Moodle in English: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Tuesday, 10 November 2009, 6:50 PM

Hi all. Just wanted to announce that the Open University's newly developed forum module, 'ForumNG', is now available as an optional add-on for standard Moodle 1.9. Since this is currently a pilot version I thought the developer forum was the best place to plug it - sites that don't have any development expertise available whatever might not be the best place to try it.

If you run a Moodle 1.9.x installation, please feel free to try it out. However, do bear in mind (again) that this is a pilot version and is sort of halfway between testing (i.e. earlier versions have been tested but we changed a bunch of things since).

This is a newer version than the one currently running, again in pilot version (yes I just said that because I wanted to make it bold again), on the OU's live system. Please install on a test server first, and do not use for any real work unless you've verified for yourself that it is good enough for your purposes. There might well be stupid bugs at present.

ForumNG sits alongside the existing Moodle forum and is completely independent; you can still set up new forums using either system.

The forum has some additional features (and just a few that are still missing, such as most of the forum types). Here are some of the new features:

Advanced DHTML/AJAX (dynamic web page) support in the discussion page, which allows you to reply to, edit, rate, and delete posts without leaving the page.
Unique (only) discussion view which combines the benefits of 'nested' and date-related views; it is a nested view, so you can see the discussion structure, but except for unread posts (and their immediate parents), posts are 'collapsed' to a short summary, so you don't have to scroll through mounds of junk to get to the unread posts. Expanding a post is one click away.
Administrative improvements such as the ability to merge discussions.
The rating system has friendly star graphics and can be used for grading or without a grade.

You can read more about the forum and see some screencasts if you look back through my work blog about the development. (The screencasts use our OU theme, but it works the same in the standard theme.) That's also the place to follow if you want to find out about ongoing development; we are continuing to add features and will hopefully batch them into public updates periodically. Or if you prefer, my blog is included in Planet Moodle, so you can watch that and get news from all sorts of Moodle developers - core developers as well as the hangers-on like me.

If you find bugs please report them via the Moodle bug tracker. (And if you find security holes please don't forget to choose the 'security' option when filing the bug so that we can fix it before it's made public.)

Thanks,

--sam

PS We do hope that this forum might be integrated into standard Moodle in future if people like it. However even if that does happen, the earliest release it would likely be in is Moodle 2.1, so this is quite some way from being a standard Moodle feature.

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Tim Hunt - Friday, 13 November 2009, 4:48 AM

I just wanted to say that in the name of eating our own dog-food, I set up one of these up for people to discuss our department Christmas Lunch, and the new interface is very nice.

Of course, there is nothing terribly wrong with the standard Moodle forums, but ForumNG is a bit better.

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Joseph Rézeau - Friday, 13 November 2009, 5:07 PM

Tim,
I hope you & colleagues will have something better than dog-food for your department Christmas lunch. black eye

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Friday, 13 November 2009, 7:53 PM

That depends whether they manage to meet the development schedule!! ;)

--sam

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Pascal Maury - Wednesday, 4 May 2011, 11:55 PM

Hi !

Just to say : the french translation is almost ready. It's not perfect, but it is a good start I think !

I will post it here very soon !

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Pascal Maury - Monday, 9 May 2011, 10:00 PM

Hi,

I would like to provide here a first french translation for forumNG 3.6. I do not know if you plan to integrate it in the mod but I think it's too early yet : I posted it in the french discussion about forumNG and I wait for the feedbacks.

We have translated only the main file (forumng.php) but the help files are coming (19/28 files ready).

Feel free to update it here or in the french discussion !

Otherwise, we found some bugs when testing the forum. Where is the best place to describe them ? Here or on the Bugs and Issues' page ?

Pascal

fr_utf8_local - v0 - 2011-05-09 forumng 3.6.php

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Glenys Hanson - Monday, 9 May 2011, 10:19 PM

Hi Pascal,

The best place to report the problems is in the Tracker. Sam Marshall, the developper of ForumNG, doesn't often read these forums but he's very quick to reply and solve problems when they're posted in the tracker.

Cheers,

Glenys

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Tuesday, 10 May 2011, 1:25 AM

Thanks Glenys. You are right - I happen to have read this post but there are definitely times when I don't read forum email.

For information, non-critical bugs with the 1.9 version of ForumNG might not get fixed any more as I am concentrating on the 2.0 version. However please feel free to file all bugs in tracker. (The bug might apply in 2.0 as well.)

Pascal - You can also file an issue in the tracker when you are happy that you have finished the French translation, and would like me to include it in the standard public version. Please let me know whether you've been working with 1.9 or 2.0. (I assume 1.9, because the 2.0 version is crazy alpha...)

--sam

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Derek Chirnside - Friday, 12 August 2011, 7:32 AM

Sam, just checking in.

Is there an ETA or approx ETA for ForumNG release outside OU for 2.x?
Is there any problem with running ForumNG AND the existng forum module on an install, so teachers have the choice?
Any whispers you know of to say if MoodleHQ is thinking of any forum work for 2.X either including NG or enhancing existing module or including something else?
(Just checking) Does it need any core hacks, or it is just bolting onto core Moodle?

-Derek

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Friday, 12 August 2011, 6:34 PM

1. Alpha version is on my blog since months ago, but it IS only alpha and there are known bugs. Release version, well um we supposedly go live next month, so I guess shortly after that (it may help to pester me late September). Release version will possibly require Moodle 2.1.

2. There is no problem with running both ForumNG and standard forum.

3. Yes HQ are planning to improve forum. They haven't made a decision regarding whether to use ForumNG or take another approach. I don't think this will likely be in 2.2 though (either way), maybe 2.3.

4. No core hacks - it runs on standard Moodle as a normal module install. You can also install the (again standard plugin, no core changes) ousearch local plugin if you want indexed full-text search support; otherwise ForumNG doesn't have search facility.

--sam

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Hartmut Scherer - Friday, 13 November 2009, 8:41 PM

Thank you, Sam, for developing the ForumNG. I like it very much and installed it in our Moodle 1.9.5. When I grade forum discussions, I use the forum tab in the profile of each student. If I use the ForumNG, is it still possible to see all posts per student? Will ForumNG also be listed in the activity report of a person? I tried the report function but I got an error message that some code is missing.

These are just a few observations and questions. I am very glad about the additional features and I would like to see the ForumNG in Moodle 2.x

With kind regards,

Hartmut

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Friday, 13 November 2009, 9:59 PM

Thanks for trying it out!

At present ForumNG does not contain any integration with Moodle core features - it is a standard module with no special extras. The existing Moodle forum has various special extras in the core code that allow it to integrate more tightly in certain ways.

For example, as you say, it does not appear in the 'list all a user's posts' feature of the profile page, sorry. It also doesn't integrate with the Latest Course News block like normal forum can do.

Not sure what you mean by activity report (may be an area of Moodle I'm not familiar with as we turn off a lot of reporting stuff here). If you just mean the log display (the one that lists IP addresses and 'view' etc) then I think this should work.

If this were ever to be integrated as a standard forum it would of course have to be enhanced to support these features (well maybe not news - there may be an alternative way of doing news - but the profile page). Unless and until that happens, it will probably remain separate. (We could add a separate 'list posts from specific user in this forum' feature within the forum itself, of course. No plans for this at present.)

--sam

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Niall Julian - Friday, 13 November 2009, 11:25 PM

Nice work on this new forum Sam. Installed it in our sandpit and works well, no bugs so far. Its got a lot of nice little features which I've wanted in the default moodle forum, such as sticky posts and the ability to lock a discussion. Also from a usability angle, having the reply box load in the same page is great. At the moment I'm not too concerned about the lack of moodle integration for certain features, but I agree it would be nice to have this in a future release

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Hartmut Scherer - Saturday, 14 November 2009, 9:11 AM

Thank you for you reply. Just to explain what I meant with the reports. It's under "Administration" in course page. When I open reports and select ForumNG as activity, I receive the error message. Probably this has to do with the missing integration with Moodle core features that you already mentioned in your post. I still like the ForumNG.

