Preparation for heavier load, customisation and similar

[nfreear]

Hi @timcoughlan,

As you say, we can discuss on Wednesday. You're right to raise these points ... I've noted them, with some initial thoughts:

-The activity will be optional and ... But we should bear in mind that 3000+ students are registered on Access for each presentation across the three modules. Would the current set up be able to cope with this kind of traffic?

I'm not sure what the current set up can handle (we should probably load test). However, there are various things we can look at:

1. — Code optimization: there are a lot of document.getElementById('id'), which could be shortened to UTIL.qs('#id'), etc. (Note, I've started this — maybe should commit something on a branch ...)

2. — Minify the code — this plus item 1 should reduce the initial load time / ease parallel requests;

3. — The code is eminently portable, so as part of planning for the access-module use, we should discuss different hosting options;

-We may want to set up a different version that allows us to integrate guidance or make tweaks specifically for this activity. For example making the sharing of the journey simple for the students. Not sure but seems like this could make sense.

I suggest that to ease maintenance we shouldn't fork the code, but instead have configuration options (and document them ;)!) As examples:

1. The link to help.html could become configurable, so that different institutions can tweak their user-facing help;

2. If the project does take off, I'd expect us to internationalize/ localize it to different languages. This also gives the option to have institution-specific text strings. (E.g. en-GB-OU for Open Uni-specific text.) (Great if we could get this sort of thing funded/ collaborate with others on!)

-We need to clarify the easiest way to share / view journeys in a forum. Could be a link or a file or embedded somehow.

Yep. Agreed.

Ta,

Nick