Looking for a free Wordpress site that allows template programming
I teach an Advanced Web Site Design course for undergraduates at the community college level. I would like to give my students some experience designing for dynamic websites but I do not have that option on the college server system. To that end I am asking if anyone on the list knows of a free online Wordpress host that allows users to design their own templates? The ones I have found only allow access to a limited family of predesigned templates and do not allow editing the templates. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Lois -- Lois Ann Scheidt Doctoral Candidate - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington IN USA Webpage: http://www.loisscheidt.com CV: http://www.loisscheidt.com/cv.html Blog: http://www.professional-lurker.com
I don't know of one. From my perspective, for a course with a name like "advanced web site design" it isn't unreasonable to ask students to get their own accounts on something like BlueHost. Because of the expense of this, I got together with friends and set up a reseller to get students an account for $36 a year (others can match this, but then up it considerably after the first year). Contact me if you are interested, this already starts to sound somewhat spammy ;). It ends up costing the same or less than a text book. The other host I've had students use is called NearlyFreeSpeech It lives up to the name. The only difficulty is that it is set up in a somewhat idiosyncratic way, and so students end up learning to use that particular host--knowledge that doesn't translate so well to later projects... Alex On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Lois Scheidt <lscheidt@indiana.edu> wrote:
I teach an Advanced Web Site Design course for undergraduates at the community college level. I would like to give my students some experience designing for dynamic websites but I do not have that option on the college server system.
To that end I am asking if anyone on the list knows of a free online Wordpress host that allows users to design their own templates? The ones I have found only allow access to a limited family of predesigned templates and do not allow editing the templates.
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Lois
-- Lois Ann Scheidt Doctoral Candidate - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington IN USA Webpage: http://www.loisscheidt.com CV: http://www.loisscheidt.com/cv.html Blog: http://www.professional-lurker.com _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [x] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net //
I agree with Alex here -- most hosts of multisite WP installs won't allow users to upload PHP files. One bit of middle ground you might explore is a WP platform that has the Custom UserCSS plugin and/or Atahualpa theme installed. Custom UserCSS ( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-user-css/ ) allows users to override theme stylesheets with their own CSS, and Atahualpa ( http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/atahualpa ) allows a great deal of flexibility in layout and design from the dashboard. If you want to go further than that and have students edit PHP files and/or design themes from scratch, it's probably best to have students sign up for their own hosting accounts, as Alex suggests. Doing so may have many unintended benefits, such as teaching students to assume control over their own web-based digital identities; see UMW's "A Domain of One's Own" initiative for more on that: http://www.wired.com/cloudline/2012/07/a-domain-of-ones-own/ Best, Matt -- Matthew K. Gold, Ph.D. http://mkgold.net | @mkgold On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 1:37 AM, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com>wrote:
I don't know of one. From my perspective, for a course with a name like "advanced web site design" it isn't unreasonable to ask students to get their own accounts on something like BlueHost. Because of the expense of this, I got together with friends and set up a reseller to get students an account for $36 a year (others can match this, but then up it considerably after the first year). Contact me if you are interested, this already starts to sound somewhat spammy ;). It ends up costing the same or less than a text book.
The other host I've had students use is called NearlyFreeSpeech It lives up to the name. The only difficulty is that it is set up in a somewhat idiosyncratic way, and so students end up learning to use that particular host--knowledge that doesn't translate so well to later projects...
Alex
On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Lois Scheidt <lscheidt@indiana.edu> wrote:
I teach an Advanced Web Site Design course for undergraduates at the community college level. I would like to give my students some experience designing for dynamic websites but I do not have that option on the college server system.
To that end I am asking if anyone on the list knows of a free online Wordpress host that allows users to design their own templates? The ones I have found only allow access to a limited family of predesigned templates and do not allow editing the templates.
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Lois
-- Lois Ann Scheidt Doctoral Candidate - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington IN USA Webpage: http://www.loisscheidt.com CV: http://www.loisscheidt.com/cv.html Blog: http://www.professional-lurker.com _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [x] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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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 On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 8:21 AM, matt g <matt.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with Alex here -- most hosts of multisite WP installs won't allow users to upload PHP files. One bit of middle ground you might explore is a WP platform that has the Custom UserCSS plugin and/or Atahualpa theme installed. Custom UserCSS ( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-user-css/ ) allows users to override theme stylesheets with their own CSS, and Atahualpa ( http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/atahualpa ) allows a great deal of flexibility in layout and design from the dashboard.