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Dan Ballance - Friday, 4 December 2009, 11:41 AM

Hi there Sam,

I notice that you have written this module with an ajax user interface. I am looking to develop a new module for 1.9.x and I want to use some ajax elements. Do you know if there is an approved way of adding ajax features to a module? Have you implemented your ajax 'the moodle way'?

What i'm wondering is if I can look at your module as a guide for my own - or if you can point me towards some docs / a thread that explains the way an ajax module should be written for moodle 1.9.x ?

Any guidance greatly appreciated and I look forward to running ForumNG on my sites. Nice work,

dan

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Tim Hunt - Friday, 4 December 2009, 6:35 PM

Although Development:JavaScript_guidelines is mainly written in terms of Moodle 2.0, the general principles apply to Moodle 1.9 too.

The bit you don't have in Moodle 1.9 is the $PAGE->requires-> stuff. Instead you just have the require_js function, which does the most important bit of giving you an easy way to link to your .js files a YUI libraries.

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Friday, 4 December 2009, 11:33 PM

Hi,

I intended to use a 'correct' Moodle 1.9 approach. If I didn't, somebody please tell me

In particular, I used YUI and require_js and ajax_enabled.

In other words as far as I know this is a suitable approach - but as it has not been checked by the core developers, I can't guarantee that!

One rather minor caveat is that the coding style in my forumng.js is wrong. You should use four spaces like the rest of Moodle. That file uses two spaces. I'm not quite sure why. Maybe I will change it at some point. (Also, I don't think there really is a Moodle JavaScript coding style in general.)

Tim's document is great, I recommend reading it, but bear in mind that nearly all the cool and useful features were added in 2.0

--sam

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Tim Hunt - Saturday, 5 December 2009, 12:27 AM

The coding guidelines for JavaScript is basically do the same as for PHP, so four-space indent, class_names, function_names, variablenames, opening brace on the same line as the control statement, ...

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Dan Ballance - Saturday, 5 December 2009, 4:27 PM

Thanks Tim. I will make sure I follow the Moodle coding standards.

I guess I meant a bit more the approach to ajax, how to connect different parts of the module together, how to make a form built from formlib into an ajax form etc...

Will keep reading all of the docs and threads as I go and will look at Sam's code as a general reference.

Many thanks,

dan

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Dan Ballance - Saturday, 5 December 2009, 4:24 PM

Ok, cheers Sam, that's very useful. Time to get coding

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Fritz Richter - Friday, 4 December 2009, 7:46 PM

Hi Sam,

the AJAX support of ForumNG is just great. Is there a chance that you guys will integrate Geof Glass' Marginalia into the module?

Best Fritz

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Friday, 4 December 2009, 10:01 PM

Thanks!

I think there's no chance of us integrating Marginalia in the immediate future, however of course I would encourage other people to go ahead and do so!

On a personal level, it doesn't seem very worthwhile to me - I did look through their research a while back and it's interesting that they do seem to have examples where having two linked-but-independent discussion gives genuine benefit. However, this seems to me to add a high level of complexity to the interface and I wonder whether the problems that were stopping people using the single channel could be overcome, or whether some simpler approach might be more useful.

It's a long time ago, but I think there was a failed startup, probably back in dotcom boom era, that had a browser plugin that added annotation to all websites. Anyway this was supposed to be the next big thing and transform the web, but instead it sank without trace*; I tend to think there's a reason for that.

* I'm sure you can still get such things, just saying nobody uses it.

Finally from direct experience, we developed the 'comments' feature on the ouwiki which allows for similar out-of-band discussion, and we've found that this appears to confuse users. Or it would do if they used it, which generally they don't. Maybe this is down to limitations of that implementation, but I don't know - I wonder if having two linked communication channels can be more complexity than benefit unless it's very carefully managed. (Two unlinked ones, though, can be very useful - e.g. having both a forum and a wiki, live text chat would certainly maybe add to a forum and wiki alike. Of course you can do that in moodle right now with chat module and existing forum/wiki.)

That's all just my opinion - I'm not in charge of requirements prioritisation and we do sometimes develop things that I personally think are not worthwhile, so this could become one of them for sure! But I don't really see this one coming to the top of our particular priority list in the near future because there are an awful lot of other things people want here. Not saying never though...

If somebody else wants to develop Marginalia support for ForumNG, and if this requires any changes to the ForumNG code, please do discuss it with me first (after you've had a bit of a look, anyhow) and ask me for assistance if you aren't sure where the changes should be placed etc.

--sam

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Michael Penney - Saturday, 5 December 2009, 1:01 AM

I've been testing the mediabird plug-in for student notes - has a nice drag/drop interface to content in Moodle - if you put it in the theme as noted in the install docs it's available on every page. Each student gets their own notebook with it, and can share notes, ask questions about notes, etc. It also auto-saves, which is nice.

US RFP requests frequently target student (and teacher

) note taking - this adds a nice tool for it - it's not quite marginalia as the notes are not necessarily linked to a page (you can add links to pages via drag-drop though) - but maybe it's even better (or at least constructivist

) as students can use it to connect courses and parts of courses in their own ways

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Hartmut Scherer - Wednesday, 10 February 2010, 8:13 AM

After the presentation given in iMoot I installed ForumNG again. I posted something. Then, I manually ran cron and got the report below. How can I make subscription work in ForumNG?
After this error message, cron (setup in cPanel) is no longer working, i.e., no emails are send to user (neither from ForumNG nor from the traditional Forum nor from other acitivities). Is 'subscription' in ForumNG not yet set up to run in Moodle 1.9.7? I am just asking. I may have to wait until summer this year.

With kind regards,

Hartmut

----------------

Server Time: Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:52:30 -0600


Starting activity modules
Processing module function assignment_cron ...done.
Processing module function chat_cron ...done.
Processing module function forum_cron ...Starting digest processing...
Cleaned old digest records
done.
Processing module function scorm_cron ...done.
Processing module function forumng_cron ...
Email processing:
Initial query: Marking processed posts: A forum exception occurred and forum cron was aborted: Failed to mark posts mailed

#0 /home/pibceduc/public_html/moodle197/moodle197/mod/forumng/forum_mail_list.php(53): forum_mail_list->mark_mailed('1265540408')
#1 /home/pibceduc/public_html/moodle197/moodle197/mod/forumng/forum_cron.php(175): forum_mail_list->__construct(true)
#2 /home/pibceduc/public_html/moodle197/moodle197/mod/forumng/forum_cron.php(159): forum_cron::email_normal()
#3 /home/pibceduc/public_html/moodle197/moodle197/mod/forumng/forum_cron.php(24): forum_cron::email()
#4 /home/pibceduc/public_html/moodle197/moodle197/mod/forumng/lib.php(68): forum_cron::cron()
#5 /home/pibceduc/public_html/moodle197/moodle197/admin/cron.php(117): forumng_cron()
#6 {main}


done.
Finished activity modules
Starting blocks
Processing cron function for rss_client....
0 feeds refreshed (took 0.004924 seconds)
done.
Processing cron function for search....Global searching is not enabled. Nothing performed by search.
done.
Finished blocks
Starting admin reports
Finished admin reports
Updating languages cache
Removing expired enrolments ...none found
Starting main gradebook job ...
done.
Running backups if required...
 Checking backup status...INACTIVE
Backup tasks finished.
Running auth crons if required...
Cron script completed correctly
Execution took 0.447317 seconds

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Wednesday, 10 February 2010, 9:12 PM

Thanks for watching the presentation & for trying it

To clarify - in June we are hoping to release a 'fully tested' version which will not be updated so much, it will be the exact same code in use at the OU, so you can have more confidence in using it with real students.

However the version available now is definitely supposed to work - it just might have bugs from time to time and we might break things. Looks like this is a case in point. Please report all forum bugs using Moodle bug tracker (contributed code, Module: ForumNG component) - I have added this one for you, it is CONTRIB-1812.

Could you confirm, either here or add a comment to that bug, which database you are using (e.g. Postgres, MySQL) and ideally the database version too? It should work on both, but there's a possibility it could be specific to one or other.

