Hello. I’m a school principal looking at software for our school. Gibbons seems to have the exact features we are looking for; however, none of the other software seems to require instalation on a server. Does Gibbon only work on a server? There is no way for this to “just work” out of the box online? Sorry if this is a silly question 
Hi rivertech, not a silly question at at. Gibbon is a web-based application, which enables users to access it from any device with an internet connection. It’s designed so that teachers, students, parents, and admin can all login and have different access and roles in the system. For this reason, it’s installed on a server rather than a single computer, because it needs to be web accessible.
It is technically possible to install it on a single computer, and for development and testing we often install it and test it out. You can do so with a local server setup, for example on a Mac you can download the software MAMP to setup a server on your computer (that is only available on that computer and not internet connected).
Hope this helps!