User blog: Helen Foster

Password policy enabled on upgrade

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:19:19 GMT

A heads up for anyone upgrading to the latest Moodle 1.9.6+, you'll find the password policy (in Site Administration > Security > Site policies) has been enabled and admins will be prompted to change their password on next login. Thus, if your site is for testing purposes only, you may wish to disable the password policy.

Password salting

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:01:07 GMT

Today I have been learning about password salting, a method of making encrypted passwords more secure and practically impossible to crack. Please see the documentation Password salting for the collected wisdom of posters in the forum discussion Moodle Salting and in our developer chat.

Elsewhere in Moodle Docs, I loved a talk page comment regarding a typo fix from documentation writer Chris Collman to Tim Hunt:

Keep doing the heavy lifting, sometimes I will find a grain of sand to put in the right place.

Moodle benefits from OU developers

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:58:13 GMT

A couple of weeks ago I came across an interesting report about the Open University (OU) and Moodle, The Open University UK: creating a win-win situation by sharing code and content. The report explained how cooperating with the worldwide Moodle community resulted in everyone benefiting.

Following his return to the UK after working at Moodle HQ in Perth for twelve months, Quiz module maintainer Tim Hunt has continued to contribute to Moodle in lots of areas. In addition to writing the documentation Development:Security, Tim has recently created a Custom SQL queries admin report.

OU wiki, OU blog and conditional activities developer Sam Marshall has recently announced ForumNG (new alternative forum for moodle 1.9). Like Tim, Sam is also a particularly helpful Moodler in the Using Moodle forums. For details of what other OU developers are currently working on, please see Sam's development update blog post.

A big thank you to all the OU team for their contributions to Moodle.

Moodle.org forums Code of Conduct

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:00:44 GMT

I'm sure you all agree with me that we're very fortunate to be part of such a friendly and welcoming community on moodle.org.

However, newcomers (over a thousand every day according to moodle.org/stats!) don't always realise the unwritten forum rules that we choose to abide by and sometimes post in the wrong forum, or post the same question in several forums, or use "Please help me" as the subject line of their post etc.

Thus we've decided it would be a good plan to document our forum rules and moderation procedures, and so I've come up with a draft Moodle.org forums Code of Conduct. Comments on the draft are very welcome - please post in the Moodle.org design forum or use Talk:Moodle.org forums Code of Conduct.

Moodle 2.0 QA testing

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:41:47 GMT

This week I've made a start on setting up tests in the Moodle Tracker for our Moodle QA / functional testing - see MDLQA. (Thanks to Jerome Mouneyrac for figuring out how to use Jira as a Test Case Management Software and to Martin for creating the project.)

Up to now, we've not had any organised testing of Moodle features prior to the release of a new version. We're hoping for lots of help from the community to ensure Moodle 2.0 is the best release yet!

If you're wondering when Moodle 2.0 is likely to be released, the answer can be found in our Administration FAQ together with links to further information.

Over 120 thousand Moodle downloads last month!

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:18:17 GMT

Our latest monthly download statistics show that Moodle is more popular than ever!

Following the release of Moodle 1.9.6 and 1.8.10, the download figures for October 2009 rose to a record high of 127052 downloads! (Note that this figure is just for packages downloaded from moodle.org/downloads and does not include site updates via a CVS mirror server as described in CVS for Administrators.)

For more statistics, including proportions of registered sites using different versions of Moodle (with a surprising number still using 1.5.x) please see moodle.org/stats.

Last day of Moodle 1.7.x

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:54:48 GMT

Today is the last day of MOODLE_17_STABLE in the Moodle Tracker. As Martin mentioned in the moodle.org news back in February, New releases: Moodle 1.9.4, 1.8.8, 1.7.7 and 1.6.9,

Moodle 1.6.9 and Moodle 1.7.7 mark the last builds that the core team plan to release from those branches… please upgrade to later versions!

For anyone interested, our process of dropping support for older stable branches is detailed in Development:Stable branch support.

Keeping your site up-to-date is highly recommended in order to keep your site secure. Also recommended is to regularly run the Security overview report in Site Administration > Reports > Security overview (source: Hacked site recovery).

Farewell to Moodle HQ developer

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:47:06 GMT

Today Moodle HQ says farewell to developer Nicolas Connault.

Nicolas joined Moodle HQ almost three years ago in December 2006. His work has included unit testing, the Moodle 1.9 gradebook, gradebook improvements in Moodle 1.9.5, blog improvements for Moodle 2.0 (MDL-19676) and over 350 bug fixes!

In addition to writing code, Nicolas has been a particularly helpful Moodler in the Using Moodle forums, a mentor for Google Summer of Code in 2007 and 2008, a documentation writer, and has added variety and artistic appreciation to our developer chat through his observations and daily photos.

A big thank you to Nicolas for his contribution to Moodle and best wishes for his return to university next year.

The story of blogs in Moodle

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:33:54 GMT

For those of you interested in some Moodle history, blogs arrived in Moodle in version 1.6, based on the work of Daryl Hawes. Since they were added, the lack of a blog comments option has been discussed at length (see Blogs, Forums and the nature of discussion and Blogs and comments) and as a result, blog comments will be included in Moodle 2.0.

In Moodle 1.7 it became possible to limit blogging to specific users by setting up a Blogger role.

Last year the Open University in the UK released their own blog module, the OU blog, which allows for course and group blogs.

In addition to blog comments, Moodle 2.0 will include a number of other blog improvements (see MDL-19676), such as support for external blogs and blog associations (based on the GSOC 2008 project Blog improvements by Joey Morwick).

As for my own blog on moodle.org, I’ve just moved it to helenfoster.wordpress.com where I’m enjoying discovering lots of cool WordPress features. Feel free to comment on any of my blog posts there!

New Moodle language pack – Dhivehi

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:15:31 GMT

Moodle has a new language pack, Dhivehi, thanks to translators Ahmed Shareef, Moosa Ali, Amir Hussein and translation coordinator Koen Roggemans.

According to the Wikipedia article, Dhivehi language, Dhivehi is the official language of the Maldives and is spoken by around 350,000 people. The word atoll (meaning a ring of coral islands or reefs) comes from the Dhivehi word atolhu.

You can easily install Dhivehi, or any other language pack, on your Moodle site via Site Administration > Language > Language packs. Even if you have no need for additional languages, you can still make use of Moodle’s language editing facility to change a word or phrase on your site. Please see the Language FAQ for details.

Meeting moodlefairy

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:44:13 GMT

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting up with particularly helpful Moodler Mary Cooch on a visit to Brussels in Belgium.

Mary, from Preston in the UK, is a real teacher at heart – she loves helping others and sharing her knowledge. A self-confessed “Moodle addict”, Mary is extremely active in the Using Moodle forums and in the Lounge, where she is a facilitator.

Mary has also written a book Moodle for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds and her Moodle Blog contains a wealth of Moodle how-to videos.

A big thank you to Mary and to all our particularly helpful Moodlers for their contributions to the Moodle community.

Moodle 1.9.7 supports IMS CC import

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:56:21 GMT

If Moodle interoperability matters to you, you'll be pleased to hear that Moodle 1.9.7 onwards supports IMS Common Cartridge import. Congratulations and a big thank you to Moodle Partner UVCMS and Eloy Lafuente for their development work (MDL-20591).

In case you're wondering why IMS CC has been added to 1.9.7 rather than 1.9.6, this is because there's currently a code freeze on the 1.9 stable branch. However, you'll be able to obtain this new feature in the first 1.9.6+ weekly build following the 1.9.6 release!

IMS CC import has been added as an experimental feature in 1.9, as it requires additional testing and bug-fixing. Help with testing is always appreciated! As for other experimental features, it may be enabled via Site Administration > Miscellaneous > Experimental.

Further IMS CC support is planned for Moodle 2.0. Please see Development:IMS common cartridge for details.

Most participatory courses on moodle.org

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 06:36:26 GMT

Moodle.org has a new community discussion course, Moodle in Cambodia. The language of Cambodia, Khmer, is considered to have the longest alphabet in the world (source: Khmer script) and computers don't generally have the font pre-installed.

For interest, here are the top 10 most participatory courses (views/posts) on moodle.org in the last four weeks:

(Source: Site Administration > Reports > Course overview.)

For information on how the list of most participatory courses is calculated, see the documentation Course overview reports.

Moodle is certified SCORM 1.2 compliant

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:27:13 GMT

In case you've not yet noticed, an ADL certified SCORM 1.2 logo is now displayed on the front page of moodle.org. After months of waiting, Moodle 1.9.5 has finally been certified SCORM 1.2 compliant (MDL-19706)! Congratulations and a big thank you to Piers Harding and Dan Marsden for all their work on the SCORM module.

If you're into Moodle trivia, you may be interested in the following. Last week in our developer chat, Martin was asked which font was used for the Moodle logo. His answer was 'Soul Papa'.

Cool Course Competition opening soon!

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:17:09 GMT

A while ago I mentioned that we were planning a Cool Course Competition to encourage more people to donate courses for our Moodle demo site and to start building our demo community hub for Moodle 2.0. Three months on, a Cool Course Competition site has finally been set up (thanks to Jordan, our Moodle HQ system administrator) and we're almost ready to open the competition!

The Cool Course Competition site is networked with moodle.org so if you're logged in to moodle.org you can visit the site without being required to create an account or login. The Cool Course Competition site is now included in the list of moodle.org connected sites and already 15 people have taken a look!

We still have a few details about the competition to finalize, such as prizes, before the competition opens. If you have any comments or suggestions, please add them to the Cool Course Competition talk page in Moodle Docs.