Thanks,

--sam

PS This error should not prevent cron running for other activities as far as I can tell, so I don't see why it would stop working for standard forum or other things - as you can see from the cron logs, it continued with other tasks after giving the forumng error.

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Niall Julian - Wednesday, 10 February 2010, 10:09 PM

Sam, will look forward to the summer release of this as it does have a lot of potential. We were testing it on our sandpit and it worked fine. However when it was installed on our main site it broke the entire site backup so we had to remove it. We also found that one could post a thread but nobody could reply as the reply button didn't work. I don't have any errors to feedback on as we had to remove it pretty quickly due to the backup problem. At the time our sandpit was on 1.9.6 and our main on 1.9.5 (we have now upgraded to 1.9.7). Let me know if you need any other details, I can always ask our MP if they can remember what errors took place.

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Thursday, 11 February 2010, 1:49 AM

Hi,

I'm not aware of either issue, sorry, and details of historical errors might not be useful. If you identify any bugs and would like us to fix them, please:

a) on a test system, update to latest forumng version and check the bug still occurs.

b) file the bug in the tracker with a list of simple steps that explain how to reproduce the problem (e.g. explain which links to click to do a 'site backup', that kind of thing).

If you can't give steps to reliably reproduce a bug, ideally with current Moodle version* and definitely current forum version, it's fairly unlikely that we will be able to do anything about it, sorry.

Waiting for the June 'stable' release definitely might be a good option for you, however be aware that the testing this release will have undergone is OU testing so even though it will be more reliable, features we don't use may still not have been tested. We don't use the 'entire site backup' feature, for example (in fact I don't even know how to do it). Obviously we do use the reply button...

--sam

* This does not mean we only support forum in the absolute latest Moodle 1.9 point release - if there is a bug specific to an older point release (within reason) we will try to fix it too.

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Andrew Helmann - Sunday, 21 February 2010, 5:15 PM

I had the same problem with the backup issues. Unfortunately the tracker wont let me post

maybe someone here could do it.

On a fresh intall of 1.9.7+ when trying to back up a course from anywhere(course or add/edit courses) this error occurs

Warning: require_once(/home/ilookjus/public_html/moodle/mod/forumng/local/xml_backup.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/ilookjus/public_html/moodle/mod/forumng/backuplib.php on line 6

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required '/home/ilookjus/public_html/moodle/mod/forumng/local/xml_backup.php' (include_path='/home/ilookjus/public_html/moodle/lib/pear:.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/ilookjus/public_html/moodle/mod/forumng/backuplib.php on line 6

Then nothing happens.

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Tuesday, 23 February 2010, 1:59 AM

Thanks. Added as CONTRIB-1843 and fixed.

It looks like nobody checked backup on the community version, and a couple of OU-specific shared utility files were missed out of the 'local' folder. Apologies. Putting the files in appears to make it work.

This is in cvs now and will be in the downloadable zip file within 24 hours from now.

--sam

PS It's a bit of a problem that people have trouble reporting bugs in the tracker / getting access to it / whatever! I wish this was easier... ah well.

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Niall Julian - Tuesday, 23 February 2010, 8:22 PM

Yippie! Might be time to install it again

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Hartmut Scherer - Thursday, 11 February 2010, 8:12 AM

Sam,

Thank you for your fast and extensive reply. It encourages me that ForumNG subscriptions are working at your university. So there is hope that it will also be working at our site.

I use MySQL version 5.0.87-community, PHP version 5.2.11, Linux, shared host server, Moodle 1.9.7 (build 20091126).

Although the cron log indicates that everything was performed correctly (except sending emails for ForumNG), in reality nothing was done at all. I cannot explain the discrepancy between the log file and what actually happened. Nevertheless, I want to continue testing ForumNG as I think students and teachers would benefit from it.

With kind regards,

Hartmut

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Hartmut Scherer - Thursday, 11 February 2010, 1:26 PM

UPDATE to my previous post

Sam, you are right. Email notificationst about forum posts in standard Moodle forum were sent as well as other email notifications, only email subscriptions in ForumNG were skipped. In my previous post I was probably too fast and didn't wait the 30 minutes (when changes are still possible).

With kind regards,

Hartmut

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Thursday, 11 February 2010, 10:42 PM

Thanks. I fixed the bug - if you download now from cvs, or in 24 hours (from now) from the zipfile available on the modules & plugins page, you should get the fix.

It was a general MySQL problem (basically, MySQL sucks, more explanation in tracker entry) that was quite difficult to fix! I guess when I tested on MySQL before, I didn't bother to test actually sending email... unfortunately this is what happens when software is tested by a developer instead of a proper tester...

Sorry.

--sam

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Hartmut Scherer - Saturday, 13 February 2010, 3:06 PM

Sam, I am excited. Thanks a lot for the extra time that you spent for updating ForumNG. Cron works at our site now and the email notifications are sent.

With kind regards,

Hartmut

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Nacho Aguilar - Thursday, 18 March 2010, 6:03 PM

Hi all,

Is there any traslation into Spanish?

If not I will try to do it

Thanks

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Friday, 19 March 2010, 1:11 AM

There aren't any translations at all yet! Please feel free.

--sam

PS I'm always pleased and usually surprised when people translate our stuff. OU Wiki is available in German, French, and Hebrew; OU Blog is available in Catalan, German, Spanish, and Japanese. Yay.

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Pascal Maury - Tuesday, 23 March 2010, 10:46 PM

Hi all,

We are looking for a translation in French. I leave a message here if somebody already did it, or even started it ?
If not, we will soon. If you started something, please tell me !

Thanks

Pascal

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by David Jofré - Wednesday, 18 April 2012, 11:36 PM

Hola:

He traducido al español del archivo forumng.php que se encuentra en el directorio /mod/forumng/lang

crear un directorio /mod/forumng/lang/es-utf8 y copiar el archivo adjunto.

Cualquier aporte a la traducción es bienvenido

Saludos

es_utf8.zip

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Re: ForumNG difficulty

by Trevor Cunningham - Sunday, 18 April 2010, 6:01 PM

Hi there. I installed ForumNG into my sandpit build, using Moodle 1.9.7 and it works like a charm. However, in my working build, also using 1.9.7, when I select ForumNG from the activity menu, it gives me nothing but a blank page, no error messages. Something isn't being communicated. The only difference between the two sites is thematic, but that shouldn't make a difference. Any ideas?

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Re: ForumNG difficulty

by Tim Hunt - Monday, 19 April 2010, 6:27 PM

Have you turned on Debugging on your working build, to find out what the error message is when you get the blank screen?

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Re: ForumNG difficulty

by Trevor Cunningham - Monday, 19 April 2010, 8:14 PM

Wow...can you make sense of this? I am not much of a code guy. Looks like there's errors all over the place!

Illegal mix of collations (latin1_swedish_ci,IMPLICIT) and (latin1_general_ci,IMPLICIT) for operation '='

SELECT cm.id, f.name FROM mdl_forum f INNER JOIN mdl_course_modules cm ON cm.instance=f.id AND cm.module = (SELECT id FROM mdl_modules WHERE name='forum') LEFT JOIN mdl_forumng fng ON fng.name=f.name AND fng.course=f.course WHERE cm.course=11 AND f.course=11 AND f.type='general' AND fng.id IS NULL

line 686 of lib/dmllib.php: call to debugging()
line 108 of mod/forumng/forum_utils.php: call to get_recordset_sql()
line 87 of mod/forumng/forum_utils.php: call to forum_utils::get_recordset_sql()
line 532 of mod/forumng/forum_utils.php: call to forum_utils::get_records_sql()
line 187 of mod/forumng/mod_form.php: call to forum_utils::get_convertible_forums()
line 116 of lib/formslib.php: call to mod_forumng_mod_form->definition()
line 40 of course/moodleform_mod.php: call to moodleform->moodleform()
line 187 of course/modedit.php: call to moodleform_mod->moodleform_mod()

