Stick a Fork in It Or Just Fork It: DS106 Assignment Bank Theme

creative commons licensed ( BY-NC-ND ) flickr photo shared by mariateresa toledo

When I started last August to develop a WordPress Theme that would provide the functionality of the ds106 Assignment Bank, I told Jim Groom that I thought I could get it ready in a month. By December, I thought I could wrap it up first week of January. So here I am in April…

It’s not done, software is never done… but I wanted for so long to make it ready for others to try. So here it is. To make a site like

you can download all you need from

It’s time to stop tinkering and let some people try it out. At this point, I am so close to it, I wonder if it makes sense to others, or if it will come across as something too complex to set up.

The whole goal was to make it something that could be configured from a theme options interface

Essentially, you define what it is inside the bank. In DS106 it was assignments, but you get to name it. I call ’em Things. And for your Things you define what Types of Things there in (in DS106 there were Design Assignments, Visual Assignments etc. So the main index shown above is an interface to the Types of Things. Inside each Type of Thing.. you find the Things!

And each Thing has the features of a DS106 Assignment (and more).

People who do a Thing can have their example syndicated in if you set up Feed WordPress (and it can be set to use an aggregator in the Bank itself, or from an external one, like DS106). Or not at all

Syndication Options

You can also have a form for people to add examples

If you allow people to submit things, you have options to define a Creative Commons license for all Things, or to let the individual select (or not even have Creative Commons be part of the scene)

One of the bigger technical hurdles was figuring out how to implement the WordPress media uploaded to allow one to add images for the icons of the types of things. Boom!

And the last chunk was filling out what is a pretty long scrolling summary of the theme options

Documentation for and inside the theme options

and the additional information in the Readme.

The docs are pretty much a first draft and very likely rife with typos. Before I go back into it, I want to float what I have now and see if people can set it up. I probably will record a screen cast of a total set up from scratch… but you know how I am with the timelines.

creative commons licensed ( BY-NC-SA ) flickr photo shared by wyliepoon

Anyhow, the Assignment Bank Theme is open, wide open https://github.com/cogdog/ds106bank

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