SETUP.txt

This web site was developed by Alex Reece, Manish Burman, Cary Yang,
and Kayvon Fatahalian.

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SETTING UP A NEW INSTANCE OF THE COURSE WEBSITE
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1. Set up the host machine:
   -- Install LAMP tools: apache, php, mysql
   -- Install imagemagick: apt-get install imagemagick

2. Apache/modphp configuration:   
   -- You may wish to increase the default modphp upload file size.
      The default is 2 MB and this is likely far too small for many
      lecture slide decks.  
       --> Change value of the variables 'upload_max_filesize' and
           'post_max_size' in /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

3. Edit scripts/course_config.template.py to confgure the site for
your needs, then save the modified file as: scripts/course_config.py.
The configuration file requires you to specify database account
information and local file system paths needed by site logic.  See
course_config.template.py file for more detailed information.
  
4. From the scripts directory, run setup_new_course.py:

      python setup_new_course.py

   This will create the course database as well as a number of
   required content directories.  You will be prompted for your mysql
   database password. (Although the db password is in
   course_config.py, I didn't want to synthesize a command line with
   the password in plaintext -- there's probably a better way to do this.)

5. From the scripts directory, run the deploy script to copy the
contents of your working tree into your web tree:
    
      python deploy.py -c ..

6. The site is now up and running.  Visit it in a browser and create a
account with the desired USERNAME.

7. The account creation process via the website UI only creates
student users.  To modify the USERNAME account to have instructor (or
TA) priviledges, use the change_user_type.py script:

       python change_user_type.py USERNAME instructor

   Note that valid user types are [instructor, ta, student], so for TA
   accounts (once your TAs sign up) should be upgraded using:

       python change_user_type.py TA_ACCOUNT_USERNAME ta

8. You'll want to customize the look of the site for your needs.  This
is going to require directly modifying php files in the
COURSE_CODE_DIR/application/views and
COURSE_CODE_DIR/application/views/template folders:

     -- If you are running a course that is not 15418, or not CMU, I
        suggest grepping for '418', '618', 'andrew', 'parallel
        computer architecture and programming', 'CMU', 'Carnegie
        Mellon', and prior years like '2014', '2015'

     -- You'll want to change presentation layer pages in:
        COURSE_CODE_DIR/application/views/*.php

     -- The only view that is slightly special is the home page,
        which, for convenience builds a list of lectures in an array
        and then renderer the array (see comments in home.php):
        COURSE_CODE_DIR/application/views/home.php
	
     -- You may want to update the account creation welcome message in
        COURSE_CODE_DIR/application/views/welcome.php

9. As the instructor, you may wish to look at the functionality
available in the "Admin Console" (see the top bar of the page).  This
is where you will upload lectures, create articles, etc.