OLEFA Concept & Philosophy

This page describes the elementary concepts of OLEFA, as I defined them in 2000-2001 and refined them during the following years until 2008.

Global concept (2000)

I originally created OLEFA as a CMS for my own web projects in 2000. Here are my basic design concepts, as I implemented them in 2000-2001. Most of these design goals were basically reached in 2000 and 2001.

a Content Management System (CMS) that easily allows to create and maintain websites
template and script based web page generation (OLEFAscript)
a powerful file manager and organized file structures on the server
fully automated backup features for all kinds of files
database management and applications: forums, guestbooks, news, ...
web based and completely platform independent, requiring only a minimum of JavaScript
reduce the costs of complex websites and reduce the required maintenance time
networking features, allow several OLEFA installations to communicate with each other

Concepts for education (2001)

About a years later, this must have been early 2001, I started to add further concepts that optimized OLEFA for the education market. I programmed most of the related code in early and mid 2001, including the library management and the wiki. One of the ideas that were only realized much later was the OLEFA fileserver, which I programmed in 2003.

meaningful use of computers in school, the computer as a production tool
students and teachers become active contributors, can make instant changes to web pages
the school website as a work and publishing platform, optimized for group work, teamwork and data sharing
focusing on the content instead by reducing technical challenges
build and expand knowledge, publish your knowledge and keep it online
user management and access control featuring a superuser, administrators and simple users
wiki, featuring multi-user document sharing, many users may edit a single page at the same time
integrated web based library management system, the library as center of the school
fully automated fileserver (only released in 2003)
a powerful intranet platform for schools

Concepts I created from 2002-2008, when I was working at EducDesign

During my time at EducDesign I developed many new concepts, my most important ideas are listed here - including the location where I worked out the global concept of the module:

new OLEFA Wiki - completely modular and flexible (Ehlerange)
OLEFA Webbook - create, edit and publish web based online books (Belgium)
OLEFA Storyboard - create, edit and publish web based cartoon-like stories (Esch/Alzette)
AFELO - an easy to use image compression and uploading client application for Windows, MacOS X and Linux (Java) (Ehlerange)
OLEFA sound recorder - record and upload sound directly on a website (Java applet) (Ehlerange)
OLEFA painter - draw and paint images on a website (Java applet) (Ehlerange)
OLEFAdesk - one of the first WebOS implementations (2005) including applications (Ehlerange)
OLEFA EiS - a suite of applications for companies, has been discontinued in 2007 or so... (Ehlerange)
OLEFA NG - a next generation version of OLEFA which was never realized... (Ehlerange, Belgium, Netherlands)
OLEFAschool - a community platform that allows to create and share online courses (Ehlerange)