Found this comment from David about templates:
“Any site can be turned into a theme. Also a programmer with server access could write a newsite callback that set these configuration preferences.”
If I’m reading that correctly, it sounds like I can do what I want to…set the configurations beforehand. Now I’m wondering if I can set up departments and the e-z edit buttons on the nav bar beforehand too.
If someone gives some hints on how to script the preference configuration, that is information that I would be very very interested in hearing. We do not have anybody around here with the time to become a frontier scripting guru, but if it is rather straightforward, OR if someone can provide a script that can be easily modified…
just to jump in here, it is a fairly trivial exercise to jump into the new site creation process and set preferences and site configurations. This is part of the plugin that I have done for schools. In this plugin various aspects of new sites are changed based on the path to the createASite page, for example there are different default sites for students, middle school teachers, elementary school teachers or high school teachers by default (though more could be added). You can alter the navigation, do substitutions on the menus, there are also some hidden settings that are set as well, the school that a teachers is at (so that a list of updated sites can be done by school) who the monitoring teacher is for a student site (to aid in the syndication of student entries to a central page for the teachers).
Sam D
http://www.teachesme.com
Frontier wonk and teacher…