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'forum_exception' with message 'Failed to get SQL recordset for SELECT cm.id, f.name FROM mdl_forum f INNER JOIN mdl_course_modules cm ON cm.instance=f.id AND cm.module = (SELECT id FROM mdl_modules WHERE name='forum') LEFT JOIN mdl_forumng fng ON fng.name=f.name AND fng.course=f.course WHERE cm.course=11 AND f.course=11 AND f.type='general' AND fng.id IS NULL' in /***/moodle/mod/forumng/forum_utils.php:110 Stack trace: #0 /***/moodle/mod/forumng/forum_utils.php(87): forum_utils::get_recordset_sql('?SELECT cm.id, ...', '', '') #1 /***/mod/forumng/forum_utils.php(532): forum_utils::get_records_sql('?SELECT cm.id, ...') #2 /***/moodle/mod/forumng/mod_form.php(187): forum_utils::get_convertible_forums(Object(stdClass)) #3 /***/moodle/lib/formslib.php(116): mod_forumng_mod_form->definition() #4 /***/moodle/course/moodl in /***/moodle/mod/forumng/forum_utils.php on line 110

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Re: ForumNG difficulty

by sam marshall - Friday, 23 April 2010, 5:40 PM

I googled it. This appears to be a MySQL bug. No not just the general MySQL bug (i.e. that you should be using Postgres instead) but a specific one with a particular version. See this thread:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?124003-Problem-when-searching-FAQs

Alternatively, if it's not a bug, then your database is in Latin1 Swedish character set, when it should be UTF-8 for Moodle. However I think the bug is more likely...

--sam

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Christoph Ruda - Friday, 25 June 2010, 8:46 PM

Hi Sam,
Thanks for developing and sharing forumng. It does what we need and what the standard forum can do only with a lot of extra admin work.
I got it installed without any issues on a test server, but our main server is a bit stubborn. Below is the error message I get when I try the installation:

Module "forumng" (2010051300) could not be installed. It requires a newer version of Moodle (currently you are using 2007101540, you need 2007101550).

It doesn't seem to pick up the correct Moodle version - ours is 1.9.4+ (20090204). Below is the output from Admin -> Server -> Environment:

moodle version 1.0 is required and you are running 1.9.4 OK
unicode must be installed and enabled OK
database mysql version 4.1.16 is required and you are running 5.1.31 OK
php version 4.3.0 is required and you are running 5.2.3 OK

Did I miss something in the requirements? The test server runs Moodle 1.9.8 admittedly, but I didn't notice this being a necessity. Any help would be appreciated.

Regards,
Christoph

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Friday, 25 June 2010, 9:54 PM

Hi,

Sorry - it isn't mentioned in the information page, but ForumNG is marked as requiring 1.9.5+. I think there was some function change in 1.9.5 that may be necessary for it to work, but I'm not certain, it may merely have been a convenient version number that was kicking around at the time I started writing it.

Don't be confused by the actual dates that are sometimes displayed - the version number for 1.9.5 is 2007101550, even though it was released in 2009.

If you want to force it to install even though you are running 1.9.4, edit forumng/version.php and change the requires= part from 2007101550 to 2007101540. As noted above it may not work properly on 1.9.4.

By the way I hope you have been manually applying security patches if you are still running 1.9.4 on a live server.

--sam

PS I have added the requirement for 1.9.5+ to the modules and plugins database page to avoid confusing anyone in future.

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Christoph Ruda - Monday, 28 June 2010, 8:47 PM

Hi Sam,
Many thanks for clearing up my confusion and for amending the requirements information.

We have hung on to 1.9.4 too long, I know. Our new server which is running 1.9.8 is almost ready, so I will not make any changes now to our present installation.

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Christoph Ruda - Monday, 28 June 2010, 10:23 PM

Hi Sam,
Testing ForumNG I have come across an issue when converting an existing forum. The new forum is created but no user data is converted. This is the error I get:

Convert forums
Technical Issues
* Creating forum structure... Notice: Undefined property: stdClass::$id in C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\lgmoodle\mod\forumng\forum.php on line 3518

A forum error occurred. Please try again later, or try something else.
Error message: Failed to get record in forumng
More information about this error

I have checked that the forum is of the 'general' type. There is no debuggung output. Did I miss anything else?

Many thanks for your time,
Christoph

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Wednesday, 30 June 2010, 12:25 AM

Hi,

It sounds like a bug. I don't know which version you're running, though, unfortunately there have been a number of changes recently and that line is not the same number in current code (we really need to get the 'stable' version done and ready, I promised that for June I think, sigh). You might like to do the following:

1) Please file a bug in Moodle Tracker (contributed code, Module: ForumNG, assigned to me) about this issue.

2) In the bug description, could you confirm exact steps, starting from nothing, to cause that error? For example does this work:

- Create new course
- Add activity / add new forum
- Enter junk for name/description and 'Save and return to course'
- Add activity / add new ForumNG
- select to convert forum
- select forum that was made before, and click convert

--> error occurs

3) If that DOESN'T demonstrate the error, and you can't think of other steps that might, then please include in the bug description, the line of code mentioned from that .php script along with say 2 lines either side (so I can find where it is in current version).

thanks!

--sam

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by mimi nom - Monday, 12 July 2010, 6:23 PM

Hello,

I can't download the forumng.zip, can you please send it to me to this email : sisififi48@yahoo.fr

thank you

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Monday, 12 July 2010, 7:43 PM

Could you just try the download again - it works for me now, maybe there was a temporary outage?

if it still doesn't work i can email you.

thanks

--sam

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by mimi nom - Tuesday, 13 July 2010, 5:26 PM

hello sam,

I tryed to download it again but I couldn't, could you please email it to me.

thanks a lot

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Hamed Al-Suhli - Tuesday, 10 August 2010, 10:03 PM

Hi,

On moodle 1.9.6 active and stable for a year, I tried to install ForumNG but moodle didn't recognize the new module??

no other plugin, but the Arabic localization enabled.

any Ideas?

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Hamed Al-Suhli - Tuesday, 10 August 2010, 11:16 PM

I'm sorry,

even I login as admin After extracting forumNG to /mod, but nothing happened.
suddenly after 3 hours moodle loged me of and give me installation succeed page for forumNG.

is it strange?

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Wednesday, 11 August 2010, 12:50 AM

Hi,

Glad it worked because I don't know the answer

Only thing I can think of is that you need to make sure you go to the 'Notifications' page after you extract the new files - just logging in as admin is not enough. But if you did that, then I dunno what it was.

By the way, just as a note to everyone reading - there will be a 'stable' (=fully tested rather than development code) version of ForumNG real soon now. It will be a downgrade from the current cvs version so you will need to uninstall and reinstall if you have been running that - or else wait with your current version if you're happy with it, until there is a 'newer' stable version, probably around end of this year.

Actually, the stable version is in fact available already, but I want to test it a bit on current moodle 1.9 before I make an announcement! I'll say more then.

--sam

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Stable R1.0 release

by sam marshall - Wednesday, 11 August 2010, 5:56 PM

A new stable release version of ForumNG for Moodle 1.9.x is now available.

About the stable version

This is actually older the current CVS version that was previously available. However, it is a tested version that has (so far) been through about half of our typical release testing schedule.

This will not be updated immediately with developer changes, only with bugfixes.

As of September, this (well the latest version available by the link) will be the same code that's live on the OU system, which means it will be undergoing heavy daily usage and is likely not to be totally broken, but will contain any necessary critical bugfixes that we do.

Warning: Although I'm calling it stable, we still don't guarantee anything about the release! You must test it and satisfy yourself that it works on your servers before updating a live system. Although this version should be more reliable, there are certain differences between standard Moodle 1.9.x and the OU version, and it's possible that we might accidentally introduce dependencies on these (thus breaking it for everyone else), so please do test.

Version numbering

In addition to this new stable version, there is a new numbering scheme. With new versions of the CVS build, if you look on the ForumNG settings page, you'll see:

ForumNG version: Unstable development version (use at own risk)

Whereas, with this stable build, you'll see:

ForumNG version: Stable R1.0

Bug reporting

Please continue to report bugs via Moodle Tracker (under 'Contributed code', 'Module: ForumNG'). In the text of your bug, please make sure to include the ForumNG version as above, and please upgrade to latest stable version (or at least latest with the same first number, i.e. 1.latest) in case the bug was already fixed.

