Configurations

Hosted

The application operates from this website and you purchase a subscription to use the application for a period of 12 months.

We perform nightly backups of the data. The system also includes an option for a nightly backup of your data to be emailed to an email account of your choice.

In-house

The in-house option is only available within countries where copyright ownership is enforced

The in-house version is only available after payment of the purchase price. If you wish to test the system first you should do so using the free trial on the hosted system

You may choose to purchase a license for the application and then operate the software from within your school network. You will pay a slightly higher purchase price for this option, however the license is perpetual (it doesn't expire).

Maintenance and Support for the first 12 months is included in the purchase price. For continued maintenance and support this is charged at 25% of the purchase price each year. After your initial purchase the maintenance and support charges are optional.

You will require a server to host the application (not necessarily stand-alone). This can be a Windows server or a Linux server. You should choose one you are familiar with.

You will require MySQL at least verion 4.2. We have tried this with MS-SQL previously however there were a host of configuration issues preventing this from working, so we gave up.

You will require a web server such as IIS (on Windows) or Apache (on Windows or Linux). If your server is Linux then you will most definitely choose Apache. The advantage of IIS on Windows is that you can utilise the windows authentication facility so that staff will be automatically identified by the application (and will not be prompted to login each time they access the system).

You will require PHP installed and configured for the web server. You should install the latest version however this should be at least 5.2.

You may find it helpful to utilise a WAMP (for Windows) or LAMP (for Linux) installation script - these come with Apache, MySQL and PHP software pre-configured. Personally I find it just as quick to install and configure the components separately.

If you are configuring Apache or PHP for the first time you may find it helpful to have somebody with experience in this area available.

If you are already running Moodle your software requirements are fine and you can easily install a Sobs system to this same server.