Welcome to Banovallum School

About the Banovallum School Website

This website is hosted on-site at Banovallum School. The server is called Merlin and is powered by the CentOS GNU/Linux operating system. Merlin is maintained by Axiom Tech.

Like the magician, Merlin is capable of more than you might expect. It handles the school's email for a start. Every staff member and student (around 800 users) has their own email address. Email is accessed using a web interface both at school and from home. Only a web browser is required, lowering barriers to access. The excellent Horde web collaboration software is used to provide webmail at Banovallum school (the core of the email system is procmail and cyrus-imapd). The apache webserver is used to encrypt connections to Horde, keeping messages safe from prying eyes on the internet.

Shortly, pupils and staff will also be able to access their school files from home via a web browser. Staff will be able to transfer assignments from home to school without worrying about email filtering and students will be able to access assignments and upload their completed homework back to the school's file servers.

This web site is based on another piece of open source software called CMS Made Simple. It's a Content Management System, meaning that content is added via a web browser using a familiar wysiwyg style editor. Staff at Banovallum generate the content of this website without the need to know HTML, or any of the details of how to upload and download files to and from Merlin.

The final feature of Banovallum's web access system is off-site access to the school's management software, eportal. Again connections to eportal are securely encrypted by Merlin to ensure that private information about students and staff is not visible in transit.

For information about implementing a similar system for your school please contact Axiom Tech via their website: www.axiomtech.co.uk.