Seven new particularly helpful Moodlers

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:39:24 GMT

Three months ago I received a message from Colin Fraser asking whether he could start a page in Moodle Docs called 'Beginning Administration FAQ'. Of course my answer was "Yes please!" as everyone is welcome to contribute to our documentation wiki.

Beginning Administration FAQ grew very quickly and so Colin started another page Beginning Administration 2 FAQ with further advice for new Moodle administrators.

Naturally Colin is now included in the documentation writers group in Using Moodle and was recently added to the particularly helpful Moodlers group too, based on his forum posts being rated as 'useful'.

A big thank you to Colin and all our documentation writers and particularly helpful Moodlers for the valuable user support they provide. From updating the Community credits, I found that seven new people have become particularly helpful Moodlers in the last two months!

Moodle features list

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:37:23 GMT

This week I've been working on a list of Moodle features in a format suitable for setting up test cases. We'd like Moodle 2.0 to be extremely well tested during the beta period, so the plan is to ask the Moodle community for help with user testing in addition to running unit tests.

Moodle Docs also includes a page describing Moodle's features for people new to Moodle: Features. The page urgently needs updating though. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Moodle 1.9.6 coming soon!

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:20:00 GMT

In case you missed Martin's recent post Heads-up for 1.9.6 - code freeze coming, Moodle 1.9.6 is due to be released very soon, most likely in a fortnight's time. Please see the 1.9.6 release notes for an evolving list of highlights.

I noticed lots of recently resolved issues in this week's code review had patches attached. A big thank you to Daniel Neis Araujo, Sean Farrell, Oliver Rahs, Oleg Sychev, Nick Freear, Lucian DiPeso and many other patch providers for helping with Moodle development.

Moodle accessibility report

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:44:04 GMT

Last week Moodle developers were given a really useful resource for helping improve the accessibility of Moodle - a report on Moodle accessibility undertaken by Randall Hansen on behalf of the CANnext consortium, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and supported by the Carroll Center for the Blind and the Washington State School for the Blind. See the discussion Results of my Moodle accessibility study for a link to the report and MDL-20409 for the list of issues raised in the report.

The report raises many excellent points, such as recommending that the most accessible option should be the default. Lots of food for thought for the Moodle community!

Resources for new developers

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:35:07 GMT

If you're thinking of developing a new module for Moodle, you'll be interested in the latest addition to our developer documentation - the NEWMODULE documentation, thanks to Daniele Cordella. The comprehensive documentation includes a tutorial, a reference, FAQ and even information on adding capabilities.

Another useful resource for new developers is the course Introduction to Moodle Programming which guides users through the process of developing a new block.

A big thank you to all our experienced Moodle developers who have written documentation to help new developers. It's great that the Moodle community is so friendly and welcoming!

Moodle errors in spelling

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:50:16 GMT

One of my weekly tasks as Moodle community manager is to respond to messages sent via the moodle.org contact form. Occasionally users logged in as a guest submit a message which I am unable to reply to if an email address is not provided. Yesterday I received one such message:

Moodle errors in spelling

Dear Moodle Support,

Our district is using Moodle as a support for our teachers and staff. It is a Wonderful resource; however, enrollment should have two (l's). Our students found the error when the logged on. Please be advised and try to correct these spelling mistakes.

Of course this is a frequently asked question which is answered in the Enrolment FAQ. As people continue to ask the same question, I wonder if things could be made clear elsewhere. If you have any ideas, please post them in a Using Moodle forum.

GHOP contest for 13-18 year olds coming soon!

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:15:25 GMT

Remember the Google Highly Open Participation (GHOP) contest in 2007/08? The contest, for 13-18 year olds, gave participants the opportunity to learn more about and contribute to various aspects of open source software development. Around 100 Moodle tasks were completed by 50 students - see GHOP/2007 for the list.

Google are planning on running GHOP (perhaps with a new name!) again this year, starting in early December. However, they are currently asking for help with testing and documenting the new system 'Melange'. Please see the GHOP meeting summary discussion for details.

Finally, if you have any ideas for Moodle tasks suitable for the contest, please add them to Development:Task ideas.

Particularly helpful Moodlers identified in community discussion courses on moodle.org

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:05:33 GMT

Thanks to Eloy, the scripts for automatically populating groups in Using Moodle are now available for all other community discussion courses on moodle.org.

Core developers are developers with write access to part or all of cvs:/moodle.
Translators are developers with write access to cvs:/lang.
Moodle Partners group membership is copied from the Moodle Partners group in Using Moodle. (Please let me know if you should be in this group but have been missed out, as I'm responsible for adding users to this group manually!)
Particularly helpful Moodlers are users who have written a lot of useful posts recently in the forums, as determined by the Moodle community when they rate posts. For example, Moodle en Español has a group Moodlers de gran ayuda and most recently, Moodle en français has a group Moodleurs particulièrement utiles.

If you're a community discussion course facilitator and would like any of these groups in your course, please create a Moodle.org Sites issue in the Moodle Tracker about it.

If you're wondering how group icons are added next to users' forum posts on moodle.org, please see the create group documentation.

Demos of new features in Moodle 2.0

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:32:53 GMT

Our online developer meeting last Friday was packed with demonstrations of new features coming in Moodle 2.0, including the navigation and settings blocks (thanks to Sam Hemelryk and Tim Hunt), the TaskChain module, a replacement for the HotPot module (thanks to Gordon Bateson), and the new Workshop module (thanks to David Mudrák).

Thanks to everyone who participated in the meeting, especially those who had to get up early or stay up late, and to Dan Poltawski who logged in whilst on holiday in Tenerife!

If you missed the meeting, Developer meeting September 2009 contains a recording link. Meeting notes will be available soon.

Mathematics and Understanding Moodle demo courses

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:39:14 GMT

If you fancy having a play with some of Moodle's features, please visit our Moodle demonstration site, which now contains courses in eleven different languages!

The German course category includes four Mathematics courses developed and donated by Christina Russu. The courses make use of the TeX notation filter to display mathematical symbols.

The latest course to be added to the site is Understanding Moodle, donated by Stuart Mealor of HRDNZ, one of our Moodle Partners. The course is media-rich, with several movies, and also includes a couple of interesting lesson activities.

If you have a course illustrating some of Moodle's many features which you'd like to donate for use on demo.moodle.org, please see Moodle demo courses for details of the process.

Moodle HQ welcomes another developer

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:07:45 GMT

I'm pleased to announce that our Moodle HQ team in Perth has a new member - developer Rossiani Wijaya. Rossiani has already been assigned several 1.9 bugs to investigate, though the HQ page is still awaiting a photo of her in front of a Moodle orange wall.

Please note that we're still looking for another developer and a project manager. For details of these positions, see the adverts Moodle developer and Moodle technical project manager in our Moodle Jobs database.

Moodle 2.0 progress updates

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:17:41 GMT

If you're interested in how Moodle 2.0 is coming along, you can track our current progress in the Moodle 2.0 planning document. (Please note the disclaimer at the bottom though: "This document is subject to change, and does not necessarily reflect the full picture. Details may be completely wrong....")

Martin has been updating the document this week, and asked in our developer chat for everyone to check it and make sure the estimates are correct for any projects we're involved in. Martin also mentioned that the stuff at the bottom of the document is liable to get cut if we run out of time!

As well as developing Moodle 2.0, the stable versions 1.8.9 and 1.9.5 need to be maintained. In the last couple of days I've been chatting with Eloy about ways of improving our bug triaging process in order to deal with Moodle Tracker issues more efficiently. If you have any comments or suggestions, please add them to Development talk:Bug triage.

Two hundred Moodle developers with write access

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:48:24 GMT

I'm pleased to announce that Moodle now has two hundred developers with CVS write access! We aim for a transparent and open development process and welcome contributions from the whole user community.

CVS stands for 'Concurrent Versioning System', a commonly-used way of managing source code for large software projects. CVS keeps all versions of all files so that nothing is ever lost, and usage by different people is tracked. It also provides ways to merge code if two or more people are working on the same file. All code and all versions are stored in a central repository (source: Development:CVS for developers).

In addition to Moodle's source code cvs.moodle.org/moodle, the CVS repository also includes areas for contributed code cvs.moodle.org/contrib and for language packs cvs.moodle.org/lang. Thanks to our contrib coordinator, Anthony Borrow, and our translation coordinator, Koen Roggemans, for managing access to these areas.

According to the software metrics site, Ohloh, the contrib folder contains well over a million lines of code (source: https://www.ohloh.net/p/moodle_contrib). For further details of contrib, please see Development:contrib.

Navigation in Moodle 2.0

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:59:28 GMT

This morning I had chance to check out the work Sam Hemelryk has been doing on navigation for Moodle 2.0 (MDL-14632). The new navigation system looks fabulous! The blocks for navigation and settings can even be converted to side panel tabs to save space.

If you're interested in trying things out yourself, please visit the test site - test.moodle.org/nav (login with username test and password test). As always, feedback is much appreciated. Please add a comment to MDL-14632.

In the Using Moodle forums the discussion What are the components of an exemplary high school Moodle course? is still going strong, with lots more useful suggestions. I also came across a discussion Probably will not use Moodle which reminded me of how friendly and welcoming the Moodle community is.

Congratulations to our GSOC 2009 students

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 16:09:55 GMT

I'm very pleased to report that our GSOC students, Andrei, Jose, Olli, Mihai and Alberto, have passed their final evaluations with flying colours! Congratulations everyone, and thanks, as always, to our mentors.

