Forum archive 2000-2006

Richard Bayne - Editing Course Welcome Page

Richard Bayne - Editing Course Welcome Page

by Arnold Pizer -
Number of replies: 0
inactiveTopicEditing Course Welcome Page topic started 9/29/2006; 2:23:43 PM
last post 9/29/2006; 5:48:55 PM
userRichard Bayne - Editing Course Welcome Page  blueArrow
9/29/2006; 2:23:43 PM (reads: 122, responses: 4)
Is there a way to adjust the WW welcome page (course listing page) without learning more perl than I have? I tried to see what Davide had done at Union, but could not easily follow the code. My main goal is to put a link on the page pointing to an Introduction for Students. Thanks. If this is not easily done without a perl effort, I guess I could add another page in front. Bayne

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userDavide P. Cervone - Re: Editing Course Welcome Page  blueArrow
9/29/2006; 3:08:49 PM (reads: 143, responses: 0)
I didn't even know you could get at the code! I'd be curious how you did.

In any case, making the changes I did was non-trivial, and not for the faint of heart (or the perl inexperienced). I would not be too hard to make some parts of the home page be customizable using something like the snippets files that are used for hardcopy output, for example, but I haven't really thought about what the right breakdown would be. More extensive customization is also possible, but most people just make a separate home page that points to the course login pages and gives that URL to the students. You will get the default page if you follow the breadcrumbs at the top of the page, but that is only a small issue for most people.

Davide

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userRichard Bayne - Re: Editing Course Welcome Page  blueArrow
9/29/2006; 3:33:32 PM (reads: 136, responses: 0)
Davide, Thank you. I shall probably just use a separate home page.

Bayne

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userJohn Jones - Re: Editing Course Welcome Page  blueArrow
9/29/2006; 5:07:33 PM (reads: 130, responses: 0)
By the way, you can also remove the breadcrumbs from the template. We find that there is enough other navigation already on a webwork page. Students are typically only taking one webwork course at a time, so a top-level link is not really needed, and they can get to everything else from the side panel.

John

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userMichael Gage - Re: Editing Course Welcome Page  blueArrow
9/29/2006; 5:48:55 PM (reads: 138, responses: 0)
And finally if you just want to add some information to the toplevel page, the file

webwork2/htdocs/site_info.txt

is displayed in the upper left corner of the homepage if it is not empty. I use this for system messages alerting users that the webwork system will be unavailable, or explaining recent changes.

A modification that would make it easier to customize the home page has been suggested more than once but isn't yet a high priority (as far as I know).

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