Course Syllabus

Intro to Web Content Management Systems Site Development - Syllabus

Harvard Extension School

DGMD-25 Spring 2017

Last Updated: 1/19/17, to add grading scale

Course Description

In a rapidly changing world, the need for online publishers to keep up with the needs and expectations of their site visitors is paramount. Today, many web publishers use content management systems (CMS) to allow them to instantly and dynamically update web pages and properties as new content becomes available so that every visit to a site is engaging, informative, and meaningful. This course explores the use of the three most popular open source web-based content management systems—WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal—to create dynamic and flexible websites and landing pages. Participants explore the fundamentals of planning dynamic websites, CMS database management, developing CSS-controlled site templates, and creating database-driven websites through the planning and creation of their own topic-based sites. Formerly CSCI E-30.

Course Prerequisite

A solid understanding of the Macintosh and/or Windows operating system environments; basic understanding of any computer based painting or drawing program.

CSCI-E-12 or the equivalent. Experience with hand-coded HTML and CSS is also required. Please see the first class for a sample assignment you should be able to complete to enroll in this course.

Instructors

Jen Kramer, Co-Instructor, lecturer on Joomla and WordPress
Email: jkramer@fas.harvard.edu
Twitter: @jen4web
Facebook: www.facebook.com/webdesignjen

Rebecca Mazur, Co-Instructor, Drupal lecturer
Email: rebeccamamazur@gmail.com

Erin Schroeder, Teaching Assistant
Email: erinmarieboyle@gmail.com

Contacting the instructors

Please email Jen, Rebecca and/or Erin with any personal issues that are affecting your class experience or with any information you do not wish to share with the rest of the class. Example: death in the family, severe illness, grading issues, etc.

Please do NOT email Jen, Rebecca and/or Erin with questions about the week’s material. It is better to ask these questions in the forum for the class, where others can benefit from the answer as well. (See “How Class Works” below.)

Class Objectives

  • Introduce learners to the three most popular open source content management systems (CMS) in use on the web today, including WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla.
  • Understand the difference between a CMS website, a static website, and websites using other server-side technologies.
  • Understand the benefits of working with a server-side database and the power it brings to creating and managing websites.
  • Compare and contrast the three most popular open source CMS.
  • Create and deploy websites using CMS, including creating and editing content, adding functionality, and creating custom templates and themes.
  • Understand ongoing maintenance considerations with CMS websites.

Lecture Time

Offered wholly online. New lectures will be posted each Tuesday, sometime during the day. Frequently the lectures are posted a few days early.

How Class works

1. This class is wholly online, which means there is no synchronous portion of the class. You may do the work whenever you wish. All work and links to materials will be posted in Canvas, canvas.harvard.edu

That having been said, this is a technology class. Do not wait until the last minute to get your work done! In technology, things go wrong all the time, so anticipate this and aim to have your assignments complete a day early... just in case.

2. For reference, you may use Boston or New York as the city for calculating time and date. The time zone here is US Eastern time. Please refer to http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/ (Links to an external site.) for your local time and date for when assignments are due. All dates and times posted in class refer to Eastern time, and you should adjust your time and date accordingly.

3. We have students from around the world in class. We try to make lectures as clear as possible, but sometimes we are not clear to those who are outside the United States. Please ask questions if the lectures or assignments are not clear. This helps us to improve, and we want you to succeed in class!

4. A new class will be posted every Tuesday.

5. When the new class is posted, you will find an entry describing exactly what you should do and what you need to turn in. If you have questions on what you should be doing, what the assignment is, when things are due, ask!

6. There will be a discussion forum posted every week where you can ask questions about the week's assignment, interact with other classmates, and answer each other's questions. 

7. We anticipate that there will nearly be 100 students in this class. Please, do not email Jen and Erin with questions about the assignment, what you should be doing, something you didn't understand in the reading, etc. Post these questions in the forum so we can ALL answer them. We'd rather answer your question once than individually for each student.

We will occasionally ask you to post emailed questions in the forum where they can be answered, rather than answering them by email.

8. This having been said, please email if you have personal issues that will prevent you from completing assignments, pertain to your grade, or contain other personal information you don't wish to share with the class. 

Jen's email is jkramer@fas.harvard.edu

Erin's email is erinmarieboyle@gmail.com

Rebecca's email is rebeccamamazur@gmail.com

9. Be warned: each lecture builds on the last one. If you don't understand something, be sure to ask in the forum. DO NOT GET BEHIND.  Complete the weekly assignments and you should have no trouble keeping up. In fact, your graded project will take no time at all!

If you have any questions on expectations for this class, please ask!

Grading

94-100
A
93-90
A-
89-87
B+
86-84
B
83-80
B-
79-77
C+
76-74
C
73-70
C-
69-67
D+
66-64
D
63-60
D-
Below 60
Failing

 

Graded assignments

There will be three projects in this course, as described below in the course outline. Each project is worth 33.33% of your grade. This includes the last project, which is considered the “final” project.

