I’ve had quite a journey setting up this website. I knew at the beginning of the summer that I wanted to have a functional website by the time we returned to school for the fall term. I also needed a better system for tracking our students’ historical records that would allow me to pull the data on a whim.

Enter the SIS

The first thing I wanted to do was create a space for our children’s data. A space where I could easily query it out or print a report. From my previous dealings with school districts, I knew that I needed a student information system.

We looked at several before we settled on RosarioSIS. I am a huge proponent of Open Source Software, so that was my first requirement. Then I installed several open source options. In order to keep the records, I knew this was going to be used primarily by my wife and partner. She made the final decision. I wasn’t sold initially, but I came around when I found out it had a Moodle connector built in.

And then the LMS

In order to make things easier on the teaching front, since we have four children in different grade levels, we decided we needed a learning management system. In the past, we have used NeoLMS, but I wanted the flexibility of hosting our own LMS as well as the foundation of open source software.

When I found out about Rosario’s built-in plugin for Moodle, I knew which direction to go. This decision was easier than the SIS.

So what about WordPress?

I wanted to put together a good-looking front-facing website. Though I am versed in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Server-side scripting, I simply don’t have the time to put together a nicely coherent, fully functional website. Many of the internet’s best looking sites have wordpress under the hood, so I decided to go ahead and pull the trigger.

This is just the beginning of my journey and doesn’t cover most of what I’ve actually learned through this process!

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