We're currently setting up test sites for several of the projects and evaluating the code for possible inclusion in HEAD.

Please see GSOC/2009 for test site links plus links to developer blogs in which each of our students have written a summary of their summer of code working with Moodle.

Moodle4Mac for PPC

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:19:25 GMT

A few days ago I received a nice surprise from Ralf Krause:

Dear Helen,

it's your birthday ... yes ... really!

I built a new version Moodle4Mac with XAMPP. XAMPP 1.7.2 for Mac OS X is the newest product from Apache Friends and it works on a PPC prossessor. You will find the download on the Moodle server. Look at http://download.moodle.org/macosx ... I hope you will like it!

Moodle4Mac is a product of your German Moodle Partner Moodleschule e.V.

Best regards, Ralf

Thus, the good news for anyone using a Mac with a PPC processor is that there is now a Moodle4Mac 2.0 dev package they can use! A big thank you to Ralf for building and maintaining the Moodle4Mac packages.

The Moodle for Mac OS X packages and the Moodle packages for Windows help people without access to a web server to easily install Moodle on their computer.

Happy Birthday to Moodle and Martin!

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:10:23 GMT

Happy Birthday to our open source course management system, Moodle, and to Moodle's founder and lead developer, Martin!

Moodle is 7 years old today! Please post your birthday greetings here: Happy Birthday to Moodle and Martin!

If you're interested in Moodle's history, please see

Moodle origins discussion in which Martin explains how he came up with the name 'Moodle'
Question on Moodle date of birth discussion
Internet Archive Wayback Machine search for moodle.org with links to how the site looked at various times since 2002 (July 2002 screenshot below)

Migrating from Blackboard to Moodle

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 09:33:39 GMT

Last week I came across a couple of interesting presentations by Jonathon Sweetin and Tina Farmer of Pitt Community College describing their experiences of migrating from Blackboard to Moodle - The Whole Kit and Caboodle on Moodle and An LMS By Any Other Name... Both links are to entries in the Moodle Buzz, our database of Moodle news and publications from around the world. A further entry of interest to anyone considering migrating from Blackboard is the Final 2009 Report of the University of North Carolina LMS Evaluation Committee.

For additional information on migrating from Blackboard to Moodle, please see the Blackboard migration documentation.

Moodle HQ welcomes long-time Moodler

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:01:26 GMT

I'm pleased to announce that our Moodle HQ team now includes another European member - long-time Moodler David Mudrák.

David has developed several contributed modules, including the popular Stamp collection module, and is currently rewriting the Workshop module for Moodle 2.0 (see the discussion Workshop 2.0 screeshots for the latest developments). In addition, David is a Czech language pack maintainer and runs the Czech Moodle community site moodle.cz. David has been around on moodle.org for quite some time - more than 6½ years according to his profile!

David will be working from the same office as fellow-Czech Petr Škoda (skodak). I hear that David has already started painting the office walls an orange colour to match Moodle HQ in Perth!

The story of the database activity module

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:45:22 GMT

Today I finally got around to renaming and recategorising database documentation pages about the database module to 'Database activity module'. Hopefully this will reduce confusion between the activity module and Moodle's underlying database.

The database activity module, which enables students to create, maintain and search a bank of record entries, was added to Moodle 1.6 by Martin D. It became popular overnight and so was added to Moodle 1.5.4 too.

The database activity module was heavily tested on moodle.org via three front page activities - the Modules and plugins database, the Themes database and the Moodle Buzz database. The creation of a database for 'all known Moodle modules, hacks and plugins' was extremely well-received by the Moodle community, as prior to then, contributed code had been scattered across Using Moodle as forum post attachments.

A presets feature was added to the database activity module in Moodle 1.7, allowing database activities to be easily shared. A variety of presets are available for download from the database for databases in the Moodle Exchange.

What does the future hold for the database activity module? As it's quite similar to the glossary module, it has been suggested that glossary data could be ported to the database module and the glossary module removed from Moodle. (Source: Some feedback on the database module in 1.6dev)

Ten new particularly helpful Moodlers

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:18:09 GMT

Last week I received a lovely message from Colin Matheson, who'd just become a particularly helpful Moodler:

"I am super happy to achieved this lofty designation. Moodle.org is the greatest online community: developers+IT+teachers in a big mish mash of positive intentions."

Particularly helpful Moodlers are people have written a lot of "useful" posts in the Using Moodle forums recently, as determined by the Moodle community when they rate posts.

Our Community credits page lists particularly helpful Moodlers past and present. In the last two months, ten new people became particularly helpful Moodlers. A big thank you to everyone who helps in the Moodle community by answering forum posts.

If you're wondering how icons such as the PHM 'M' are displayed next to forum posts in the Using Moodle forums, please see the Moodle.org FAQ.

Issue security levels

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:01:32 GMT

Did you know that the security level setting of an issue in the Moodle Tracker determines how many people can view it?

I knew that serious security issues could only be viewed by members of the security team (led by Petr Škoda) but I only discovered recently that the other security levels also restrict access.

The different security levels provide access as follows:

None - Viewable by everyone, including non-logged-in users
Could be a security issue - Viewable by all logged-in users
Minor security issue - Viewable by developers and testers only
Serious security issue - Viewable by members of the security team only

If you're not sure whether your issue is security-related or not, please report it in the tracker anyway. If you're not sure which security level to choose, select a higher level. The issue can then be reviewed by a member of the security team and if necessary the level changed (as happened for MDL-18996).

The reason for restricting access to security issues, is that Moodle practises responsible disclosure. This means we have a policy of disclosing all security issues that come to our attention, but only after we have solved the issue and given registered Moodle sites time to upgrade or patch their installations. (Source: Moodle security procedures)

If you have a non-security-related issue, then the more people who can view it the better.

"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" (Linus's law)

GSOC projects nearing completion

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 13:31:40 GMT

With less than a fortnight to go till the official GSOC 'pencils down' date (17 August 2009), our students, Andrei, Jose, Olli, Mihai and Alberto, are well on their way to completing their projects.

This year, for the first time, we've encouraged students to keep a blog of their progress. See GSOC/2009 for blog links together with links to tracker issues and discussions about the projects. As always, comments and feedback are much appreciated.

Thanks to our moodle.org sys admin

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:34:51 GMT

Last Friday, 31st July, was System Administrator Appreciation Day. A belated big thank you to our moodle.org system administrator Jordan Tomkinson for looking after all our servers so well.

Moodle server availability info can be found on http://moodle.org/stats/network.php together with info on the availability of CVS mirror servers.

Last Friday was also the last day of Moodle 1.6.x in the Moodle Tracker (MDLSITE-737). As Martin D mentioned in the moodle.org news six months ago, New releases: Moodle 1.9.4, 1.8.8, 1.7.7 and 1.6.9, "Moodle 1.6.9 and Moodle 1.7.7 mark the last builds that the core team plan to release from those branches... please upgrade to later versions!"

Two new jobs offered at Moodle HQ

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:20:32 GMT

Looking for a job working with Moodle? Or perhaps you have a vacancy for someone with Moodle skills? If so, our large Moodle Jobs database, with over 120 adverts, may have exactly what you're looking for.

Looking for a job working with Moodle in Perth, Australia? We're currently advertising for two new positions at Moodle HQ - a Moodle developer and a Moodle technical project manager. Both jobs provide the opportunity to work as part of a fabulous team, with a really cool boss - Martin D!

Moodle logos galore

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:38:16 GMT

Looking for a Moodle logo to use in an article or presentation? A new page on moodle.org: Moodle Logos (in the Downloads dropdown menu) now provides download links for various sizes of logo and desktop wallpaper.

If you wish to show the world you support Moodle, please visit our Moodle Shop (in the Community dropdown menu) for t-shirts, mugs and even teddy bears sporting the Moodle logo! A percentage of all sales from the Moodle Shop goes towards Moodle development.

The Moodle wiki story

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:59:02 GMT

There was an interesting discussion in the Lounge last week entitled Why Mediawiki Instead of Moodles Wiki Module for docs.moodle.org? As this question has been asked quite a few times, I decided to add it, together with some of the answers in the thread, to the Moodle.org FAQ.

The current Moodle wiki module, ewiki, based on the ErfurtWiki, was integrated in Moodle by Michael Schneider and Mike Churchward. Rather than trying to keep maintaining the complex code, it was decided that ewiki should be replaced in Moodle 2.0 with either NWiki, developed by Ludo (Marc Alier) and his team in Spain, or the OU wiki, developed by Sam Marshall of the Open University in the UK.

The Moodle community was asked to vote for the wiki they would like in Moodle 2.0 by means of a vote and a discussion Voting on NWiki vs OUWiki. NWiki received the highest number of votes and is now listed in the Roadmap as the wiki for 2.0. Thanks to both Ludo and his team and to Sam for developing wiki modules for Moodle.

Moodle Exchange samples now available

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:11:11 GMT

Have you ever visited the Moodle Exchange and wondered whether any of the databases, glossaries and quizzes on offer might be suitable for including in your courses? Thanks to Paula Clough, you can now check out many of the activities from the Moodle Exchange in the Exchange Samples course on demo.moodle.org.

If you're looking for ideas on how to improve your courses in Moodle, the discussion What are the components of an exemplary high school Moodle course? has an increasing number of useful suggestions.

Moodle course showcasing quiz with questions created by students

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:36:06 GMT

I'm pleased to announce that demo.moodle.org now has two more demonstration courses - in Arabic and Persian. These courses provide the opportunity for Moodle developers to test support of right-to-left languages. A big thank you to all our Moodle features demo course translators.

