Welcome to our new website! ScholarPress is a developing hub for educational WordPress plugins – bridging the gap between technology and pedagogy. At our launch we have two plugins that work independently, but can be combined together.
Courseware
Courseware enables you to manage a class with a WordPress blog, including a schedule, bibliography, assignments, and other course information.
WPBook
WPBook works with the Facebook Development platform to create a Facebook Application (addable by users within the site) using a Wordpress blog.
It’s possible to use these together, as Jeremy has done for his History 120 class. Check it out. Subscribe to our blog to stay up to date with future releases, and updates. We have some cool plans for the future!
I’ve installed the courseware plugin on my wife’s blog (WordPress 2.3 hosted by LunarPages with MySQL 4.1.21) and the “Upcoming Schedule” shows the following error:
WordPress database error: [You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'WHERE field="assignments_type"' at line 1]
SHOW COLUMNS FROM wp_assignments WHERE field=”assignments_type”
Hi Bill,
We’ll try to track down the problem. Do you have any schedule entries entered? Also, what version of PHP are you using?
I am getting this error:
WordPress database error: [Table 'uprminf_wrdp9.wp_schedule' doesn't exist]
SELECT * FROM wp_schedule WHERE schedule_date >= ‘2007:11:18′ ORDER BY schedule_date, schedule_timestart LIMIT 4
I am using wo 2.3.1
Hi Mario,
Try adding your schedule dates like this:
2007-11-18
using “-” instead of “:”
Since a few others have had this problem, we’re going to look into giving users the ability to add dates in different formats.
Hi Guys -
Hey… I predict you are going to have a great following of Instructors and Professors as you build this plugin suite to maturity.
Questions:
* What do you suggest if you teach several courses per term?
* Any plans to offer a Quiz/Exam plugin module?
Yours, Scott
Great questions, Scott.
Right now the plugin only works for one course, one blog. This is fairly limiting. Another instructor at GMU also wondered about this as well. Hopefully we can give plugin users the ability to manage multiple courses with one blog and one plugin with a future release.
Josh and I batted around that idea a long while back. We had plans of integrating CHNM’s Survey Builder as a quiz portion of the plugin. I think it still might be useful, but we’ll have to figure out where in the development timetable we want to devote time to it.
I am a novice! I installed the ScholarPress plugin but when creating my first schedule the following error displays in Course information:
WordPress database error:[Table 'rdonalds_wrdp1.wp_schedule' doesn't exist]
SELECT * FROM wp_schedule WHERE schedule_date >= ‘2007:11:30′ ORDER BY schedule_date, schedule_timestart LIMIT 4
Then after trying to create a schedule:it displays [Table 'rdonalds_wrdp1.wp_schedule' doesn't exist]
SELECT * FROM wp_schedule ORDER BY scheduleID DESC
What should I do now?
Hi Robin,
Try adding your schedule dates like this:
2007-11-30
using “-” instead of “:”
We’re looking into giving users the ability to add dates in different formats, but right now you have to use a dash to separate year, month, and date.
Does this work with the free wordpress.com blogs?
Hello, can you show me live demo of site using this plugin?
Thank you.
Can this be used on a WordPress mu installation and made available to all users?
If so then that would be FANTASTIC!
Hi,
We were wondering if this can be installed on Wordpress MU, which we are running at our university.
Also, are there any links to go to see see Courseware in action?
Thanks!
Anon: Sorry, this does not currently work with the blogs on wordpress.com
Edie: That’s a great idea. We’ll install a live demo and post when that’s available.
Michelle: This currently cannot be used with WordPress MU, though we have plans to develop the plugin to do so.
Hello Jeremy, Happy New Year. Just installed your plugin; any idea why I am getting this error when going to the /wpbook/ page? This is also what appears in the Facebook app. I am using WP-2.3.1.
Warning: require_once(simplexml44-0_4_4/class/IsterXmlSimpleXMLImpl.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /usr/www/users/renoa/dragonradio/wp-content/plugins/wpbook/php4client/facebookapi_php4_restlib.php on line 34
Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required ’simplexml44-0_4_4/class/IsterXmlSimpleXMLImpl.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /usr/www/users/renoa/dragonradio/wp-content/plugins/wpbook/php4client/facebookapi_php4_restlib.php on line 34
Many thanks,
Tony
Hi Tony,
People have been asking a lot of support-related questions on my original blog post that first announced WPBook - including a tip from someone that will explain what’s going on. http://www.davelester.org/2007/09/24/wpbook-%e2%80%93-creating-a-facebook-application-with-your-wordpress-blog/
The error you’re receiving is because you’re running PHP4, which doesn’t have SimpleXML preinstalled like PHP5 does. Leo Kimble posted this suggestion:
“I am having problems with my installation. I ended up having to install simplexml44-0_4_4 in the wpbook/php4client/ folder as this seemed to be the initial problem.”