Upgrade problems

If you are currently running the latest version from CVS you won't be able to upgrade to this stable version because its Moodle version number is lower. You'll need to uninstall (which will delete all forums) and reinstall - or wait until the stable release catches up, which should be in December.

Not sure? Check your version (you can see this on the manage activities page) - the stable version is 2010 05 13 00. If your version number is lower than this, or the same, then you can upgrade to the stable version. Otherwise you can't. (The current CVS version, for instance, is 2010 07 21 00.)

Download

Download via the link on the standard modules and plugins page (you want the link that goes to a Google Docs folder with the file forumng.1.0.zip in it).

Thanks all.

--sam

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Re: Stable R1.0 release

by Hamed Al-Suhli - Wednesday, 11 August 2010, 7:09 PM

Thanks Sam,

Is there any planning to make forum -> forumNG converter?

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Re: Stable R1.0 release

by sam marshall - Wednesday, 11 August 2010, 8:04 PM

Already done

Go to add activity and choose forumng. Instead of actually adding one, scroll down to the bottom of the page - you should see a link to convert old forums. (Will only appear if there are old forums on the course that it can convert.) You can then select which ones to convert and it will hopefully work. (Converting doesn't delete the old forums, only hides them, so no worries if something goes wrong.)

It can't convert old forums with a forum type other than 'general' (ie you can't convert news forum or Q&A type forum).

--sam

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Re: Stable R1.0 release

by Hamed Al-Suhli - Sunday, 15 August 2010, 4:43 AM

Thanks Sam,

I uninstall and reinstall V1.3 from google docs on moodle 1.9.6,
but I got this error

^{Version mismatch: forumng can't downgrade 2010072100 -> 2010051300 !

the forumNG I was created still active}

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Re: Stable R1.0 release

by sam marshall - Monday, 16 August 2010, 5:22 PM

When you uninstall you need to use the Moodle interface to actually delete the forum (from admin / modules / manage activities) before deleting the code. Then only when that's complete, add it back.

--sam

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Re: Stable R1.0 release

by Paul A. Schlag - Tuesday, 17 August 2010, 9:55 AM

Hi Sam! Great resource...thank you so much.

I was wondering if there is any way to clear out responses to discussion topics. I have a course with 8 discussion topics and 30-40 students responded to each topic between 4 and 5 times. Is there an easy way to delete all those posts since a new semester is beginning?

Thank you again!

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Re: Stable R1.0 release

by sam marshall - Tuesday, 17 August 2010, 8:09 PM

Ish. There are a few options but I think they aren't quite relevant to your situation:

1) You can manually delete discussions no problem. However I think in this case you maybe want to keep the first post in the discussion and delete the rest? This could be tedious. The 'split' feature may help you but not if all the responses are top level.

2) We have automatic archiving option, but this works at the whole-discussion level.

However if you want to preserve the 8 initial posts a better option might be to make a clean forum one time, back it up and restore it afresh (with 'restore, add activitiy') each time. So you just create a new forum each time from your existing backup, and delete the previous one (or rename it and hide it, or something).

Restore can be a bit sketchy (not with ForumNG in particular, just in general), maybe test on a test system before you use this approach on production.

The manual approach would be to (as an admin) go in and 'edit' the first post in the existing discussion, then copy the text, and start a new discussion and paste that in. 8 times, right? Not too bad.

If I misunderstood your situation (for example if you don't need to keep the first post in each discussion) then the answer might be different.

--sam

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Re: Stable R1.0 release

by Paul A. Schlag - Tuesday, 17 August 2010, 9:20 PM

Thank you for your prompt reply. You are exactly right that I wanted to save the first post on every discussion (which presents the question students address).

I'll go ahead and simply create a new discussion, copy the first post from the old discussion and delete the old discussion. Thank you for the great advice!

-Paul

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Re: Stable R1.0 release

by Glenys Hanson - Friday, 17 September 2010, 5:19 PM

Hi Sam,

How do I get the latest stable version of ForumNG for Moodle 1.9.9? You say "In order to get the stable version, do not use any of the download links at bottom of this page. Instead, you must access it from the following link: Download folder on Google Docs"

But the link no longer works. thoughtful

I tried out a version in August - so much better than the current Moodle forum.

Cheers,
Glenys

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Re: Stable R1.0 release

by Tim Hunt - Friday, 17 September 2010, 5:49 PM

Sam is on leave so may not see this.

I just tried the link in your post, and it worked.

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Re: Stable R1.0 release

by Glenys Hanson - Friday, 17 September 2010, 6:56 PM

Hi Tim,

Thanks for trying to help but I've tried on two computers and several browsers and I just get a blank page (see below). Could this be a private page open to OU developers but not to common mortals? thoughtful

I had no problem in August.

Cheers,
Glenys

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Re: Stable R1.0 release

by Tim Hunt - Saturday, 18 September 2010, 1:37 AM

It should not be OU-specific. It is just Google docs.

I wonder if it only works if you have a google docs account? Do you have one?

(Obviously that is not what the intention was, sam just wanted the easiest possible way to share zip files with people, and thought Google docs would do. If it is not working, we would like to know, and will try to think of something better. In the mean time, can you try creating a Google docs account if you don't already have one. Thanks.)

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Re: Stable R1.0 release

by Jon Witts - Saturday, 18 September 2010, 1:42 AM

Yep... Definitely a Google account issue. If I sign out of my google account I get a blank page; sign back in and revisit the link and I see all the files...

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Re: Stable R1.0 release

by Tim Hunt - Saturday, 18 September 2010, 2:24 AM

Grrrr!

Thanks for confirming. Hopefully sam can come up with a plan B when he gets back from leave.

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Re: Stable R1.0 release - ForumNG

by Glenys Hanson - Saturday, 18 September 2010, 4:30 AM

Hi Tim and Jon,

I've signed out of Google docs (thanks for the tip, Jon) and back in and I see as below. But I'm on Moodle 1.9.9 - can I assume that the version I downloaded in August is the the latest stable version ? I've tested it locally and it all seems fine (but talking to myself gets a bit boring). I'd love to use it on a live course.

Cheers,
Glenys

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Re: Stable R1.0 release - ForumNG

by Tim Hunt - Monday, 20 September 2010, 6:46 PM

No, forumng.1.8.zip is the latest stable version. The forumng version number of 1.8 is completely unrelated to any Moodle version numbers. All these files are for with 1.9.x.

(I was confused too, at first.)

Average of ratings: Useful (1)

Re: Stable R1.0 release - ForumNG

by Glenys Hanson - Tuesday, 21 September 2010, 4:15 PM

Hi Tim,

Thanks for that though I still didn't find it immediately obvious how to download the file.

I've added a screenshot to save other people time

Cheers,
Glenys

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Re: Stable R1.0 release

by Gordon McLeod - Thursday, 28 October 2010, 6:59 PM

Hi Sam,

Installed stable version and everything seems to be working fine ... except our site has a dark background theme, and when e-mail is sent out notifying new posts it includes the background as picture attachment making it difficult to read (it doesn't do this on the forum). I've tried tweaking css based on feedback elsewhere in the forums about theme css:

#email
{
background: none!important;
background-image: none!important;

While this works for news forum (default Moodle) the background is still being pulled through on forumNG posts being sent by e-mail. Any advice on how the notificatins are handled - should I be specifying forumng background?

Thanks.

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Re: Stable R1.0 release

by sam marshall - Thursday, 28 October 2010, 8:08 PM

I think this should be easy - add a similar rule for #forumng-email as well! (Maybe we ought to change it so that #email works instead. We might do that at some point so don't delete your original rule.)

--sam

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ForumNG Posting

by Greg Jeffrey - Monday, 20 September 2010, 10:24 PM

Hi, I have just installed this to our system (Moodle 1.9.9 (Build: 20100609). It all seemed to go through ok and I successfully created a post. However, if I try to reply to the posting from within the forum hitting the Post Reply button has no effect, other than that the Cancel button greys out (even if I wait 'till the post has been mailed). Oddly though if I come to it from an email link (reply to Post) it works correctly. Can anyone help?
G

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Re: ForumNG Posting

by Glenys Hanson - Tuesday, 21 September 2010, 4:24 PM

Hi Greg,

I've just redownloaded forumng.1.8.zip and reinstalled it locally on Moodle 1.9.9 (Build: 20100609) and it all works fine.