A new course in Dutch has also been added to the site - ICT en samenleving (thanks to Koen Roggemans). The course showcases a number of Moodle features including wiki activities with history, a random glossary entry block and even a quiz containing questions created by students (after assigning them the role of question creator).

If you have a course illustrating some of Moodle's many features which you'd like to donate for use on demo.moodle.org, please see Moodle demo courses for details of what to do.

Moodle books help support Moodle development

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:44:39 GMT

Yesterday I added a new book to the Moodle Books database - Moodle 1.9 Multimedia by João Fernandes.

Remember, if you buy a book by following a 'Buy this book' link in the Moodle Books database, you're helping support Moodle development, since a percentage of all sales from the database goes to the Moodle Trust.

If you're interested in writing a Moodle book yourself, you may like to check out the recent Lounge discussion Packt invites Moodle book ideas and authors.

Packt has published six Moodle books to-date. A further book Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching by Jeff Stanford is due to be released in a couple of months time.

GSOC students pass their mid-term evaluations

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:16:18 GMT

I'm very pleased to report that our GSOC students, Andrei, Jose, Olli, Mihai and Alberto, have all passed their mid-term evaluations with flying colours! Congratulations everyone, and a big thank you to our super mentors.

Our students now have another month to complete their projects. After a final evaluation period, the results of GSOC 2009 will be announced on 25 August 2009.

Please help our GSOC students by providing comments and feedback about their projects. See GSOC/2009 for all discussion and tracker issue links.

Moodle twitter

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:07:36 GMT

It seems that an increasing number of people are twittering about Moodle! TweetMeme, a twitter links aggregation service, have set up a Moodle channel moodle.tweetmeme.com for following all the latest Moodle tweets.

As mentioned previously, useful forum posts are shared via twitter.com/moodle. If you're interested in Moodle development, you may wish to follow twitter.com/moodledev. I use twitter.com/moodlehelen to tweet about Moodle community news.

If you're into twitter, why not edit your profile on moodle.org and add your twitter ID and the twitter tag as an interest.

More Moodle demo courses

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:15:39 GMT

Following my request for features demo course translations (MDLSITE-767), I'm pleased to announce that demo.moodle.org now has demonstration courses in Spanish, German, Russian and Korean (in addition to English!) - see the Moodle demonstrations course category.

Would you like to translate the Moodle features demo course into your language? Or perhaps you have a real course which nicely illustrates some of Moodle's features, which you'd like to offer for hosting on demo.moodle.org? If so, please see Moodle demo courses for details of what to do.

If you're looking for ideas on how to improve your courses in Moodle, you'll probably be interested in the discussion What are the components of an exemplary high school Moodle course? started by long-time Moodler Art Lader.

Most active courses on moodle.org

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:37:56 GMT

This week I've been visiting each of the community discussion courses on moodle.org whilst working on MDLSITE-422 and MDLSITE-767. A big thank you to all moodle.org course facilitators for their wonderful work - see Community credits for the list.

For interest, here are the top 10 most active courses on moodle.org in the last four weeks:

(Source: Administration > Reports > Course overview. If anyone knows what the activity figures in the most active courses table represent, please add it to the documentation Course overview reports!)

Tags in Moodle

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:30:53 GMT

For interest, here's a brief version of 'The story of tags in Moodle':

Tags were first introduced with blogs in Moodle 1.6.

Interests, tag pages, Flickr and Youtube blocks and other tag improvements were added to Moodle 1.9 as part of the GSOC 2007 project Social Networking features (MDL-10169).

Further tag improvements were planned for 1.9 and 2.0 - see MDL-13404. However the issue assignee Mathieu Petit-Clair is unfortunately no longer working for Moodle HQ, and so these improvements are currently on hold.

What does the future hold for tags in Moodle? As always, further development depends upon funding and developer availability. Another important factor is community feedback.

Are tags important to you? If so, please vote for / comment on tag issues, discuss tags in the Using Moodle forums and create new tracker issues as required. See also Development:New feature ideas.

Coming soon: The Cool Course Competition!

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:53:20 GMT

We're currently planning a Cool Course Competition to encourage more people to donate great courses for our Moodle demo site (MDLSITE-744). Please see Moodle demo courses and Development:Cool Course Competition for more details. Comments and suggestions about how the competition should be organised would be most welcome!

People often ask in the Using Moodle forums for sample Moodle courses. The recent discussion Sample Moodle courses for k-12? contains various useful links.

MoodleMoot hash tags

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:05:24 GMT

Having read the article Cannot Get to a Conference? Get on Twitter (thanks to my twitter mentor for the link), I've just checked that all the upcoming events in the moodle.org calendar include a hash tag, and have updated the list of tags in use in Standard Moodle tags.

If you can't manage to attend one of our upcoming MoodleMoots, you can always get live news reports instead by monitoring the event's hash tag!

Rating useful forum posts

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:24:50 GMT

Have you ever considered rating any useful forum posts in Using Moodle? Here are my reasons for doing so:

Ratings make useful posts easily identifiable for others browsing the forums.
Ratings provide feedback for forum posters.
Particularly helpful Moodlers are calculated based on forum ratings.
Useful posts are highlighted in the recently rated posts block on the Using Moodle course page (which uses the RSS feed from http://moodle.org/useful).
Useful posts are shared via http://twitter.com/moodle. (As a recent twitter convert, I especially appreciate the value of this!)

New demo course - Romeo and Juliet

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:46:06 GMT

I'm pleased to announce that demo.moodle.org now has a new course - Romeo and Juliet Sample Unit - thanks to Lesli Smith of Moodlerooms.

The course includes a variety of activities, and course participants are arranged into two groups, Montagues and Capulets.

Our demonstration site provides the opportunity for you to explore some of Moodle's features as a student, teacher or administrator. It's no problem if you make a mess, as the whole site is reset to a clean state every hour. The site is regularly updated and is currently using Moodle 1.9.5+.

If you don't have a separate Moodle site for testing, then demo.moodle.org is a good place for checking whether a certain bug affects all Moodle sites, or just yours, and whether a bug has been fixed in the latest stable release of Moodle.

GSOC student progress - part 2

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:04:02 GMT

Following on from my blog entry yesterday about how our GSOC students are doing...

Olli Savolainen, our usability specialist, has a Moodle Tracker meta-issue MDL-19586 for his project Moodle UI consistency improvements and has written some progressive disclosure guidelines in addition to being active in the Using Moodle forums.

Mihai Sucan has been busy making lots of changes under the hood of PaintWeb as part of his Paint tool project. See Mihai's blog post PaintWeb has a new user interface for details and have a play with the latest PaintWeb demo!

GSOC student progress - part 1

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:36:38 GMT

With a fortnight to go till the GSOC mid-term evaluation period, I've been taking a look at how some of our students are doing.

Alberto J Varela has created his first patch for offline integration (MDL-19286) as part of his Google Gears integration and has described his work in his blog post First patch and exams.

Andrei Băutu has posted some initial screenshots of his record audio repository plugin in his blog post First glimpse.

Jose Cedeno has chosen a name for his Blog-style course format - 'Timeline', and has been joining in a number of discussions in the general developer forum.

Please see GSOC/2009 for links to discussions, tracker issues and developer blogs for all our GSOC projects.

Moodle Exchange

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:08:32 GMT

Looking for inspiration for your Moodle course? Or perhaps you have a great glossary or other activity which you'd like to share? If so, please check out the Moodle Exchange, where you'll find databases of glossaries, database templates, Scorm packages, quizzes and even courses. A big thank you to Paula Clough and Dan Marsden for developing and facilitating the Moodle Exchange.

We can look forward in future to being able to share courses very easily via a community hub. See the community hub specification for full details.

Tuesday testing again

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 17:04:23 GMT

Today, as part of our weekly code review, I tested a wiki interlinking bug which has been around since the wiki module was added to Moodle 1.4 - Wiki redirects to http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki? (MDL-19460).

The current wiki module is based on the Erfurt wiki. However, as listed in our Roadmap, it's due to be replaced in Moodle 2.0 by a new wiki, Nwiki.

Oklahoma MoodleMoot

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:07:29 GMT

I've just returned from a wonderful week at the Oklahoma MoodleMoot where I met many amazing people. The Moot was special in that there were lots of new Moodlers, so the hands-on sessions were particularly popular. It was great to be able to talk with new Moodlers about their first impressions of Moodle.

There were plenty of MoodleMoot OK tweets, and as a result I decided that I should begin twittering too - see twitter.com/moodlehelen.

A big thank you to everyone for making the Oklahoma MoodleMoot such a success, especially Matt Campbell for his superb organisation and Metro Technology Centers for hosting the event.

Stories from the Moodle community

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:08:36 GMT

This week I'm off to the Oklahoma MoodleMoot (#mootok09). I'm really looking forward to meeting lots of familiar faces from moodle.org, as well as chatting to newer Moodlers about their experiences.

I'll be sharing stories from the Moodle community in my presentation, including "Moodle millions?", "Spam - such a scandal!", "Which wiki?", "Moodle ecstasy", "Our Knight in shining armour", "Gradebook goings on", "Moodle and Microsoft" and "Resources revelations".

You can find lots more interesting stories about Moodle in the Moodle stories forum.

Moodle videos past and present

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:10:35 GMT

I've not yet had chance to see the infamous 1 hour 20 minutes video embedded in the general developer forum discussion Google Wave, but I have managed to watch several interesting videos recently by Moodlefairy aka Mary Cooch. Mary, a talented video creator, has set up a YouTube channel www.youtube.com/usingmoodle for all her videos. I particularly liked the video 'What can Moodle do for you?'

