Gibbon was conceived and built as online, web
based software? Presumably there is some way to enable it to work offline, but
this is really not part of our vision. I can see why some schools might like
this, but we don’t have the resources to cover what would be a substantial
rewrite of substantial parts of the system.
- What are the current limitations for running Gibbon offline? - What needs to be done to make it work offline?
Good questions! With limited resources, this is something we have never really looked into, so I am not in a position to answer your questions. However, one of our community members, @iulianghetau, has an interest in this area, so perhaps he has some input to add?
Can you tell us more about your use case? Interested to hear where you are, and how you are considering applying Gibbon to your situation.
I’m interested in supporting schools in more remote areas of the developing world. The following scenarios are very common:
- No funds for internet connection - No availability of internet connection - Insufficient bandwidth - Unstable internet connection
It is therefore required to run Gibbon offline, e.g. by installing it on the local school server.
My starting comment was in regard to your initial statement, that Gibbon has been designed to run online and needed adjustments to run offline.
I was simply wondering why Gibbon can’t run offline. After all you give installation instructions for Gibbon to run on offline WAMP based systems, right? I’m simply a little confused and wanted to find out more.
To me “offline” means completely without a network connection, rather than in a local area network setting, which is what you are suggesting. Hence my comments. However, given your added information, Gibbon should run without alteration within a LAN environment, providing you have a suitable stack (WAMP as you mention, or XAMPP, LAMP, MAMP etc). What you are proposing, in terms of the types of schools you are supporting, sounds fantastic.
I don’t know much about MoWes. I made rather good experiences regarding portability with EasyPHP in the past (http://www.easyphp.org). However, I haven’t tested Gibbon with EasyPHP.