Homework assignments

Each week, you will be assigned some “optional” homework assignments. There is no place to submit these assignments, nor will they be viewed or examined by the instructor or the teaching assistant. 

These small, interim assignments are actually pieces of the graded project that is due at the end of each unit. If you complete each optional assignment each week, the graded assignment builds itself and will take little additional time on your part.

Grading procedures

Projects are due on the dates specified in the course outline by 11:59 PM Eastern time that day. It is expected that you will turn the assignment in on time. If you keep up with the weekly assignments, you’ll complete the graded project a week in advance of the due date.

Grades will be posted online in Canvas.

Turning in assignments

Your assignment will be a fully functional website, built in each of the three CMSs covered in this course. You will post these in your web hosting environment (directions provided in the first class). You will then paste the URL for the home page of your assignment in a text file and upload this to the assignment box for this course.  Detailed instructions will be provided for your first assignment.

Late assignments

You may turn in either assignment 1 or assignment 2 in late. (Assignment 3 cannot be late as it is the end of the term.)

"Late" means 3 days late. All assignments are due on Fridays, so the "late" date would be the immediately following Monday at 11:59 PM.

When your assignment is late, we note it in Canvas. There is no penalty for your grade for this late assignment. However, you may only turn in one assignment late. If another assignment is late, it will receive a zero.

Regrading of assignments

If you are dissatisfied with a grade you receive on assignment 1 or 2, you may resubmit the assignment for review. This resubmission must occur within 3 days of receiving your grade.

You may have one regraded assignment per term. Generally, regrades occur because students do not follow directions about how to turn in the assignment. 

Regraded assignments are recorded in Canvas. There is no penalty for your regrade. However, you may only have one per term. 

Regrading is not available for the third (“final”) project due to grade submission timing.

Academic Honesty

Once again, the purpose of this course is to teach you the fundamentals of digital media design and development. This means that copying the files of other students and submitting them as your own work is not only a violation of school academic policies but a real shortchange to your ability to learn what you need to learn.

We fully expect that there will be no issues in this area. We ask that you help keep us out of situations where we might need to take action regarding plagiarism, cheating and other acts of poor academic integrity. 

You are responsible for understanding Harvard Extension School policies on academic integrity and how to use sources responsibly. Not knowing the rules, misunderstanding the rules, running out of time, submitting "the wrong draft", or being overwhelmed with multiple demands are not acceptable excuses. There are no excuses for failure to uphold academic integrity. To support your learning about academic citation rules, please visit the Harvard Extension School Tips to Avoid Plagiarism, where you'll find links to the Harvard Guide to Using Sources and two, free, online 15-minute tutorials to test your knowledge of academic citation policy. The tutorials are anonymous open-learning tools.

Accessibility

The Extension School is committed to providing an accessible academic community. The Disability Services Office offers a variety of accommodations and services to students with documented disabilities. Please visit www.extension.harvard.edu/resources-policies/resources/disability-services-accessibility for more information.

Textbooks and external videos

We will be working with Joomla 3.x, WordPress 4.x, and Drupal 8.x in this course.  Any supplementary materials should match these version numbers. For example, you may find that Joomla 3.0 and 3.6 have some differences – and the differences between Joomla 2.5 and Joomla 3 are even more pronounced.

There are no required textbooks for the class. It’s possible that you could complete this course simply by watching the lecture videos and looking up your own resources online. However, a book may help to fill in gaps and supplement the lecture videos.

After the registration period for the term is complete, all students will be given access to lynda.com via Harvard at no additional charge. You will have assigned videos to watch in the lynda.com library, as well as optional material to help understand topics or expand your learning. More information will be provided after the start of class.

Course Outline (subject to change)

Class #/date

Agenda

01-
01/24

 

 

Introducing Content Management Systems

This lesson will give learners an overview of some of the different tools and methods that today’s web publishers are using to create highly-tailored dynamic web content.

  • Review of Syllabus and other materials
  • Grading and attendance policies
  • Purchasing and configuring a domain name and web hosting
  • Exploring CMS terminology, including open source, PHP, MySQL, server-side, client-side, static HTML website, how CMS web pages are generated, and so forth.
  • Website strategy and planning, site mapping, content planning

02-01/31

Introduction to Joomla

This week marks the start of an exploration of Joomla!, the second most popular web CMS solution available today. We will explore the CAM model (Categories, Articles, Menus) approach to creating content for Joomla environments. Special attention will also be spent on the administration and management of users and media.