Another video I've enjoyed watching today was an interview with Martin D by Charles Severance of Sakai from 2005 (my first year of moodling) - Visiting with Martin Dougiamas. In the interview Martin answers a number of questions including 'When did you find your first really big helper?' and 'Has there ever been a situation when the community has mildly revolted?'

(Edited to remove the video link, as there seems to be a bug displaying it in this blog entry.)

A new language pack for Moodle

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:29:36 GMT

Moodle has a new language pack, Marathi, thanks to translator Usha Deo and translation coordinator Koen Roggemans.

According to the Wikipedia article Marathi language, Marathi is a language spoken by the Marathi people of south-western India, and the 15th most spoken language in the world.

Moodle has been translated into over 70 languages. According to download.moodle.org/lang, 'There are currently a total of 79 language packs', whereas Translation credits lists 75 languages. If you can figure out exactly how many language packs we have now, please let me know.

In our developer chat today, Tim Hunt was asking Martin D for a Pirate-English language pack for Moodle. Who would ever want a language pack full of 'Ahoy!', 'Aye aye!' and 'Arrr!'? I wondered to myself...

Particularly helpful Moodlers

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 08:35:22 GMT

I've just been updating the list of particularly helpful Moodlers in our Community credits. We have 13 more particularly helpful Moodlers since the last update six months ago. A big thank you to all our particularly helpful Moodlers past and present.

Particularly helpful Moodlers are people who have written a lot of useful posts in the Using Moodle forums, as determined by the Moodle community when they rate posts. The Particularly helpful Moodlers group was the first group to be created on moodle.org, hence the "group=1" in the URL. Members were originally added manually by Martin D or I, but nowadays it's calculated automatically based on a formula.

You can check recently rated posts via a block on the Using Moodle course page, which uses the RSS feed from moodle.org/useful. Useful posts are also available via twitter.com/moodle.

Amsterdam MoodleMoot

Thu, 28 May 2009 21:22:29 GMT

Yesterday I had an enjoyable and interesting time at MoodleMoot NL 2009 in Amsterdam. This is the fifth Dutch-language MoodleMoot, with the location alternating each year between Holland and Belgium.

In my presentation 'Moodle community op weg naar 2.0' I talked about some of the new features in Moodle 2.0 and about how the Moodle community can help 2.0 come sooner. Martin Langhoff gave an entertaining presentation about OLPC and Moodle, mentioning ideas for simplifying Moodle by removing lots of options. Another highlight for me was the presentation 'Mahara + Moodle = Mahoodle?' by Koen Roggemans and Richard van Iwaarden. Copies of many of the presentations are now available from MoodleMoot NL 2009 handouts.

A big thank you to everyone for making the Moot such a success, especially Ned-Moove, the Dutch language Moodle organisation, for organising everything (in just two months!) and to Pieter Nieuwland College for hosting the event. Meeting other Moodlers in person is always special.

Commenting in Moodle 2.0

Mon, 25 May 2009 12:53:34 GMT

The weekly Moodle HQ meeting this morning included discussion about a new item in our Moodle 2.0 Planning document - Comments 2.0 (MDL-19118). Dongsheng has been working on the Comments 2.0 specification. The plan is to be able to add comments almost everywhere in Moodle, for example to assignments, blog posts (MDL-8776), wiki pages, quiz questions, even to forum posts!

Creating a specification in Moodle Docs is an important part of the development process. Well done to David Mudrák on his recent Workshop 2.0 specification. According to Martin D, it's an example of an excellent spec.

Repositories in Moodle 2.0

Fri, 22 May 2009 12:07:08 GMT

I've finally got around to checking out the new repositories feature in Moodle 2.0, which allows users to browse external repositories such as Box.net, Flickr or Wikimedia, and select files to bring into Moodle. It's fabulous! Kudos to Dongsheng Cai, Jerome Mouneyrac, Martin D and everyone else who helped with development (MDL-13766).

There are currently 15 possible repository plugins to choose from, though lots more are planned (see MDL-16543). As a Google Docs user, I was pleased to see Google Docs in the list, thanks to Dan Poltawski and Dongsheng (MDL-16383).

If you're a developer thinking about writing your own repository plugin, please see the guide Development:Repository plugins.

Welcome to new Moodle HQ developer

Wed, 20 May 2009 15:03:16 GMT

This week we welcome a new developer to the Moodle HQ team in Perth - Sam Hemelryk.

One of Sam's first jobs is to make sure that every file in Moodle contains the GPL copyright statement at the top, plus a separate docblock, as described in Development:Coding style (MDL-19235).

It's official: Moodle 1.9.5 and 1.8.9 are now available! A big thank you to everyone who has helped with development, testing, feedback, bug reporting, QA, documentation etc.

Linking between the tracker and forums

Tue, 19 May 2009 15:09:03 GMT

Eloy reminded me the other day of the importance of linking between Moodle Tracker issues and forum discussions to ensure that developers and testers have the full picture.

It's easy to add a tracker issue link to a forum post - simply type the issue number and the tracker issue auto-linking filter will do the rest. Adding a tracker issue link to a forum post encourages others to watch, vote for and/or comment on the issue.

If you're looking for a challenge, you may like to check out a particularly difficult issue which Eloy reported a while ago - MDL-15169.

Ideas for new features or improvements?

Mon, 18 May 2009 13:04:33 GMT

People often post in the Using Moodle forums with ideas for new features or improvements they'd like included in Moodle. Assuming others agree with the idea, it's important that it's recorded in the Moodle Tracker, together with a link to the discussion thread, so that it can be reviewed by core developers.

Development:New feature ideas provides details of the process of getting a new feature or improvement included in Moodle core.

Ideas for new features or improvements are always welcome. For example, see the discussion What would Angel users really like to see in Moodle?

GSOC students start blogging

Fri, 15 May 2009 08:20:57 GMT

With just over a week left of our GSOC community bonding period, I've been checking how each of our six students are getting on. Everyone now has a blog for keeping the Moodle community informed of their progress etc - see GSOC/2009 for links. Nearly everyone has a project specification in Moodle Docs, and has posted in one of the Using Moodle forums asking for feedback.

I've also been checking any new/updated entries in our front page databases. Fortunately I have lots of help with approving database entries (thanks to all our volunteers assigned the role of non-editing teacher), though sometimes Moodle Jobs database entries need amending to ensure they comply with the Trademark License for Moodle. The Moodle Jobs database currently contains around a hundred adverts for Moodle-related jobs offered and wanted.

My Moodle improvements in Moodle 2.0

Mon, 11 May 2009 15:11:23 GMT

Great news for My Moodle users: Mike Churchward is planning major improvements in Moodle 2.0 (MDL-19124). Please join the discussion New Tracker Item for My Moodle 2.0 Improvements.

For the full list of features planned in Moodle 2.0, see our Roadmap. If you're watching this page in the documentation wiki, you'll have received email notification that the system requirements have recently been updated.

A few weeks ago I blogged about Moodle twitter. Thanks to Martin D, we now have some guidelines for tags: Standard Moodle tags.

GSOC students engaging with the community

Fri, 08 May 2009 13:22:47 GMT

We're about half-way through our GSOC community bonding period and students Mihai and Jose are already engaging with the community in discussions about their projects - see Thoughts on the paint tool interface and What would you like to see or have in a blog-style course page format?

Elsewhere on moodle.org, there's an interesting discussion in the themes forum, Helping visual designers affect Moodle, started by Ian Grivois from Canada's leading distance-education provider, Athabasca University.

Moodle 1.9.5 release coming soon!

Thu, 07 May 2009 10:39:07 GMT

If you're eagerly awaiting the release of Moodle 1.9.5 containing lots of gradebook improvements, you'll be pleased to hear that it's coming soon! Please see Tim's latest reply in the discussion Anticipated Moodle 1.9.5 Release Date for the most accurate forecast.

Thanks to everyone (especially Petr) who has helped by going through the list of Moodle 1.9.5 unresolved issues and reducing the number of issues from 221 to less than 30. Let's keep going until we reach zero!

Another list we need to reduce to zero is the number of unmerged files. The list of unmerged files is generated automatically these days thanks to a clever trick from Eloy.

GSOC orientation meeting

Wed, 06 May 2009 10:57:02 GMT

Yesterday we had a useful online orientation meeting for our GSOC students and mentors. Everyone introduced themselves (with lots of interesting facts being divulged!) then Martin D gave an overview of the Moodle development process and talked about our coding guidelines.

I encouraged students to post in the forums of our GSOC 2009 course and participate in our jabber chat gsoc2009@conference.moodle.org, in addition to engaging with the wider Moodle community on moodle.org. I also reminded students to check GSOC expectations for a list of what they should be doing.

More Tuesday testing

Tue, 05 May 2009 19:18:49 GMT

As part of our weekly code review this week, I chose a couple of XHTML strict validation issues to test. This was easily done by enabling the xmlstrictheaders setting in Administration > Server > Debugging.

A few days ago I came across a Drupal initiative for encouraging community members to help with testing - Patch review sprints.

It seems that sprints have become popular in some Open Source projects. In our developer meeting last week, Penny's idea of a Moodle bug sprint was met with enthusiasm.

Moving discussion threads between courses

Mon, 04 May 2009 13:16:58 GMT

It seems that lots of newcomers to moodle.org end up in the Lounge and completely miss the message:

"Please do not post here asking for technical help with Moodle itself! Use Moodle Support for that (it's probably the quickest way to get an answer!)."

and post their Moodle questions in the social forum.

