Website update 13/6/22
First things first – well done to all the students who took their R081 exam today. We really hope that you did well and get the mark you deserve from it.
In other news, today we’ve made a significant and long time coming update to the website. You’ll notice that it looks slightly different and this is because we have changed the theme of the website so that we can incorporate a different learning management system (LMS) into the site.
Why did we do this?
It does seem slightly strange given we only upgraded this in January but unfortunately the one we chose back then has caused nothing but problems, so it was decided to ditch this in favour of another that required a theme change and an export of the courses back across to the new LMS.
The change in theme meant a lot of changes to a lot of settings and also required a fair amount of custom CSS to get it looking how I wanted it. We’re still working our way through making sure that everything looks and acts the way that it is supposed to, but if you do spot anything that isn’t how it should be please get in touch!
While making this change, we’ve also taken the time to upgrade some of the courses so that they now all include quizzes, more media and we are also updating the courses to include audio read outs of the text. We aim to complete the update of the existing R081 courses tomorrow.
As well as updating the front end of the website we’ve also installed a new plugin in the back end to assist with our SEO which given time, should improve our search rankings for the site and make it easier for teachers and students to find our resources.
More updates planned this week
As well as the updates today, we’ve got more planned over this week as we approach a quieter time on the site now that most Y11 students have finished their course.
We’ve got:
- Site tests to complete from the theme change over
- Audio read outs to complete for all courses
- Tests to complete on all courses
- Certificates to design for the new LMS so that users can get a certificate when they complete a course
- Hook up the courses to our iMedia Points so that students earn points when completing courses
- Make a start on improving SEO across the site
- Start on producing content for the new J834 specification.
- Produce quizzes for the new J834 specification
Yep – we’ve got a lot to do over the next week! We’ve also got to try and start posting regularly on our social media channels and get back into the routine. As a person who tries to avoid social media in my daily life (I know how to use it, I just choose not to interact with it) I find it difficult!
As you can see, the site is under constant development and if you find it useful, please consider making a donation to our Kofi page to help us with our server and development costs. We’re not funded by anyone – all of this is created in free time but it does incur a recurring monthly server cost, plus whatever investment is put into the tools necessary to make the site even better. Any monetary contribution is greatly received!
Thanks very much for reading and supporting us and we hope you enjoy the improved site.