It's the same version as I downloaded in August: shows up as version 2010051300

Example of my scintillating conversation below.

Cheers,
Glenys

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Re: ForumNG Posting

by Greg Jeffrey - Tuesday, 21 September 2010, 6:27 PM

Hi Glenys,

If I hit reply to a mail (on the right) the text box opens forumng/discuss.php?d=1 At this point only the cancel button is 'live' below the text box. as soon as I type in the box I get all 3 live. When I hit "post reply", "cancel" greys out, but no post has been sent. It worked for thr original posting ok, just not the replies.

If I hit 'reply to post' from an email I get a different screen altogether :-
mod/forumng/editpost.php?replyto=2 showing just the text box plus 3 upload buttons and the 3 Post/cancel/save buttons.

I would say that it was because I'm an admin, but I'm getting the same problem as a student. sad

Average of ratings: Useful (1)

Re: ForumNG Posting

by Glenys Hanson - Wednesday, 22 September 2010, 3:29 AM

Hi Greg,

Have you tried switching to the Standard theme? Do you still have the problem?

Have you tried turning debugging on to see if get any messages? Don't ask me to interpret them but there are clever people here who can. ;-;

Cheers,
Glenys

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Re: ForumNG Posting

by Robert Blomeyer - Saturday, 25 September 2010, 6:34 AM

Glenys & Greg:

I'm afraid I'm having the same luck Greg is - i.e. no replies!

I'm using Moodle 1.9.9+ (Build: 20100908) and ForumNG 2010051300.

I'm using the Oceanblue theme. I don't see why the theme sould make any difference re: whether or not replies to postings post or not.

Everything else about this version seems to be working. But if it won't post replies we just can't use it in our courses.

Does this warrant a bug report to to OU development team? I've never bugged a development team before. wink

Bob Blomeyer (BobBl)

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Re: ForumNG Posting

by Robert Blomeyer - Saturday, 25 September 2010, 9:03 AM

I greatly regret being the one to break the news, but ForumNG apparently has an intermittent problem that's causing it to behave differently on different server installations.

Either that or my self-installed, windows localhost server likes ForumNG much better than my professionally managed Redhat, Production Server installation.

In my case, before I installed ForumHG on my production server, I tried it out on a localhost sandbox running the same version of Moodle (Moodle 1.9.9+ (Build: 20100908)) and the identical ForumNG Mod. (2010051300).

Please note both machines are configured identically with the Oceanblue theme.

The localhost is on a beefed up Windows 7 Ultimate machine I built myself. I've carefully installed Moodle 1.9.9 there so it has the same version and Mods as on our production server.

The localhost is on a Windows server installation and our production server is on a Redhat Linux host in Indianapolis, IN.

ForumNG runs peachy on the localhost sandbox in my basement. Here's a screen shot of the screen that comes up to successfully post a reply to ForumNG on my Windows localhost installation:

On the basis of ForumNG running perfectly on my localhost sandbox, I decided to give it a try on our production server

And here's a screen shot of a reply screen which WON'T post a reply to ForumNG as installed on our professionally managed, Redhat production server:

OTA Production server

Note that the html editor isn't loading when the reply window sets up on the production server.

My "guess" is that something is keeping java or ajax from creating a proper text/html editor for for replies on my production server.

Unfortunately, I don't have a clue how to debug it or go about repairing my production server's installation so that it will also be fully ForumNG functional.

If anyone has any ideas, we'd be most beholdin' to anyone who can help.

Thanks for your consideration.

Bob Blomeyer (BobBl)
Online Teaching Associates
(Reply to: rblomeyer@earthlink.net)

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Re: ForumNG Posting

by Glenys Hanson - Saturday, 25 September 2010, 7:05 PM

Hi Bob and Greg,

Hum, everything seems to work OK on my online course too but I don't have access to the server there so I don't know what it's running on.

I think you should put a message in the tracker ( I couldn't see anything about this problem already there) - the developer Sam Marshall encourages us to contact him that way. He doesn't read all the messages on these forums. But maybe he's still away on leave.

Cheers,
Glenys

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Re: ForumNG Posting

by sam marshall - Wednesday, 29 September 2010, 10:48 PM

Hi. I'm back and have finally got things under control. (Also, I built a new version of forumng with some recent changes - 1.11 - so now it will stop being confused with Moodle versions - I hope. It's going to become 2.1 in december even though it will still be for moodle 1.9, so that will confuse everyone again. Maybe I should have started at version 42 or something.)

About this issue, I don't have time to respond this week but hopefully can look at it next. For then, I need more information - can you update it to 1.11 just so it's running the latest code, this probably won't fix it but will get the line numbers the same as mine. Then, either:

a) Look in Firefox javascript error console to find out what is the JS error that is causing Send not to work.

or

b) On some publicly-available system, give me a student account on a test course and send a url so I can go try your forum and see what the error is that way - obviously if you do this, send me the account login details by private message.

thanks!

--sam

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Re: ForumNG Posting

by Neil Birt - Sunday, 3 October 2010, 12:17 AM

Hi Sam

Much applause for ForumNG! We have been testing it out at a medium scale and have been very happy with it so far.

I was wondering if it would be possible to add a couple of small features to it.

In the standard moodle forum, there is a header that identifies the forum in the email that is sent out. This is very useful as it allows users to filter email according to the forum that generated it. This does not appear to be part of ForumNG as of yet.
This one is probably less likely. The standard moodle forum places the "re:" after the course title. This makes it difficult for mail programs to associate responses with previous posts in the thread. Most of the time the "re:" goes in the front. Any chance of getting that changed to the front in ForumNG?

Thanks in advance for any help/thoughts on this.

Neil

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Re: ForumNG Posting

by Glenys Hanson - Sunday, 3 October 2010, 3:22 AM

Hi Sam,

Me too, I've been testing it on a live course and everything seems fine... and so much easier for me to see what's going on.

On a test course, I have been able to reproduce more or less what Greg and Bob (see above) found: "If I hit reply to a mail (on the right) the text box opens forumng/discuss.php?d=1 At this point only the cancel button is 'live' below the text box. as soon as I type in the box I get all 3 live. When I hit "post reply", "cancel" greys out, but no post has been sent."

I tried to send a message in which there was no text, just an image and the reply button stayed greyed out until I added text.

This is on version 2010051300, downloaded as 1.11

Cheers,
Glenys

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Re: ForumNG Posting

by sam marshall - Monday, 4 October 2010, 5:31 PM

Hi,

That's not the same bug. The initial report was that the 'Post reply' button became not-greyed-out and it was only on clicking it that it greyed out (which it is supposed to do when you click it so you can't post twice) and failed to post the message (which it is not supposed to do).

It is a bug though, I guess. Maybe. I made it consider a post as 'empty' (=you can't post it yet) if there is no text in it, ignoring all tags. Possibly I should allow specific tags like <img>, probably <a> as well. Please file a Moodle tracker bug about this issue if you'd like it fixed.

--sam

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Re: ForumNG Posting

by sam marshall - Monday, 4 October 2010, 5:28 PM

Thanks. In answer to your questions:

1. Really? Ugh - I thought there was a header. OK, I will try to get this added at some point, but it may have to wait for the upcoming 2.0 port (=next year sometime) as we are supposedly not doing any new development except bugfixes on our 1.9 version since last Friday.

2. Off the top of my head, I *think* the course code is put there by Moodle standard mail function, so just in one module like ForumNG, we can't add stuff before it. Also, a better way to address this might be to correctly send In-Reply-To and similar headers which I am guessing we currently do not do - possibly also due to limitations of Moodle standard mail function, but if so we could probably un-limitate-it in 2.0 at least.