In the hope that less posts of this kind in the Lounge will prevent other newcomers from making the same mistake, I've been tidying up and moving discussion threads into the Using Moodle course.

In case you're wondering how this was done, I've written down the method in tracker issue MDL-12622. (I decided not to add it to the Forum module FAQ as I thought it pretty unlikely that people would want to move discussion threads between courses. If I'm wrong, please vote for the issue!)

For those of you who asked how I hid certain themes database entries last week, please see the Database module FAQ.

Whilst we're waiting for blog comments to come in Moodle 2.0 (MDL-8776), if you have any comments about my blog posts, please feel free to send me a Moodle message.

New coding guidelines, new workshop module and a painting tool for Moodle

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:54:55 GMT

Our online developer meeting today had plenty of interesting topics of discussion.

In addition to discussing a number of items in our Roadmap, Martin D talked about our new coding guidelines, the place to start if you want to know how to write code for Moodle.

If you're a Workshop module fan, you'll be happy to hear that the module is being completely rewritten by David Mudrák for Moodle 2.0. Please see Development:Workshop 2.0 specification and join the Workshop 2.0 specification - request for review and comments discussion.

It was great to hear from Mihai Sucan, one of our GSOC 2009 students, about his project to develop an online painting tool inside Moodle. Please see Development:Paint tool for the emerging specification.

For anyone who missed the meeting, notes and a recording link will be available soon: Developer meeting April 2009.

Online developer meetings

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:55:59 GMT

In our Moodle HQ meeting today, we went through the Moodle 2.0 Planning document, updating it where necessary. Martin D also asked everyone to go through the list of Moodle 1.9.5 unresolved issues and reduce the number of issues (currently 221!) to a more realistic figure, assuming 1.9.5 will be released within the next few weeks.

Our next developer meeting is the day after tomorrow at 11:00 UTC on Thursday 30 April 2009. If there's anything you'd like discussed, please add it to the meeting agenda: Developer meeting April 2009.

GPL requirement for Moodle themes

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:42:40 GMT

Following the discussion Remove buttom links on Computer-world, we're enforcing a GPL requirement for all themes in our themes database (see the discussion GPL requirement for themes). The themes database add entry form now includes the statement: Please note that all entries to the themes database are considered to be released under the GNU General Public License.

Elsewhere on moodle.org, I came across an interesting discussion openSIS - MySQL and Moodle integration. openSIS-MySQL is one of this year's GSOC projects for Linux-based operating stystem openSUSE.

(Edited to amend the first paragraph.)

Gradebook improvements added to MOODLE_19_STABLE

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:49:14 GMT

As Martin D posted in the discussion Wanted: User testing of Moodle 1.9.5 gradebook improvements, our gradebook improvements were added to MOODLE_19_STABLE today, to be part of 1.9.4+, with the release of Moodle 1.9.5 planned for a fortnight's time.

A big thank you to everyone who helped with testing and feedback, and to Nicolas for his patient patching. As always, help with our weekly code reviews would be much appreciated to ensure that our gradebook improvements are really bug-free!

Moodle twitter

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:21:16 GMT

Martin D was chatting to me today about the free social networking and micro-blogging service Twitter. We were kindly given the moodle twitter account about a month ago, and so we're now using it for Moodle news. According to Martin, at the recent UK MoodleMoot, "the twitter use was mad, but really, really worked".

In order to easily find MoodleMoot twitter messages, it would be good if we could come up with a standard way of tagging events which is easy to remember. If you have any ideas, please join Martin's lounge discussion A standard naming scheme for Moodle hashtags.

Spam on moodle.org

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:15:40 GMT

Thanks to everyone who let me know about a messaging spammer on moodle.org. I blocked the spammer's account by setting their authentication method to 'No login' and then used MySQL Admin to delete any messages which hadn't yet been read.

Although email-based self-registration is enabled on moodle.org, we follow the guidelines on Reducing spam in Moodle and as a result, hardly get any spam at all.

If you ever come across spam on any of the moodle.org sites, please send me a Moodle message to let me know or create a Moodle.org sites issue in the Moodle Tracker.

New themes in Moodle 2.0

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:42:04 GMT

If you're thinking of giving your Moodle site a face-lift sometime in the future, you'll be pleased to hear that Moodle 2.0 has some great new themes.

Urs Hunkler, unodo, has donated a couple of themes, colors and lines, and a theme from Patrick Malley, NewSchool Learning, called anomoly (see attached screenshot) was added to HEAD today (MDL-18860).

Now we just need to keep Martin D to his promise to "delete all the standardxxxx themes"!

Navigation 2.0 implementation plan

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:56:27 GMT

I've just been catching up on a very significant discussion currently taking place in the general developer forum - Navigation 2.0 implementation plan - about our proposed plans for improving the general navigation in Moodle, including blocks, layout and themes.

Please see Development:Navigation 2.0 implementation plan for the full details. As Tim says in a forum post, "... if you have not already engaged with this, now would be a good time."

GSOC applications and matching student proposals to mentors

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:17:59 GMT

Firstly, thanks to all the students who applied to work with Moodle for GSOC 2009.

We had slightly fewer applications than last year, perhaps because of our new requirement that students fix at least one bug, but the quality was much higher! This pattern has been reported generally across the 150 organisations participating in GSOC 2009 (see Student Applications for Google Summer of Code™ 2009 for an official statement).

We now have until Wednesday 15 April to finalize matching student proposals to mentors, though I'm trying to hassle our mentors into choosing which students they'd like to work with by Monday 13 April, to allow time to sort out any problems, such as more than one organisation wanting to accept the same student.

Mentors, a further reminder: please check the discussions in our mentor-only forum in the GSOC 2009 course and reply as soon as possible.

Moodle 1.9.5 gradebook improvements to be released soon

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:44:00 GMT

A big thank you to everyone who has provided feedback on our proposed Gradebook improvements in Moodle 1.9.5.

It seems that lots of people are now eagerly awaiting the release of Moodle 1.9.5, and asking when will it happen?

As mentioned previously, since the proposed improvements involve changing the interface quite a lot (something we'd normally wait until 2.0 to do), we need to make absolutely sure that everyone is happy with them before adding the code to the 1.9 branch. Thus, we need to allow sufficient time for testing, feedback and responding to the feedback etc. Anyway, please rest assured that we're trying our best to release Moodle 1.9.5 as soon as possible, hopefully within the next two or three weeks!

If you've not yet had chance to check out the gradebook improvements for yourself, please see the discussion Wanted: User testing of Moodle 1.9.5 gradebook improvements for details of how you can help with testing and feedback.

Moodle for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 14:34:51 GMT

I came across an interesting new book in the Moodle Books database a couple of days ago: Moodle 1.9 for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds by experienced teacher and particularly helpful Moodler, Mary Cooch. Based on Mary's hundreds of useful forum posts in the past year, and her Moodle Blog, no doubt the book will prove to be a great help for beginner Moodlers.

In addition, if you buy a copy of "Moodle 1.9 for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds", you'll be helping support Moodle development, since a percentage of all sales goes to the Moodle Trust. This is the case for all books advertised in the Moodle Books database.

GSOC student application deadline tomorrow

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:40:32 GMT

Any students wishing to work with Moodle for GSOC 2009 who haven't yet submitted their application should do so as soon as possible, as the deadline is tomorrow! Please see Applying to work with Moodle for GSOC for our application template.

Quite a few people have been asking how many projects we hope to run for GSOC 2009 (depending of course on funding from Google).

Our ideas page Projects for new developers lists nine suggested projects, which is less than we had last year. (See GSOC for a list of previous years' projects.)

This year we're planning on mentoring fewer better students and aiming for higher quality results. I noticed that this approach is recommended in the article Shared GSoC Wisdom from GSoC participants.

Moodle 2.0 surprise

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:03:18 GMT

Moodle has a history of celebrating April Fools' day - see April Fools Joke (from 2004) and Martins April Fools joke (from 2006) - but with Martin D currently attending the Canadian MoodleMoot, would there be anything to watch out for this year?

I was just chatting with Tim Hunt about GSOC when he casually mentioned that I should update my Moodle 2.0 dev install. So I did...

What a surprise!

Here's a screenshot for anyone who missed it. (Note: You'll need to login to moodle.org and then view my blog in order to see the screenshot.)

Requesting feedback from the Moodle community

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:28:54 GMT

I've just posted in the news forum announcing our Proposed Moodle 1.9.5 gradebook usability improvements and requested help with testing and feedback. Thanks to Nicolas for implementing all the improvements on our 1.9 test site.

Elsewhere on moodle.org, Portfolio API developer Penny Leach is also requesting help with comments about her proposed Moodle LEAP2A implementation.

Comments and feedback from the Moodle community are greatly appreciated, as they form a valuable part of our Moodle development process.

Prospective GSOC students get bug-fixing

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:13:39 GMT

With just four days to go till the GSOC student application deadline (see Google Summer of Code 2009 Program Timeline), we've already received quite a few interesting project proposals.

The lists of easy bugs in 1.9 and easy bugs in 2.0 are coming under close scrutiny as prospective students fix at least one Moodle bug before their application is considered. Tim provides a nice explanation of why we've introduced this requirement (for the first time this year) in his forum post in the GSOC 2009 course Greetings from Tim.

If you're a student thinking of applying to work with Moodle for GSOC 2009, please see Applying to work with Moodle for GSOC and feel free to join our jabber chat gsoc2009@conference.moodle.org.