So there you go. I’ve made some modifications to WPBook, but got distracted by the end of the semester and winter break. Hopefully there can be an overhaul of the code sometime later this month - for now this should work.
Dave
Hello. I read through the comments above and I’m not sure if my problem is exactly similar. The error message I get is:
WordPress database error: [Table 'zadriana_install_1199472904.wp_schedule' doesn't exist]
INSERT INTO wp_schedule SET schedule_title = ‘First Day of Class’, schedule_date = ‘2008-01-07′, schedule_timestart = ‘09:00:00′, schedule_timestop = ‘09:50:00′, schedule_description = ‘Syllabus & introductions’
WordPress database error: [Table 'zadriana_install_1199472904.wp_schedule' doesn't exist]
SELECT scheduleID FROM wp_schedule WHERE schedule_title = ‘First Day of Class’ and schedule_date = ‘2008-01-07′ and schedule_description = ‘Syllabus & introductions’
I’ve used dashes instead of colons to enter the date and that does not seem to be resolving the problem. Any advice on how to proceed?
My apologies, Adri. Off-hand, I’m not sure what the problem is, but I’ll look into it. I was able to add a schedule entry with the same data that you used on my test installation. I’ll keep looking into it, and will be sure to get Dave’s help when he’s back from vacation.
We are working to make date and time entry much much easier, and should have that done with the next release. This might fix the problem. We’ll keep you posted.
Hey Adri, it appears that the schedule table wasn’t created, ‘zadriana_install_1199472904.wp_schedule’
If possible, check to see that it exists - something must have gone wrong when you installed courseware.
I have looked through and it doesn’t exist anywhere. Can I create the file?
I’m looking forward to getting wpbook working with Facebook, but I’m getting a “Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error” whenever I try to activate wpbook. I’ve never had this problem with any other Wordpress plugin (including ScholarPress Courseware, which installed successfully). I’m running Wordpress 2.3.2 and php 5.2.5. Any ideas about what’s causing the error?
Hi Mark, what plugins (other than courseware) do you currently have activated? I wonder if it’s b/c one of the class names in WPBook is replicated in another plugin - I’ll need to append a prefix to those in WPBook.
Otherwise, you have the right version of PHP and an up to date version of WP.
Hi David, I deactivated all my plugins, and then WPBook installed just fine. Now, I’ve got another problem. Whenever I try to go to my wpbook page (http://www.samplereality.com/gmu/spring2008/353-002/wpbook/
two things happen:
(1) the page is blank and it doesn’t bounce me back to Facebook; and
(2) Wordpress sometimes, but not always, generates a wpbook page, which then shows up under my Manage Pages control panel in WordPress. The sole content of this page is the word “wpbook.”
Curiouser and curiouser…
Hi Mark,
You’re right, the plugin is broken as of now - whoops. Beyond the naming issue of functions, which is a quick and easy fix, one of the recent versions of WordPress updated exactly how page layouts were stored in the database, which is causing the wpbook page to load as a normal page, and not using the blog template that’s included within the plugin (which will be embedded into Facebook).
Long story short, I’m on top of this.
Dave
any working samples of wpbook?
Hello there,
thank you for the development of this software and your hard work.
I have just downloaded this plug in, but unlike ZOTERO it does not plug itself in. It remains a dowload with a strange icon I have never seen and when I double click on it the folder containing the files open but then there is no exe. file, which is the only thing I know to install software.
Could you please help? I am using firefox and Windows XP.
Thanks a lot
Nic
Hi Nicolas,
Zotero is an add-on for the Firefox browser.
The plugins we develop at ScholarPress are for WordPress, an open source blogging system that you install on a server. The plugins we develop aren’t browser add-ons.
To use our plugins, you’ll first need to download and install WordPress on your server, then FTP our plugins into your WordPress install’s wp-content/plugins directory and activate from the admin panel.
You can learn more about setting up and using WordPress in their Codex, especially the section “Getting Started with WordPress”
Hope this helps!