--sam

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Re: ForumNG Posting

by Barbara Taylor - Saturday, 6 November 2010, 7:53 AM

We installed ForumNG v 1.14 from the Google doc on our dev server running Moodle version1.9.9, mysql 5.1.48 and php 5.2.11. When I click on Add a Activity -> ForumNG -> nothing happens. The page says "done" in the bottom left and is completely blank.

Are there any settings we need to change under Modules -> Activities ->ForumNG? On that page it says "ForumNG version: Stable R1.14"

Thanks,

Barbara

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Re: ForumNG Posting

by Tim Hunt - Monday, 8 November 2010, 6:34 PM

Did you complete the installation by going to the Admin Notifications page after uploading the files?

If it still does not work, can you try turning on Debugging. Thanks.

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Re: ForumNG Posting

by Barbara Taylor - Tuesday, 9 November 2010, 6:30 AM

We turned debugging on this morning and were able to make some setting changes to make it work. Now during testing when we reply to a post we can't. I type the message and click on the Post Reply button but nothing happens. Any thoughts?

Barbara

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Re: ForumNG Posting

by sam marshall - Tuesday, 9 November 2010, 6:49 PM

Using Firefox, turn on the error console (Tools menu). Clear it just before you try to do the reply. Then try to do the reply. There will probably be an error in the console. Let us know what that is? (Right click and copy, then you can paste it into here or a moodle tracker bug report.)

--sam

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ForumNG Date Formats

by Karl Zander - Monday, 11 July 2011, 1:16 AM

Is it possible to change the format of dates in ForumNG? We are in the US where mm/dd/yy is used. ForumNG seems to be defaulging to dd/mm/yy.

I looked at Language Editing but did not see any date formating there.

Thank you.

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Re: ForumNG Date Formats

by Tim Hunt - Thursday, 14 July 2011, 2:44 AM

Are you using the en_us lang pack?

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by nitin jain - Friday, 16 September 2011, 8:28 PM

forumng is working fine on my localhost but afer uploading on my server its half load and stop not working please help

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Mary Evans - Wednesday, 19 October 2011, 12:52 AM

Hi Sam,

I have a problem with Forum NG (ForumNG 3.7). It installed OK but I have hit a problem trying to add it to the Frontpage of my LocalHost site (Windows 7/WAMP/Moodle 1.9.12). Here are the Warnings I am getting.

( ! ) Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in C:\wamp\www\moodle1912\course\modedit.php on line 187

( ! ) Notice: Uninitialized string offset: 0 in C:\wamp\www\moodle1912\lib\datalib.php on line 1533
Call Stack
#	Time	Memory	Function	Location
1	0.0139	45160696	{main}	..\modedit.php:0
2	0.1913	73075936	moodleform_mod->moodleform_mod	..\modedit.php:187
3	0.1913	73076016	moodleform->moodleform	..\moodleform_mod.php:45
4	0.3126	73303392	mod_forumng_mod_form->definition	..\formslib.php:121
5	0.5799	74259256	HTML_QuickForm->addElement	..\mod_form.php:120
6	0.5800	74260808	HTML_QuickForm->_loadElement	..\QuickForm.php:602
7	0.5828	74315912	MoodleQuickForm_modgrade->onQuickFormEvent	..\QuickForm.php:572
8	0.5828	74315912	HTML_QuickForm_select->onQuickFormEvent	..\modgrade.php:70
9	0.5828	74315912	HTML_QuickForm_element->onQuickFormEvent	..\select.php:598
10	0.5829	74315992	MoodleQuickForm_modgrade->onQuickFormEvent	..\element.php:366
11	0.5840	74316848	get_scales_menu	..\modgrade.php:54
12	0.5943	74316120	make_default_scale	..\datalib.php:1577

I know they're only warnings, and I could perhaps ignore them, however, I am wondering why am I getting them at all?

I hope you can help?

Cheers

Mary

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by jeremy chen - Tuesday, 20 December 2011, 6:04 PM

Hi Sam, I installed forumng today from github (master) and got the following error message. If I use my old forumng ($module->version = 2011012800;), then it works okay.

I like ForumNG a lot. I hope my report can help you make it better.

Debug info: Unknown column 'f.id' in 'where clause' SELECT f.id as f_id,f.course as f_course,f.name as f_name,f.type as f_type,f.intro as f_intro,f.ratingscale as f_ratingscale,f.ratingfrom as f_ratingfrom,f.ratinguntil as f_ratinguntil,f.grading as f_grading,f.attachmentmaxbytes as f_attachmentmaxbytes,f.reportingemail as f_reportingemail,f.subscription as f_subscription,f.feedtype as f_feedtype,f.feeditems as f_feeditems,f.maxpostsperiod as f_maxpostsperiod,f.maxpostsblock as f_maxpostsblock,f.postingfrom as f_postingfrom,f.postinguntil as f_postinguntil,f.typedata as f_typedata,f.magicnumber as f_magicnumber,f.originalcmid as f_originalcmid,f.shared as f_shared, cm.id as cm_id,cm.course as cm_course,cm.module as cm_module,cm.instance as cm_instance,cm.section as cm_section,cm.added as cm_added,cm.score as cm_score,cm.indent as cm_indent,cm.visible as cm_visible,cm.visibleold as cm_visibleold,cm.groupmode as cm_groupmode,cm.groupingid as cm_groupingid,cm.idnumber as cm_idnumber,cm.groupmembersonly as cm_groupmembersonly,cm.completion as cm_completion,cm.completiongradeitemnumber as cm_completiongradeitemnumber,cm.completionview as cm_completionview,cm.completionexpected as cm_completionexpected,cm.availablefrom as cm_availablefrom,cm.availableuntil as cm_availableuntil,cm.showavailability as cm_showavailability, c.id as c_id,c.shortname as c_shortname,c.fullname as c_fullname, (SELECT COUNT(1) FROM forumng_discussions cfd WHERE cfd.forumngid = f.id AND cfd.deleted = 0 AND ( ((cfd.timestart = 0 OR cfd.timestart ?)) OR (cfd.forumngid IN (?,?)) ) ) AS f_numdiscussions, (SELECT COUNT(1) FROM ( SELECT 1 FROM forumng_discussions fd INNER JOIN forumng_posts fplast ON fd.lastpostid = fplast.id INNER JOIN forumng_posts fpfirst ON fd.postid = fpfirst.id LEFT JOIN forumng_read fr ON fd.id = fr.discussionid AND fr.userid = ? WHERE fd.forumngid = f.id AND fplast.modified>? AND ( (fd.groupid IS NULL) OR ((1=0)) OR cm.groupmode = 2 OR (fd.forumngid IN (?,?)) ) AND fd.deleted = 0 AND ( ((fd.timestart = 0 OR fd.timestart ?)) OR (fd.forumngid IN (?,?)) ) AND ((fplast.edituserid IS NOT NULL AND fplast.edituserid<>?) OR fplast.userid<>?) AND (fr.time IS NULL OR fplast.modified>fr.time) LIMIT 1) innerquery ) AS f_hasunreaddiscussions FROM forumng f INNER JOIN course_modules cm ON cm.instance = f.id AND cm.module = (SELECT id from modules WHERE name = 'forumng') INNER JOIN course c ON c.id = f.course WHERE f.course = ? AND cm.id IN (?,?) ORDER BY LOWER(f.name) [array ( 0 => 1324375029, 1 => 1324375029, 2 => '3', 3 => '4', 4 => '2', 5 => 1318327029, 6 => '3', 7 => '4', 8 => 1324375029, 9 => 1324375029, 10 => '3', 11 => '4', 12 => '2', 13 => '2', 14 => '13', 15 => '50', 16 => '56', )] Stack trace: line 394 of /lib/dml/moodle_database.php: dml_read_exception thrown line 809 of /lib/dml/mysqli_native_moodle_database.php: call to moodle_database->query_end() line 3167 of /mod/forumng/mod_forumng.php: call to mysqli_native_moodle_database->get_records_sql() line 2895 of /mod/forumng/mod_forumng.php: call to mod_forumng::query_forums() line 370 of /mod/forumng/lib.php: call to mod_forumng::get_course_forums() line 994 of /lib/modinfolib.php: call to mod_forumng_cm_info_view() line 1024 of /lib/modinfolib.php: call to cm_info->call_mod_function() line 624 of /lib/modinfolib.php: call to cm_info->obtain_view_data() line 1509 of /course/lib.php: call to cm_info->get_extra_classes() line 242 of /course/format/topics/format.php: call to print_section() line 240 of /course/view.php: call to require()

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Tim Hunt - Tuesday, 20 December 2011, 6:45 PM

Which version of Moodle are you using?

