User:Kgibbe1/sandbox/grok

About
The GROK Knowledge Base is a website of Louisiana State University that provides around-the-clock computing assistance for the campus and university. The GROK Knowledge Base was created by Brandon Johnson as a graduate student while attending LSU. The site consists of articles which provide computer-based assistance to LSU students, faculty, and staff. As technology continues to grow, the website and its operators develop new ways to help its users by constantly updating new articles.

Articles
The GROK website provides articles for users to answer any questions and provide visual walkthroughs for various computing problems. The articles within the GROK Knowledge Base are created primarily by LSU student workers with help from LSU faculty and staff. The articles span a wide range of topics, from general IT support for connecting your computer (Windows, Linux, or Mac) to the LSU wireless network to how to articles such as mounting a windows shared folder in linux. One of the most common uses for GROK is for student and faculty technical support for Moodle, LSU's website for displaying course information from teachers to students. Many of the articles have helpful links at the top of the page to help users find other relevant content.

Technology
The GROK Knowledge Base is written in ASP.NET with a VB.NET backend and utilizes XHTML, Cascading Style Sheets, OpenSearch, and JavaScript. GROK also uses Google Analytics to track users that visit the site and can be used to see which articles are the most heavily trafficked and might need to be update more frequently. GROK's servers run Microsoft IIS 7 and are house on LSU's campus in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Mobile Site
If you browse to grok.lsu.edu on a mobile device such as a smartphone or a tablet computer, you will be redirected to a mobile version of the GROK Knowledge Base intended to enhance the users experience while viewing on the smaller device. There is also a soon-to-be-released GROK Knowledge Base iPhone App created by LSU student Jeremy Meador. It is rumored that a new mobile web-based version of GROK is being developed which is cross-platform and uses jQuery Mobile to display the content in an app-like manner.