Structure of your online course
The course is located in a directory under the lecturer's web home called here MyCourse
This directory contains the folders:
| Folder | contains | originator |
| MyCourse | Web home of the course |  |
| MyCourse/admin | Administration files for the course | |
| MyCourse/contents | The content-pages for the course; all material should be placed in that folder and possible subfolders (like e.g. imglocal for local images etc.) | lecturer |
| MyCourse/css | css-files (font styles) | |
| MyCourse/doc | Local copy of documentation for the lecturer | |
| MyCourse/help_en | Subfolder for the user help files, accessed via the help-button in the menu bar; the folder name is defined in the general variables file inc/general_vars.inc.php and folders for other languages may be built and used instead. | |
| MyCourse/img | Some image files | |
| MyCourse/inc | Necessary include files | and lecturer |
| MyCourse/install | Installation folder; needed for initial setup, later use only for the CourseAdmin to change images or other setup features (can be closed to the general webserver access after installation). | |
| MyCourse/modules | Subfolder modules of the course, that may or may not be activated. | |
| MyCourse/modules/cafe | Scripts for the (for all course users public) chatroom "Cafe". | |
| MyCourse/modules/filedepot | Scripts for the userspace "Filedepot". | |
| MyCourse/modules/filedepot/userspace | There the upload/download- and working space for the users "Filedepot" is located. Beware: The subfolders are property of the owner of the web server process (e.g. wwwuser/nogroup). | |
| MyCourse/modules/forum | Scripts for the discussion forum. | |
| MyCourse/modules/makeimages | Scripts for the installation step to create the course title image, menubuttons and other images. | |
| MyCourse/modules/notes | Scripts that provide the "notes feature", i.e. that the user may add notes to the contents items. | |
| MyCourse/modules/postoffice | Scripts for sending mail to course users and groups. | |
| MyCourse/modules/search | Subfolder containing the configuration file, templates and data base for the search feature. | |
| MyCourse/scripts | Folder for the php-scripts running the course | |
The layout of the course's WWW-surface is defined by parameters in
MyCourse/inc/general_vars.inc.phpThere you may change headers (color, text) and menu, as well as some of the graphic items used.
The course material is build from html-pages provided by the lecturer in the folder MyCourse/contents. This is really the only folder, where you have to work after your course has been setup completely.
Note regarding links
Internal links to html-pages via INLINK will be interpreted as URLs relative to that directory MyCourse/contents.
example:
[INLINK=CP-1-2-300.html TEXT=Introduction]
refers to a file CP-1-2-300.html located in the folder MyCourse/contents.
Other explicit links not using INLINK (like the EXLINK-tag, the "A HREF"-command or the "IMG"-tag referring to images or movies) should be given as absolute URLs like
Coursehome/contents/imglocal/sample.gif
(e.g. /~xyz/MyCourse/contents/imglocal/sample.gif)
or in the form
../contents/imglocal/sample.gif
i.e. with a preceding "../contents/" and then the path relative to the folder contents.
example:
<IMG SRC="../contents/imglocal/mypic.gif">
or
<IMG SRC="/~xyz/MyCourse/contents/imglocal/mypic.gif">
Text style
Text attributes of the various environment are controlled by the files in MyCourse/css. You may change that file, but be aware that the administration styles better be kept untouched.
The html-Files may be developed individually as standard html-code. When displayed in the course window only the information between the tags <body> and </body> is used.
For the filenames please use only characters and the symbols minus (-), underline (_) and dot (.), otherwise you may run into problems at execution time.
Dedicated files
There are a few files, which should be kept, but can be adjusted (names and content) to the lecturer's needs. These files are:
contents/motd.html
contents/newlogin.html
modules/filedepot/template-index-in-userfolder.html
and you find more information in How to prepare the online course units.
Language
The language in the course administrators area is English. However, all language specific strings and text files for the course users may be customized.
- The help files are in the folder help_xx (xx denotes the language, e.g. _en for English). The name of the folder is specifies in the file MyCourse/inc/general_vars.inc.php.
- The text strings in buttons and messages are defined in inc/locale_xx.inc.php (xx denotes the language, e.g. en for English). You may set up your own version. The name of the folder is specifies in the file MyCourse/inc/general_vars.inc.php. If the text in the button-images are to be changed, you have to invoke the installations script install/install.html again, but may restrict yourself to the generation of images part.
- The files motd.html, newlogin.html, template-index-in-userfolder.html in the folder contents may also be adapted to your needs.
- For the htDig search feature: the configuration and template files (with the string "_en") in the folder search ("_xx" denotes the language, e.g. _en for English). There is a README file in that folder, explaining the necessary changes.