Using WebEnabled.com for Classroom Training

We encourage users to post events happening in the community to the community events group on https://www.drupal.org.
jdwalling's picture

Seattle Drupal User Group (SeaDUG) has organized beginner workshops for the past 3 years to prepare attendees for the annual PNW Drupal Summits, which don't offer beginner sessions. (British Columbia and Oregon Drupal groups provide their own local beginner workshops.)

The SeaDUG workshops are called "Seattle Drupal Clinic for Beginners".

The last Clinic was held September 24th and is documented here:
-- http://drupalkata.com/seattle-drupal-clinic/seattle-drupal-clinic-2011
-- http://drupalkata.com/seattle-drupal-clinic/seattle-drupal-clinic-2011-curriculum

We chose WebEnabled's free 30 day trial hosting instead of requiring students to build a local Drupal stack. We provided these instructions and resource links to do both:
-- http://drupalkata.com/seattle-drupal-clinic/sdc-2011-resources

We asked attendees in advance to setup hosted Drupal accounts or install Drupal locally, but most did not. WebEnabled setup problems affected about one half of the 33 attendees. While creating Drupal 7 installations, students experienced long queued delays and some saw their attempts fail repeatedly. We were in close communication with WebEnabled support before and during the Clinic.

In a follow up, WebEnabled offered to create a more streamlined workflow to give students an easier time setting up accounts for our next Clinic. WebEnabled is waiting for us to submit a wish list which I started here:
-- http://drupalkata.com/seattle-drupal-clinic/sdc-2011-webenabled

Our goal is to be able to submit a list of student names and email addresses a few days before the class and have the accounts ready for use before the event begins.

If you have comments or suggestions for the Clinic or our WebEnabled wish list, add them to this topic.

Comments

Local installs?

jhodgdon's picture

In the Spokane beginner workshop I led recently, we got everyone's laptop installed with either WAMP, MAMP, or XAMPP, rather than using WebEnabled.

Advantages:
- People who are developing Drupal sites need a test bed going forward (I guess they could use WebEnabled, but a local install is IMO better -- not subject to WiFi, you have full control, doesn't cost anything, etc.)
- WebEnabled is a bit complex to figure out how to FTP to, and their dashboard is also a bit confusing... You can get around the FTP issues by having WebEnabled set up sites with modules/themes ahead of time, but then the participants do not get the experience of finding, downloading, and installing modules/themes, which is something that the 2010 participants felt lost about after the Clinic that year.
- Using WebEnabled puts you at the mercy of the WiFi connection at the venue -- if it's weak, it will be a major problem. We had issues with this at both the 2009 and 2010 Seattle workshops. Local install means the WiFi dependence is minimal (just to download Drupal, the MAMP/WAMP/XAMPP installer, and modules/themes, which you can download ahead of time and save on a couple of jump drives just in case anyway).
- Using WebEnabled they will not go through the procedure of creating a database and running the standard Drupal installer, which again is somehing 2009/2010 participants felt lost about after the workshop. Local install means that they will have this experience, and they will be prepared to set up a new site on shared hosting or on their local machine.

Disadvantages:
- Setting up *AMP is a bit chaotic. It helps greatly to have several people on hand to help them get it installed.
- Acquia DAMP in particular has a non-standard set-up (database port etc.). MAMP also uses a non-standard HTTP port. WAMP uses 'www' as the doc root and the others use 'htdocs'... Basically, there are differences between the setups people will have, the URLs they will go to, what they'll need to enter on the Drupal install screen, etc. (But we managed to get them all figured out eventually.)
- Setting up *AMP does take time away from other things that could be covered in the workshop. In the Spokane workshop, I allotted 1.5 hours for everyone to install *AMP, set up a MySQL database, and run the Drupal installer, and that was about right.

Anyway, it's something to consider... I personally think the participants are better prepared to go forth and create new Drupal sites, having had the experiences that setting up a local install brought them, so I plan to do that again rather than going back to WebEnabled in future workshops I lead.