  • Installing Joomla
  • Exploring the Admin Interface
  • Content creation using the CAM model
  • Content customization: images, video, audio, tags, formats, etc.
  • Adding and displaying menus
  • Linking menus to articles and other features

03-02/07

Extending Joomla
This week we will explore the use of Joomla, Plug-ins, Modules, Components and other extensions. Special attention will be paid to the installation of extensions.

  • Finding and adding Joomla extensions
  • Must have extensions for any Joomla site
  • Adding and setting up 2 “big” extensions (choose blog, calendar, image gallery, Paypal-based shopping cart, or portfolio. Other extensions on approval)

04-02/14

Custom Templates
This week we will explore the addition of creation and uses of customized Joomla templates as well as take a look at modifying templates using CSS and HTML tricks.

  • Creating customized Joomla templates
  • Modifying Joomla CSS and HTML parameters
  • Tweaking the Joomla backend
  • Mobile considerations

05-02/21

 

User management and permissions

Explore how to manage users in your Joomla site, including managing who sees what based on login, as well as who can do what based on permissions assigned

06-02/28

Introduction to WordPress

With Joomla under our belts, we next explore WordPress, the most popular web CMS solution available today.

  • WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com
  • Installing WordPress
  • Exploring the admin interface
  • Content creation: Posts vs. pages
  • Content customization: images, video, audio, tags, formats, etc.

03/03

Assignment 1 (33.33% of grade)

Build a Joomla website. The site should contain at least 10 pages of content written by you. You should demonstrate mastery of all areas of Joomla covered in class, including:

  • Making use of the CAM to enter content for the site, including images and content, plus customizations and tweaks.
  • Creating at least one menu bar for the website.
  • Add extensions to the site as described in the assignment.
  • Create a custom template for the site.
  • Create a custom area for select users to view and potentially interact with.

07-03/07

Extending WordPress
As with Joomla, WordPress has the ability to extend, by adding functionality to the CMS via plug-ins and widgets. Learn about working with plug-ins and widgets, including identifying a good plug-in or widget, installing, and configuring them.

03/14

Spring Break, no lecture

08-03/21

WordPress Theming
This week we will explore the addition of creation and uses of customized WordPress themes as well as take a look at modifying themes using CSS and HTML tricks.

  • Creating customized WordPress themes
  • Modifying WordPress CSS and HTML parameters
  • Mobile considerations

09-03/28

Introduction to Drupal: Rebecca Mazur, instructor

Finally we look at Drupal, the 3rd most popular web CMS solution available today, and generally recognized as more complicated/powerful (depending on your perspective) than Joomla or WordPress.

  • Installing Drupal 8
  • Exploring the admin interface
  • Content creation: nodes, basic content, site information
  • Content customization: images, video, audio, tags, formats, etc.

03/31

Assignment 2 (33.33% of grade)

Build a WordPress website. The site should contain at least 10 pages of content written by you. The content may be the same as your Joomla site – indeed, this is a preferred approach to class. You should demonstrate mastery of all areas of WordPress covered in class, including:

  • Create posts and pages
  • Including media, images, etc.
  • Add plug-ins and widgets to the site as described in the assignment.
  • Create a custom theme for the site.

10-04/04

Extending Drupal Content: Rebecca Mazur, instructor

Learn about customizing your content entry with different content types for your Drupal site. Add new fields to existing content types; create new content types; and customize their display. Adjust the default image settings, or create your  own image styles. Apply the image styles to content types that use image fields.

11-04/11

Extending Drupal Functionality via Modules: Rebecca Mazur, instructor

As with Joomla and WordPress, Drupal has the ability to extend, by adding functionality to the CMS via modules. Learn about working with modules, including identifying good modules, installing, and configuring them. Enhance the display of content through the use of the module Display Suite.

12-04/18

Creating Lists of Content with Views: Rebecca Mazur, instructor 

One of Drupal’s most powerful modules allows you to create arbitrary lists of content. You can use the Views module to create a list of content, an image gallery, or a calendar.

13-04/25

Custom Theming: Rebecca Mazur, instructor

This week we will explore the addition of creation and uses of customized Drupal themes as well as take a look at modifying themes using CSS and HTML tricks.

  • Creating customized Drupal themes
  • Modifying Drupal CSS and HTML parameters
  • Mobile considerations

14-05/02

 

 

Advanced Drupal mini-lectures: Rebecca Mazur, instructor

Bite-sized topical lectures on various Drupal-related concepts.

05/12

 

Assignment 3/Final Project (33.33% of grade)

Build a Drupal website. The site should contain at least 10 pages of content written by you. The content may be the same as your Joomla/WordPress sites – indeed, this is a preferred approach to class. You should demonstrate mastery of all areas of Drupal covered in class, including:

  • Create nodes, basic content
  • Including media, images, etc.
  • Add modules to the site as described in the assignment.
  • Modify a starter theme for the site.
  • Create a custom view using an additional display module (e.g. a carousel or a calendar).

Course Summary:

Date Details Due