Easier editing of grade categories and items

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:22:41 GMT

I'm hoping I'll be able to publicize our proposed gradebook improvements in Moodle 1.9.5 very soon now, perhaps tomorrow!

Thanks to Nicolas for further improving the 'Edit categories and items' page (MDL-16913) so that columns for weight and extra credit are only displayed when necessary.

(To be added to Moodle Docs: Weight is only available for grade items within a category with weighted mean of grades aggregation type. Extra credit is only available for grade items within a category with either Mean of grades (with extra credits) or Sum of grades aggregation type.)

Elsewhere on moodle.org, I came across an interesting discussion: Plugin, module, block - what's the difference? Perhaps we'll get around to changing the name of the Modules and Plugins database one day!

Contact with potential GSOC students

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:22:13 GMT

Last year, we had very little contact with potential GSOC students before the student application deadline. This year, we're going to "provide support for potential students in the application phase, hang around the IRC channel, help create patches etc." as recommended in our GSOC mentor debriefing, and in doing so, hopefully encourage lots of good students to apply to work with Moodle.

Thanks to Dan Poltawski and Penny Leach for hanging around irc://freenode/moodle, and to Eloy for setting up a jabber chat gsoc2009@conference.moodle.org.

Mentors, please help adding/amending skills required and difficulty level for each project listed in our Projects for new developers and add your name to any project(s) you'd like to mentor. Also, please remember to join our gsoc2009 jabber chat!

GSOC 2009 gets underway

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:33:51 GMT

The GSOC 2009 student application period is now open, and our GSOC 2009 course already has a number of enrolments!

If you're thinking of applying to work with Moodle for GSOC 2009, please see our GSOC application template.

If you're a core developer and would like to help with mentoring a project, please sign in to http://socghop.appspot.com/ and follow the 'Apply to become a mentor' link. Thanks to the five developers who have already applied.

PS If you have any ideas for new features in Moodle which might be suitable as GSOC projects, there's still time to suggest them. Please see Development:New feature ideas.

German MoodleMoot 2009

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 12:14:23 GMT

Last week I attended the German MoodleMoot 2009 in Bamberg and met lots of really cool Moodlers, including Ulrike Montgomery, Sigi Jakob-Kühn, Stephan Rinke, Gisela Hillenbrand, Czech language pack maintainer and developer David Mudrák, Moodle4Mac's Ralf Krause and Moodle Themes designer Urs Hunkler.

I especially enjoyed the 'Dr Moodle' sessions, where people could drop in and have their Moodle questions answered and any problems fixed.

Many thanks to everyone for making the event such a success, particularly the organisers University of Bamberg, Bayerischer Volkshochschulverband and Moodle Partners moodleSCHULE and eLeDia.

Moodle download statistics

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 13:27:47 GMT

In addition to our statistics on Moodle sites, moodle.org community growth and Moodle downloads per month, available from Moodle statistics, we now have further statistics available on downloads of plugins, patches, language packs and more - see Download statistics.

The top three plugin downloads are currently:

Certificate - 14 per day
Book - 17 per day
Questionnaire - 29 per day

The top three language pack downloads are currently:

Russian - 21 per day
Portuguese (Brazil) - 29 per day
Spanish - 96 per day

(All figures are averages from the last 60 days.)

Thanks to everyone for sharing their plugins and patches, and to all our language pack maintainers.

English language pack clean-up

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 10:13:19 GMT

A hot topic of discussion at the moment, both in the Moodle Tracker (MDL-15252) and in the Languages forum (Translators heads up: proposals to change the Moodle translation process), is how to clean-up the English language pack i.e. remove language strings and help files which are no longer used.

Traditionally, language strings and help files for earlier versions of Moodle have always been kept in each language pack for backwards compatibility. When features are greatly improved, such as the new gradebook in Moodle 1.9, this results in lots of 'orphaned' language strings and help files. As well as being a problem for translators, it's also confusing for users browsing the index of help files.

It seems that cleaning up the English language pack will involve branching i.e. creating separate language packs for each version of Moodle. Please help us decide upon the best solution by joining our discussion Translators heads up: proposals to change the Moodle translation process.

GSOC 2009 application

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:43:57 GMT

I've just submitted an application for Moodle to be a mentoring organisation for Google Summer of Code 2009.

The list of accepted mentoring organisations will be announced on Wednesday 18 March 2009, with the student application period starting in just over a week on Monday 23 March 2009.

Hoping Moodle will be accepted, we really need lots of interesting ideas listed as Projects for new developers.

If you're thinking you'd like to mentor a project, please take a look at the ideas mentioned in the discussion Wanted: New feature ideas for GSOC projects and the list of popular new features and improvements. Perhaps some of the 2008 project ideas which weren't implemented last year could be considered for this year?

Please ensure you follow the process outlined in Development:New feature ideas to encourage community input from the start.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions so far.

Moodle.org first access

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:32:51 GMT

If look closely at your moodle.org profile, you'll notice it includes some new information - first access. My first access was 4 years 200 days ago! (I was shy and lurked for 4 months before making my first forum post Importing quizzes from Learnwise.)

Thanks to Anthony (first access 3 years 358 days ago) and Eloy (first access 5 years 344 days ago) for this improvement (MDL-18518).

Moodle Docs upgrade

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:33:53 GMT

A big thank you to Eloy for upgrading all the Moodle Docs wikis (28 in total!) We're now using MediaWiki version 1.13.5. The upgrade was mostly security fixes, with a few improvements, such as the nicely laid out Special Pages page.

If you come across any bugs in our upgraded Moodle Docs, please use MDLSITE-657 to report them.

Allowing grades over 100%

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:02:44 GMT

Petr has come up with a clever solution for allowing grades over 100% (MDL-12380) by making use of a new aggregation type, such as 'Mean of grades (unlimited)', or 'Sum of grades (unlimited)'. Petr's solution also adds a useful admin setting for limiting which aggregation types are available (see attached screenshot).

Please help us by testing this solution on our 1.9 test server (username: teacher, password: testm00dle) and providing feedback.

Stage 1 gradebook improvements

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:26:50 GMT

I'm really hoping we'll be able to complete our Stage 1 gradebook improvements (MDL-18083) soon and, where possible, include them in Moodle 1.9.5 (following the implementation plan detailed in Development:Gradebook improvements in Moodle 1.9.5).

Issues outstanding include:

Help popups for the new "Edit categories and items" page (MDL-16913). Coming up with the wording for a help file is always a good test of understanding.
Make full use of title attributes in the gradebook (MDL-13960). Thanks to Matt Gibson for this suggested improvement.
Help popup for synchronise legacy grades (MDL-14961).
Provide summary statistics in the gradebook (MDL-18163). We've not had much feedback yet on the best way of doing this, so perhaps it would be best to leave it to stage 2 of our gradebook improvements.

Also on my to-do list is to re-read the gradebook forum discussion Community input requested on some Gradebook 1.9 terms and add a reply.

Gradebook capabilities

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:08:34 GMT

I've been going through all the gradebook capabilities in order to document ways of simplifying the Moodle 1.9 gradebook. One thing I discovered was that the capability moodle/grade:manage overrides moodle/grade:hide, moodle/grade:lock and moodle/grade:unlock (MDL-18442). Thanks to gradebook developer Petr for explaining things.

I also came across an interesting website today, www.artofcommunityonline.org, for promoting a new book "Art of Community" written by by Jono Bacon, Ubuntu Community Manager. The book is due to be published by O'Reilly later this year and released online under a Creative Commons license.

Installing Moodle documentation changes

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:17:55 GMT

Lots of people have contributed to our Installing Moodle documentation in the past three years and, as a result, the page has become very long. Chris Collman has kindly stepped up to the challenge of rearranging all the information over several pages. Help in reviewing the changes would be appreciated.

Historical note: Prior to Moodle Docs, a small amount of documentation was included in the moodle download package. Here is the installation documentation before it was transferred to our documentation wiki: moodle/lang/en/docs/install.html.

Blogs on moodle.org

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:39:57 GMT

Since starting a blog myself, I've come across quite a few interesting blog posts on moodle.org, including a recent one by Olli Savolainen, Documenting Moodle usability work.

As Olli mentions, it's not possible to publish to anyone in the world, to prevent blogs being used for spam. A small hack makes my own blog an exception to this, as it needs to be world-accessible in order to make it available on Planet Moodle.

A number of blog improvements are on our Roadmap for Moodle 2.0 (MDL-14411). Thanks to GSOC student Joey Morwick for his Student projects/Blog improvements. Joey even blogged about his GSOC project on moodle.org.

Extra credit and grades over 100%

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:34:39 GMT

There's an interesting discussion currently happening in the Gradebook forum - New feature discussion: Extra credit and course total scores above 100%. Thanks to Michael Skwara for starting it. These kind of discussions are just what we need to help us decide upon the best solutions for some of the less straightforward issues in the Moodle Tracker.

Moodle Docs upgrade testing

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:48:48 GMT

I've been helping Eloy with Moodle Docs upgrade testing (MDLSITE-657). Due to our hacks (for displaying real names etc.) there's lots to test before upgrading the production wiki. Any help is much appreciated.

I've finally got around to switching to Ubuntu after my Windows XP became unbearably slow. It's fantastic! I should have made the switch ages ago. It seems that an increasing number of people are discovering the benefits of open source - see BBC News - UK government backs open source.

Simplifying the gradebook

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:27:22 GMT

I recently discovered that there are lots of gradebook capabilities which provide an easy way of simplifying the gradebook for teachers, and made a start on documenting them - see Simplifying the gradebook.