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by jeremy chen - Thursday, 22 December 2011, 2:52 PM

Hi Tim,

Sorry. My version is: Moodle 2.1.3+ (Build: 20111209)

Happy Holidays!

Jeremy

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Tuesday, 20 December 2011, 7:18 PM

It looks like you're using MySQL. We test against Postgres and it would be good to have community help when MySQL has problems (and boy does... okay, let's not go there).

Can anyone advise on why this query might not work in MySQL? There is clearly a table f and it has an id field, so the error "Unknown column 'f.id' in 'where clause'" is not immediately obvious. Is there some crazy restriction about not being able to refer to columns in the 'main' query in a subquery? If there is, it must surely be more specific than that, like a particular kind of subquery...?

--sam

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Jetmire Sadiki - Friday, 6 January 2012, 5:40 PM

Hi Sam

First, a big thank you for the development of ForumNG, it is very helpful and promising, we really hope it will be included in Moodle-Core one of these days!

Here at the Institut für Fernstudien- und eLearningforschung (IFeL) we are using ForumNG in a sequence of tandem-group-learning with discussions of specific topics within the small groups. We have chosen ForumNG for the many improvements over the Standard forum.

Now we remember to have tested during evaluation a ForumNG-Version with the following function:
The forum did display the whole thread of posts --- not only when reading, but also when adding a new post or answering to a post as a user.

Now we can’t reproduce this sequence of functionality. Was this a feature that you had to cancel (or is it even a kind of mis-recalling something we were wishing for)?

Thanks and best regards from Switzerland.

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Friday, 6 January 2012, 7:46 PM

Hi Jetmire, thanks for your comments.

I think the feature you are talking about, is being able to reply to a post within the discussion page without going to a different page, instead of where it goes to a separate form?

If so, yes this is still available. Check that you have the 'AJAX' option enabled for the user profile setting. Otherwise check for JavaScript errors.

--sam

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Jetmire Sadiki - Friday, 6 January 2012, 8:48 PM

Hi Sam, thanks for your reply.

I enabled the 'AJAX' option in the profile. Now it works like it should.

Jetmire

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Stephen Livesey - Wednesday, 15 February 2012, 7:23 PM

Hi Sam, do you have a screencast/demo of the ForumNG in action? I tried the link on your OU blog but it didn't work...

Cheers
Stephen

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Wednesday, 15 February 2012, 9:43 PM

Yeah, I used to store all the blog-associated files on an OU server that I conveniently had access to because I was administrator of another system. Then that system came to end of life and I asked for somewhere else to put the files and they wouldn't give me anywhere, so I just chucked them on google docs...

Google docs folder

(Hope we can move to moodle 2 blog some time this year and I can actually store attached files inside the blog entry... not entirely sure how we are going to make public file access work, though...)

So basically, sorry but if you want a screencast about forumng, um, there might be some in that folder. Hey, maybe somebody else other than me has made one more recently?

--sam

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Stephen Livesey - Wednesday, 15 February 2012, 11:22 PM

Brilliant, thanks Sam.

This definitely looks like the type of forum we are looking for - Our students have just moved to moodle and are getting a bit frustrated with the standard forum.

I don't suppose it's possible to get demo login details so I can see the forum in action?

Cheers

Stephen

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Stephen Livesey - Wednesday, 15 February 2012, 11:40 PM

Hi again Sam,

Ignore that last post, I've just seen the forum working on the OU site.

Thanks again,

Stephen

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Derek Chirnside - Thursday, 16 February 2012, 3:43 AM

Stephen, Hi, I'm quite interested in seeing some progress in core Moodle in forum functionality. There has been talk for some time in maybe adding ForumNG into the core or working on enhancements to the existing forum. I posted here recently in the developers forum: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=195094. I guess I'd be intereasted in your comments. What was/is "frustrating" your students?

A link to a ForumNG is here: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/forumng/view.php?id=396256

But you only have guest access. I have created an account, but even in the open forums I still only have guest access. If there is a ForumNG anywhere in the world where we can create an account a login to see the functionality from the inside I'd be interested.

-Derek

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ForumNG and Internet Explorer

by Jetmire Sadiki - Monday, 27 February 2012, 10:51 PM

Hi Sam

I have a problem with Internet Explorer and ForumNG.
A student told me that he cannot see the Message textfield in the ForumNG.
I also tested it with Internet Explorer 7 and 8 and it doesn't work.

Do you have an idea what is wrong?

I think it should work with this browser...

Thanks and best regards from Switzerland,
Jetmire

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Re: ForumNG and Internet Explorer

by sam marshall - Tuesday, 28 February 2012, 12:00 AM

As this is a bug report, it would be best to file this issue in a bug tracking system not in a forum. When you do, please give the Moodle version you're using.

Two possibilities:

(1) It might be broken in 2.2, in which case I'll fix it.
(2) It might be broken in 1.9, in which case, not sure I'm really supporting ForumNG on 1.9 any more...

--sam

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Julian Ridden - Wednesday, 23 May 2012, 12:13 PM

Hi Sam,

Have just installed on a 2.2 site and having issues.

Trying to convert some exisiting standard forums with user posts containined. They are "standard" forums.

When I have chosen the forum to be converted I get the error:

"Can not find data record in database table forumng"

Any ideas where I should start to look? Is this a known bug?

Julian

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by Hendry Sudarmono - Wednesday, 23 May 2012, 1:14 PM

Are you gonna make a forum that user can reply your post?

You cannot make it with a standard news forum, you can hide it, and make a new custom forum, it works...

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Re: ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9)

by sam marshall - Wednesday, 23 May 2012, 5:18 PM

Hi Julian, thanks for reporting this.

We developed and used the 'convert forum' feature in Moodle 1.9, and although we have converted the code to Moodle 2 along with the rest, we've never actually used it since conversion. (Because when we moved to Moodle 2, we were starting from scratch and already had ForumNG, so there was nothing to convert.)

So, unfortunately, it is probably broken.

If you can give specific steps to reproduce starting from an empty course with default settings, that would be useful - please report this as a bug in an appropriate tracker. (At present, we're gradually moving toward using the GitHub issue tracker for the plugins I look after, so that would be the best place.)

Once a bug is filed, we may fix it when there is time - better still would be if anyone has time to fix it themselves and send us a patch, that would be great.

--sam

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MyMoodle showing posts to grouped ForumNGs

by Charlie MacFadyen - Thursday, 30 August 2012, 9:32 PM

We just switched over to ForumNG (3.7, Moodle 1.97). We use groupings to have separate forums for our faculty departments within a larger faculty "course." So, for example, an English teacher doesn't see activity in the Math Department forum. What's happening is that people are being notified (on MyMoodle) of new posts in any of the ForumNGs-- even ones attached to groupings that they don't belong to. When we used standard forums, people would only be notified of activity on the forums belonging to their groups. Is this fix-able?

Thanks in advance.

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Re: MyMoodle showing posts to grouped ForumNGs

by Charlie MacFadyen - Monday, 10 September 2012, 11:48 PM

Here's an update on what we've tried :

In the file: moodle/mod/forumng/lib.php (around line 235), we added the code in red below, because faculty are only subscribed to the forums they need.

if ( $forum->display_subscribe_options()==forum::FULLY_SUBSCRIBED && $forum->has_unread_discussions())

This resulted in no forums at all showing up in MyMoodle with unread posts.

Also, in mod_forumng.php, we found the display_subscribe_options() function and set the default to true, as described here:

 /**
 * Displays subscribe options for this forum.
 * @param bool $expectquery True if we expect this to make a DB query
 * @return string HTML code for subscribe information section
 */
    public function display_subscribe_options($expectquery = true) {

Still no luck. Any thoughts?

Thanks!!

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