Our School Federation

Michael is the executive headteacher for a group of schools which come together under the federation banner: 'Our School Federation'. His requirements were for a database-driven system where four sites could have their own identities but work from a common database so users and articles could be increasingly integrated with each other as the federation of schools developed more cross-over.

Naturally, Drupal lends itself particularly well to this complicated multi-site request. It can handle the complex matrix of permissions needed and it allows multiple themes to be applied to a single site with relative ease. This is where the real power of Drupal showed itself over other content management systems. We were able to develop a suite of sites that fed from the same database but retained their own look, feel and permissions.

Another key feature Michael was looking for at the time of commissioning Three Things was the option to expand to more sites at a future date, as it was possible that other schools would join the federation. Again, Drupal was the instant choice here, with its almost infinite extendibility. In fact, since our original discussions a fourth school has joined the federation and the site is currently being developed 'behind the scenes' until they are ready to launch.

Michael wanted a similar structure for each site, but retained the option for each of the schools to add their own individual detail to their theme. So I developed the structure and an initial starting point for each school's theme based on their colours, graphics and location. We arrived at the first training session with a representative from each of the schools who proceeded to tweak and tailor (actually rip apart!) my original effort and make it their own. We arrived at a federation site and three individual school sites that each school really felt they owned. Some content from the schools sites populated the federation site automatically and there is the option to choose to include some of the content from the school sites in the main federation site; so the federation truly became a collection of the best of the individual school sites.

There are a lot of people involved in this project, so co-ordinating between everyone carefully and pro-actively was a necessary requirement, particularly leading up to launch. Three Things has a particular strength here and I was also able to proof-read content and check placement for the schools as they got used to adding text, pictures and videos up to the launch.

See the individual sites here:

• Our School Federation
• Blackawton Primary School
• East Allington Primary School
• Stoke Fleming Primary School
• Kingswear Primary School (in development)

Finally, in order to run a complex multi-site database setup the federation required a quality host. So Three Things agreed to host the sites on their really fast server and this ensured a high level of dependability and 24 hour support, as well as the raw power to handle the complex requirements of this federation of schools. They have ended up with a system that is highly configurable, fast, reliable and expandable; as well as really good looking!