignment retrieval; documents; announcements; and discussion boards. It is written in PHP with a MySQL back-end, and is fully administrable through its web interface. Requirements: New-ish version of PHP (tested on 4.3.1). This may be obtained from http://www.php.net. Requires register_globals=on and safe_mode=off. New-ish version of MySQL (tested on 4.0.11). This may be obtained from http://www.mysql.com. New Installation: 1. Create root directory for courses. This directory must be readable/writable by the user under which the web server will be running. 2. (Optional) Create temp directory for use by Whiteboard. Otherwise, the system should be configured to use a system temp directory. Either way, this directory must be readable/writable by the web server. 3. Create database: `mysql [-h ] -u -p` enter your password `create database ;` `grant all on .* to identified by '';` `exit` 4. (Optional) If your course system requires a different semester format than , edit program/include/semesterinclude.php. Basic knowledge of PHP and Perl-style regular expressions is required. If you change this file to support a different semester format that would be useful to other users, please share your code in the forum for this purpose on the SourceForge project page (http://sourceforge.net/projects/whiteboard/). 5. (Optional) If your authentication system is not YP, edit program/include/authinclude.php. Basic knowledge of PHP is required. If you change this file to support a different method of authentication that would be useful to other users, please share your code in the forum for this purpose on the SourceForge project page (http://sourceforge.net/projects/whiteboard/). 6. (Strongly Recommended) Create a small image (18 pixels high, approximately 18-22 pixels wide) of your school's logo and copy it into the program/images directory. Otherwise, you can use program/images/apple.gif. 7. Copy entire contents of 'program' directory to somewhere under your HTTP root. 8. Edit setup.php. Be sure that all of the information is correct. No knowledge of PHP is required. The default style sheet is located at /include/style.css. The default logo is located at /images/whiteboard.png. The default school link icon (generic apple) is located at /images/apple.gif. 9. Copy setup.php to somewhere where it will be readable by the web server, but, for security reasons, preferably not under the HTTP root. 10. Edit the first line (define ("SETUPINCLUDE"...) of /include/include.php to contain the (file system) location of setup.php. 11. Load Whiteboard in your browser (). The system will perform some automatic initialization and then prompt you to click to add the first administrator, which you have already specified in setup.php. Clicking the link adds the specified administrator, but unless you are already logged in as that user it will not actually display the administrators page for security reasons. Follow the link to "Go to Whiteboard Home" to begin adding departments and courses. Upgrade Installation: 1. If you are upgrading from a version earlier than v1.0.1, edit setup.php. Add the following lines anywhere between the php tags (after 'define ("SHORTTEXTFIELDLENGTH", 20);' makes the most sense): /*width (in chars) of each line of announcements, document comments, and discussion board descriptions and messages--do not decrease this to a number smaller than the maximum number of characters per line in existing announcements */ define ("TEXTAREAWIDTH", 95); 2. If you are not using the default authinclude.php or semesterinclude.php, back up the current version. 3. Copy entire contents of 'program' directory over old installation. Or, if you have modified the code, perform a diff of the changed files with the originals for your version and make the appropriate changes. Files changed between v1.0.2 and v1.0.3: histograms.php include.php coursehome.php (also index.php in root directory--this is a copy of coursehome.php) Files changed between v1.0.1 and v1.0.2: grades.php students.php databaseinclude.php gradesinclude.php pageinclude.php Files changed between v1.0.0 and v1.0.1: configinclude.php gradesinclude.php 4. If you backed up your authinclude.php or semesterinclude.php, overwrite the appropriate files in the new installation. 5. Remove '.xvpics' from images directory. Suggestions: 1. Ensure that your version of the UNIX file command supports -i to return a MIME type. If not, one that does is available from ftp://ftp.astron.com/pub/file/. 2. If your PHP installation supports True-Type Fonts, download http://www.fontfiles.com/Fonts/G/grandezza10.zip (title font) and http://www.fontfiles.com/Fonts/O/oldrepublic20.zip (text font). Unzip them into a directory where PHP can read them, and set them up as the histogram fonts in setup.php instead of the built-in PHP ones. Documentation: User and administrator documentation may be found at /docs. index.html is a good place to start. Sample Submit Script: A sample submit script for testing assignment submissions is included. It may be found at program/docs/sample_submit_script.scr and is targeted toward rudimentary C program compilation. Clearing System: The system may be cleared by an administrator who is given permission to do so in setup.php using /restricted/clearsystem.php. Acknowledgements: Special thanks to Steve Elgersma, Brian Jones, James Roberts, John Ritter, Victor Shnayder, and Rebecca Gillespie. Also thanks to Leszek 'Leon' Krupinski and L-Forum (http://l-forum.sourceforge.net), which inspired the discussion board and visual theme. Author: Todd Templeton E-mail: ttempleton@users.sourceforge.net Getting Involved: You could be helping to plan and write the future of Whiteboard. If you want to get involved, please contact the author at the email address above. Comments and Bugs: Contact the author at the email address above. Change Log: Version 1.0.3 - fixed problem with accessing histograms for courses that are not in the curent semester - fixed session problem - fixed missing department list in "Submit and Return" from creating course - fixed "Submit and Return" from creating department - removed .xvpics from images directory Version 1.0.2 - (aggregate) numeric grades scaled from 0 to 100 instead of 0 to 1 - fixed problem with copying database tables (migrating courses) - fixed problem where quick course selector on sidebar always went to current semester Version 1.0.1 - fixed sorting students by numeric grade - allowed announcements, document comments, and discussion board descriptions and messages to have longer lines - fixed data descriptions that were valuetype=6 (changed to valuetype=5)