If you want to go further than that and have students edit PHP files and/or design themes from scratch, it's probably best to have students sign up for their own hosting accounts, as Alex suggests. Doing so may have many unintended benefits, such as teaching students to assume control over their own web-based digital identities; see UMW's "A Domain of One's Own" initiative for more on that: http://www.wired.com/cloudline/2012/07/a-domain-of-ones-own/
Best,
Matt -- Matthew K. Gold, Ph.D. http://mkgold.net | @mkgold
On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 1:37 AM, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com>wrote:
I don't know of one. From my perspective, for a course with a name like "advanced web site design" it isn't unreasonable to ask students to get their own accounts on something like BlueHost. Because of the expense of this, I got together with friends and set up a reseller to get students an account for $36 a year (others can match this, but then up it considerably after the first year). Contact me if you are interested, this already starts to sound somewhat spammy ;). It ends up costing the same or less than a text book.
The other host I've had students use is called NearlyFreeSpeech It lives up to the name. The only difficulty is that it is set up in a somewhat idiosyncratic way, and so students end up learning to use that particular host--knowledge that doesn't translate so well to later projects...
Alex
On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Lois Scheidt <lscheidt@indiana.edu> wrote:
I teach an Advanced Web Site Design course for undergraduates at the community college level. I would like to give my students some experience designing for dynamic websites but I do not have that option on the college server system.
To that end I am asking if anyone on the list knows of a free online Wordpress host that allows users to design their own templates? The ones I have found only allow access to a limited family of predesigned templates and do not allow editing the templates.
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Lois
-- Lois Ann Scheidt Doctoral Candidate - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington IN USA Webpage: http://www.loisscheidt.com CV: http://www.loisscheidt.com/cv.html Blog: http://www.professional-lurker.com _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [x] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- Lois Ann Scheidt Doctoral Candidate - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington IN USA Webpage: http://www.loisscheidt.com CV: http://www.loisscheidt.com/cv.html Blog: http://www.professional-lurker.com
Hi Lois, In that case, I advise you teach students to install MAMP or XAMPP. They can then run apache/mysql/php and install WordPress in local dev environments and develop themes for them through the comfort of their own laptops. All of this software is open-source, so the only associated cost is the computer. Best, Matt On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 9:38 AM, 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
On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 8:21 AM, matt g <matt.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with Alex here -- most hosts of multisite WP installs won't allow users to upload PHP files. One bit of middle ground you might explore is a WP platform that has the Custom UserCSS plugin and/or Atahualpa theme installed. Custom UserCSS ( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-user-css/ ) allows users to override theme stylesheets with their own CSS, and Atahualpa ( http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/atahualpa ) allows a great deal of flexibility in layout and design from the dashboard.
If you want to go further than that and have students edit PHP files and/or design themes from scratch, it's probably best to have students sign up for their own hosting accounts, as Alex suggests. Doing so may have many unintended benefits, such as teaching students to assume control over their own web-based digital identities; see UMW's "A Domain of One's Own" initiative for more on that: http://www.wired.com/cloudline/2012/07/a-domain-of-ones-own/
Best,
Matt -- Matthew K. Gold, Ph.D. http://mkgold.net | @mkgold
On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 1:37 AM, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com wrote:
I don't know of one. From my perspective, for a course with a name like "advanced web site design" it isn't unreasonable to ask students to get their own accounts on something like BlueHost. Because of the expense of this, I got together with friends and set up a reseller to get students an account for $36 a year (others can match this, but then up it considerably after the first year). Contact me if you are interested, this already starts to sound somewhat spammy ;). It ends up costing the same or less than a text book.
The other host I've had students use is called NearlyFreeSpeech It lives up to the name. The only difficulty is that it is set up in a somewhat idiosyncratic way, and so students end up learning to use that particular host--knowledge that doesn't translate so well to later projects...
