dokeos

Customize your Dokeos portal homepage : add an image + pages + news that will be visible upfront, before login.

This will implement a lightweight Content Management System (CMS) and help you articulate deep training processes with surface information (courses catalogue, commercial website, company intranet...). 

 Login as admin > go to Administration tab > Portal > Edit portal homepage and :

Add a nice image in the  Central Area. Select or build an image that helps understand what the portal is about. Resize it (using tools like GIMP or Photoshop) to values like 720x 250 pixels. In our example, the image addresses a metro company emmployees: it recycles a metro lines image to present the training programme as a pathway towards skills improvement. 

In the right hand menu, add web pages through the "Add a page (CMS)" tool. In two steps : (A) Add a page (remove the "http://" that appears there), (B) edit (yellow pencil) the page create and type your text (basic layout = text + title + one trainer picture aligned right).Edit the homepage notice there too (important messages to your visitors)

Go back to Administration tab - top middle- and enter Portal > Portal news to add news. To have news visible only before login, check Guest target group only. 

Multilingual : if you manage a multilingual portal take into account that the language selector on top of the Portal Homepage Edition page decides for which language your changes will be active. In other words, in a bilingual portal you will have to edit 2 homepages, 2 sets of links and 2 sets of news. 

Below : portal homepage editing

Below : editing a page added in the right hand menu

Steps further

Three proposals to go further in homepage customization.

1. Select another Stylesheet for the header + footer + overall coloring scheme of Dokeos. Admin > Portal > Configuration settings > Style sheets. Or add your own stylesheet like in this example http://msf.dokeos.com. (this will require some CSS programming skills and a basic knowledge of Dokeos architecture, see the Dokeos wiki on CSS Coding Conventions).
2. Link your homepage nice image (or any kind of homepage central content) to one of the pages created in the right hand menu. You should first create the content page, then logout, then copy its URL, then login back, then edit portal homepage central area and add link on top of the nice image, using the online editor.
3. A pedagogically relevant approach in portal customization is to offer an image-based greyed menu before login and activate (and visually enlighten) this menu once logged in, like in this example : http://www.medtronicdiabeteseuniversity.com. This requires that you create 2 images, the second being the black and white copy of the first one + using the imagemap tool that is now included in Dokeos online editor. Advantage : you master your training scenario.