hello there! (sorry if i'm saying something which you have already tried out) have you considered using Bitnami? http://bitnami.org/ Bitnami offers complete software stacks (including Wordpress based ones) which can be installed locally on your computer with a simple next > next > next type wizard we use this all the time with our students: - it installs in a snap on a local folder - you don't have to be administrator of your computer - it includes Apache+MySQL+PHP+Wordpress (or other CMS if you download another stack) - it's fully functional, it's like having a hosting on your machine each of our students installs one of these and works on his/her machine just as if it was a hosting online even better, they also are able to do more things, since they have complete control of their machine, like being able to schedule script execution and things like that when they're finished, they can choose to get their own hosting if they're satisfied with the result (and most of the time we buy and share a single hosting for the entire class where we install all the project works: with 20 students it's about 1 euro/month for a very good hosting). to bring the project works online it's just a matter of uploading a directory using FTP and exporting-->importing a database hope it helps all the best, Salvatore
On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Lois Scheidt <lscheidt@indiana.edu> wrote:
A followup note...which I sent to Alex privately. At this community college, and as I understand it possibly most community colleges, I can't add materials that would add additional costs to the student without approval of the central course committee. So expecting students to buy their own sites is out of the question.
Also I can't add server-side software without that committee's approval...and these committees take years to decide on such things. They are in their second year of discussions on replacing the nearly 10 year old HTML server emulator with something that will support both static and dynamic pages and their associated software.
As for desktop emulators...we've had terrible trouble with these tools on the current network design.
Yes it's a pain...but it is what it is. Which is why I was hoping against hope that this group might know of a resource I was unable to find in my searching.
Thanks
Lois
-- Salvatore Iaconesi m. ++39 3476054421 t. ++39 0697600324 salvatore.iaconesi@artisopensource.net xdxd.vs.xdxd@gmail.com salvatore@fakepress.net skype: xdxdVSxdxd --- Art is Open Source http://www.artisopensource.net --- FakePress http://www.fakepress.it via G. Ghislieri 14 00152 Rome Italy