Alex
On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Lois Scheidt <lscheidt@indiana.edu> wrote:
I teach an Advanced Web Site Design course for undergraduates at the community college level. I would like to give my students some experience designing for dynamic websites but I do not have that option on the college server system.
To that end I am asking if anyone on the list knows of a free online Wordpress host that allows users to design their own templates? The ones I have found only allow access to a limited family of predesigned templates and do not allow editing the templates.
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Lois
-- Lois Ann Scheidt Doctoral Candidate - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington IN USA Webpage: http://www.loisscheidt.com CV: http://www.loisscheidt.com/cv.html Blog: http://www.professional-lurker.com _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [x] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- Lois Ann Scheidt Doctoral Candidate - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington IN USA Webpage: http://www.loisscheidt.com CV: http://www.loisscheidt.com/cv.html Blog: http://www.professional-lurker.com
This may be a long shot and not practicable at your college, but what about combining the course with an actual web design project? I can imagine that there are lots of small businesses, community groups or third-sector organisations that would appreciate someone building a website for them. If they pay or raise money for hosting, your students would have the resources they need to learn and experiment. In addition to the didactic benefit of working for a "real" project, your class's "clients" would get a free website design, and your college might even tick off a box on their community outreach agenda. Best, Malte 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
On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 8:21 AM, matt g <matt.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with Alex here -- most hosts of multisite WP installs won't allow users to upload PHP files. One bit of middle ground you might explore is a WP platform that has the Custom UserCSS plugin and/or Atahualpa theme installed. Custom UserCSS ( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-user-css/ ) allows users to override theme stylesheets with their own CSS, and Atahualpa ( http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/atahualpa ) allows a great deal of flexibility in layout and design from the dashboard.
If you want to go further than that and have students edit PHP files and/or design themes from scratch, it's probably best to have students sign up for their own hosting accounts, as Alex suggests. Doing so may have many unintended benefits, such as teaching students to assume control over their own web-based digital identities; see UMW's "A Domain of One's Own" initiative for more on that: http://www.wired.com/cloudline/2012/07/a-domain-of-ones-own/
Best,
Matt -- Matthew K. Gold, Ph.D. http://mkgold.net | @mkgold
On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 1:37 AM, Alexander Halavais <halavais@gmail.com wrote:
I don't know of one. From my perspective, for a course with a name like "advanced web site design" it isn't unreasonable to ask students to get their own accounts on something like BlueHost. Because of the expense of this, I got together with friends and set up a reseller to get students an account for $36 a year (others can match this, but then up it considerably after the first year). Contact me if you are interested, this already starts to sound somewhat spammy ;). It ends up costing the same or less than a text book.
The other host I've had students use is called NearlyFreeSpeech It lives up to the name. The only difficulty is that it is set up in a somewhat idiosyncratic way, and so students end up learning to use that particular host--knowledge that doesn't translate so well to later projects...
Alex
On Sunday, August 12, 2012, Lois Scheidt <lscheidt@indiana.edu> wrote:
I teach an Advanced Web Site Design course for undergraduates at the community college level. I would like to give my students some experience designing for dynamic websites but I do not have that option on the college server system.
To that end I am asking if anyone on the list knows of a free online Wordpress host that allows users to design their own templates? The ones I have found only allow access to a limited family of predesigned templates and do not allow editing the templates.
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Lois
-- Lois Ann Scheidt Doctoral Candidate - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington IN USA Webpage: http://www.loisscheidt.com CV: http://www.loisscheidt.com/cv.html Blog: http://www.professional-lurker.com _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- -- // // This email is // [x] assumed public and may be blogged / forwarded. // [ ] assumed to be private, please ask before redistributing. // // Alexander C. Halavais, ciberflâneur // http://alex.halavais.net // _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
_______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- Lois Ann Scheidt Doctoral Candidate - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington IN USA Webpage: http://www.loisscheidt.com CV: http://www.loisscheidt.com/cv.html Blog: http://www.professional-lurker.com _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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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
participants (5)
-
Alexander Halavais -
Lois Scheidt -
Malte Ziewitz -
matt g -
xDxD.vs.xDxD