This repository contains what you need to run an open-source version of the Computer Science Circles website,

http://cscircles.cemc.uwaterloo.ca

on your own computer.

This repository is at https://github.com/cemc/cscircles-wp-content

For authoring information, see http://cscircles.cemc.uwaterloo.ca/authoring/

This code is released under the GPLv3 license.

This folder plays the role of the wp-content directory in your WordPress installation.

This plugin teaches programming by executing and grading arbitrary user code. However, this is not a good idea unless done securely. Currently, only one option works: you must install "safeexec" and "python3jail" on your server, which is harder than installing a wordpress plugin. We are working on developing other options like sending code to a Waterloo server and executing it there as long as it does not exceed our demand.

For now, your options are:

1. follow Installing "safeexec" and "python3jail" directions below
2. install without ability to execute user code

If you are starting from scratch, you can use this approach.

Installing Wordpress:

• get database permissions from a database admin
• unzip http://wordpress.org/latest.zip in your public_html
• copy wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php and edit
• visit WordPress in your browser and follow account setup
• for more info see: http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress

Replacing wp-content:

• in a shell, enter the wordpress directory
• delete wp-content or rename it to wp-content-backup
• git clone https://github.com/cemc/cscircles-wp-content.git wp-content which copies this git repo into a new wp-content directory

Activating new content, on WordPress admin dashboard:

• go to Plugins and enable "python in a box"

If you want the appearance to be the same as CS Circles:

• go to Appearance/Themes and activate "Pybox 2011 Child Theme"
• go to Settings/Reading, set Front Page Displays to a static page (currently we don't have theming designed for posts)

Then you are good to go as far as WordPress is concerned! To test it out, create a WordPress page and enter some shortcodes like

[pyWarn]This is a warning[/pyWarn]

This is an [pyHint hint='the popup text']embedded[/pyHint] hint.

[pyExample code='print("Hello, World!")']Sample text[/pyExample]

You should see these when you view the page, although the Run program button won't work.

Please visit

https://github.com/cemc/safeexec

and

https://github.com/cemc/python3jail

and follow the (unfortunately long) installation instructions therein.

After installation, go to the admin pages/dashboard and select the "CS Circles" menu item at the bottom. Enter the locations of the safeexec binary & jail directory.

Note: in its current form, installing safeexec requires super-user (admin) permissions, in order to keep user code on separate accounts, which is how we keep different submissions from interfering with each other.

Note 2: If you can't get this to work please let us know. Initial steps are to look at the web server logs, configuration, and phpinfo(). We ran in to 'basedir' problems once.

If you want people to be able to register themselves,

• go to Settings/Membership and select "Anyone can Register" Otherwise you will have to create each account.

Some minor functionality requires that you have named links instead of numbered ones. Go to Settings->Permalinks, change to "Post name".

• When you press "Save Changes", if you get the yellow box "You should update your .htaccess now." at the top of the page, follow the instructions at the bottom of the page. This .htaccess file should be in the "wordpress" directory.

Does your website work? Try going to the home page. If it's broken (404 / Not Found) maybe one of the following three things happened. (a) the mod_rewrite module needs to be activated? read rewrite_help.php in this folder if you're not sure how to check this and fix this. (b) the module is installed but .htaccess files are not allowed? edit the server .conf file and change "AllowOverride None" for your site to "AllowOverride All". Then restart the server process. (c) the .htaccess file cannot be read by the webserver user account? edit it to start with a garbage line like Blah. Now you should get a 500 / Internal Error instead if the file is being read. (Remove that garbage line after.)

If needed, you may switch back and forth by manually visiting http://your-site/cscircles/wp-admin

See http://cscircles.cemc.uwaterloo.ca/authoring/

You can look at samples of existing content by using the icons on the bottom-left of exercises, examples and lessons. Feel free to copy the entire source code for the pages (including the authorship info). You can make derivative works under the conditions of the license mentioned on the get-source page.

Power users need not copy all of wp-content. If you install the theme

wp-content/plugins/pybox

then you will get all of the shortcode functionality, although the look and feel won't look great with every theme.

Use the theme

wp-content/themes/pybox2011childTheme

to get our look and feel, including customizations to the admin bar. The theme will not work if the plugin is not installed and activated.

Lesson data files are stored in

wp-content/lesson_files

Specifically this the source location for @include directives in shortcodes, as well as images in the lessons we wrote.

The remaining files in

wp-content/plugins/{not pybox}

are the other plugins we use on the main site. Some of them will be necessary to display content we wrote, e.g. LaTeX shortcodes.

The directory

wp-content/languages

references WordPress admin translation files (we did not make them). Note that our own translation is done with the .{mo,po,pot} files in pybox and the Polylang plugin.