Summary statistics in the gradebook

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:35:36 GMT

Our gradebook improvements meeting this morning was useful. We discussed possible ways of providing summary statistics in the gradebook (MDL-18163) and concluded that more community input would be helpful in coming to a decision - see the discussion Summary statistics in the gradebook. We also talked about showing categories in the gradebook user report in a similar way to the categories and items page (MDL-17991). Thanks to Paul Ortman for his patch.

After noticing quite a few people posting in the forums about their site being hacked and asking what to do, I started a page in the documentation wiki: Hacked site recovery. Thanks to Petr for checking and improving the page.

New community discussion course

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:22:38 GMT

We now have a new community discussion course/area/forum (I prefer the word 'course') for Hebrew Moodle. Thanks to Yaniv Cohen for offering to facilitate it.

Elsewhere on moodle.org, the Moodle Buzz contains an interesting Ofsted report: Virtual learning environments: an evaluation of their development in a sample of educational settings. 14 of the 18 colleges surveyed were using Moodle.

GSOC 2009 - ideas for projects needed

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:03:50 GMT

I've realised we need to start working now on our Projects for new developers list for Google Summer of Code 2009. Please see the discussion Wanted: New feature ideas for GSOC projects for more details.

I came across some interesting ideas on managing GSOC from another Open Source project, Drupal - SoC 2009: We need a team (or, webchick's braindump about SoC) and SoC Team Sign-Up Wiki Page-O-Rama.

Further security improvements

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:53:39 GMT

I've come across several security improvements in today's weekly code review, including the implementation of a spam cleaner tool (MDL-17144) and links in the security overview report for fixing any unsupported role assignments (MDL-18041). All being well, these improvements, together with lots of bug fixes, will be available in tomorrow's weekly download packages.

Security overview report documentation

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:44:59 GMT

To be effective, the new security overview report in Moodle 1.9.4 (and in Moodle 1.8.8+ from Wednesday onwards) requires documentation for administrators on how to fix any identified security issues (MDL-18078).

Following Petr's work in adding links to pages in Moodle Docs for each security overview issue, I've created the pages in the wiki to make it easy for anyone to add information.

Help in editing these pages and adding further information or links to forum discussions would be much appreciated.

Popular gradebook issues

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 22:55:55 GMT

Today I've been chatting with Nicolas about various gradebook issues, including whether the LSU stats report would be a good solution for providing gradebook summary statistics (MDL-18163) and the format of an admin setting for choosing whether to display the gradebook dropdown menu and/or tabs (MDL-18004).

I notice that newly-created issues for individual features of the LSU gradebook - MDL-18228 and MDL-18229 - are quickly voted upon.

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to vote and/or comment on gradebook issues. Please keep doing so!

Documentation discussions

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:15:45 GMT

I often wish I had more time to focus on Moodle Docs. Fortunately, our documentation writers do a fantastic job and it's great to see new people contributing too.

As our documentation wiki grows, issues arise regarding content organisation. Discussions in the Moodle documentation forum, such as the recent Too many FAQs?, can help us find solutions to these issues. Thanks for everyone's comments.

Season of Usability

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:30:50 GMT

Following a forum post by Olli Savolainen (who completed the Moodle Quiz UI usability project last year) about the Season of Usability, I've submitted an application for Moodle as an OpenUsability project. Support for improving the Moodle's usability would be great!

FOSDEM 09

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 11:32:45 GMT

Yesterday I attended FOSDEM 09 (Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting) in Brussels. It was great!

The schedule comprised of various main tracks, developer rooms and lightning talks. Highlights for me included Brion Vibber of MediaWiki talking about the upcoming Wikipedia Usability Initiative, a demonstration of Drupal's Automated Web Translation Workflow module, and Leslie Hawthorn's keynote presentation Google Summer of Code: A Behind the Scenes Look at Large Scale Community Management.

I hope that next year's FOSDEM will include one or two Moodle presentations. I'd like to talk about our Moodle community!

Regarding GSoC 2009, Leslie announced a couple of important dates:

9 March 2009 - Mentoring organizations can begin submitting applications to Google
23 March 2009 - Student application period opens.

Gradebook improvements in Moodle 1.9.5

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:31:09 GMT

I've started a page Development:Gradebook improvements in Moodle 1.9.5 to provide details of changes to the gradebook in Moodle 1.9.5, since as Martin commented in our gradebook meeting today, "This is probably the biggest UI change in a stable release that I can remember."

With almost 200 unresolved 1.9 gradebook issues, I'm learning lots about how to manage tracker issues. Renaming MDL-13501 to focus on a different issue from the one initially reported was a mistake which I'll try not to make again.

Animated grade statistics report

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:11:28 GMT

I've been looking at the animated grade statistics report, or visual report, a GSoC project by Daniel Servos. The different visualizations are very impressive.

The plan is to add the visual report to Moodle 1.9.5 and 2.0 - see MDL-13501 for more details.

I'm very happy with all the feedback we've received about gradebook tabs navigation, both in the forum discussion New gradebook navigation - Tabs and in the tracker (MDL-18004). There are just a few things left to decide upon, then the code will be added to core.

New Security and Privacy forum

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:46:34 GMT

The Using Moodle course now has a Security and Privacy forum. Thanks to Petr and Ken Wilson for offering to help moderate it.

Hopefully we'll soon be able to use the content of forum posts rated as useful to improve our security overview report documentation and Security FAQ.

Please see http://moodle.org/useful.php for a list of posts rated as useful in Using Moodle in the last fortnight (MDLSITE-550).

Tuesday testing

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:05:20 GMT

I've tested a variety of issues today, as part of our weekly code review, including a very old bug which was reported on 28th April 2003 (long before I'd even heard of Moodle!) - MDL-381. Thanks to Sam Marshall, Moodle 1.9.5 onwards now includes a move forum discussions usability improvement - a Move button.

I also checked that all pages in the documentation wiki which mention Moodle 2.0 requirements, such as Installing Moodle, now correctly state PHP 5.2.8 as minimum.

Conditional activities - cool!

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 18:07:40 GMT

Today I've had chance to play with Conditional activities in Moodle 2.0 and chat with the developer Sam Marshall about it. It's very cool!

Hopefully the updated Conditional Activities forum, nicely organised conditional activities documentation and a news forum post will encourage people to test this new feature and contribute to the documentation.

Gradebook tabs navigation

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 01:01:51 GMT

I've been chatting with Nicolas about tabs navigation for the gradebook and he's kindly implemented my initial ideas. Please see the discussion New gradebook navigation - Tabs and/or MDL-18004 for more details.

Moodle server availability

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:34:25 GMT

Every now and then, I have problems accessing one of the moodle.org sites (quite often with moodle.org itself, though hopefully that should change in the near future) and wonder whether there's a problem with the site, or with me. I was happy to hear that there is now a way of checking - see http://moodle.org/stats/network.php. Moodle CVS mirrors are also listed.

In the event of http://moodle.org/stats/network.php being unavailable, there's also http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/moodle.org.

Online developer meeting

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 11:06:57 GMT

Our online developer meeting today was interesting and informative. Highlights included Martin D going through the Moodle 2.0 planning document, Nicolas Connault demonstrating GSoC student Daniel Servos' animated grade statistics report, and a discussion about the possible use of templates in Moodle.

For anyone who missed the meeting, a recording is available here: Developer meeting January 2009. Meeting notes will be available soon.

Gradebook unresolved issues

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:15:36 GMT

Working my way through the list of unresolved 1.9 gradebook issues, I'm finding lots of good ideas for improving gradebook usability. Thanks especially to Matt Gibson for all his issue reports.

Gradebook common use cases

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:36:46 GMT

I've made a start on Development:Gradebook use cases. Hopefully lots of people will add further use cases which will help us in planning gradebook improvements.

I discovered today that there are quite a few grade capabilities which can be not set (or prevented) in order to simplify the gradebook for teachers.

LSU gradebook

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:27:22 GMT

I've been looking at the LSU gradebook, as MDL-17807 has lots of votes. The simple grader report is really nice, with the option to scroll grades while students stay fixed, and quick editing for fast paced editing of grades for either grade items or students.

I've also been learning more about the flexibility of the Moodle 1.9 gradebook. Alternative reports can easily be added as plugins, with visibility controlled by a capability.

Please see the work-in-progress Development:Gradebook improvements for proposed gradebook improvements based on the list of popular gradebook issues. (Remember to vote for the issues you most want to see fixed!)

AJAX forum rating

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:36:43 GMT

Tuesday is weekly code review day, and I've been looking at a usability improvement - MDL-17364 - AJAX forum rating. Thanks to Eloy for this improvement, which you can see in action in the moodle.org forums and which will be included in Moodle 1.9.4 onwards . See the Forum ratings documentation for more details.

Hopefully in future, AJAX can be used to improve database and glossary entry rating too!

Ada Lovelace Day

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 23:14:30 GMT

Ada Lovelace Day - 24 March 2009 - is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.

I really admire Moodlers A. T. Wyatt and Mary Cooch, as they're always helping others in the forums, plus they provide a much-needed teacher perspective in discussions.

Embedding resources in a page without using a frame

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:11:41 GMT

Tuesday is weekly code review day, and I've been looking at MDL-10021.

Thanks to the work of Daniele Cordella, Jerome Mouneyrac, Joseph Rézeau and a few others, for improving the implementation of embedding resources in a page, keeping the page navigation visible, using an object tag, rather than a frame. The File or website link documentation has further details.

Gradebook improvements

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:37:31 GMT

I'm investigating how the Moodle gradebook can be improved, particularly for teachers, and have started looking through the list of popular gradebook issues.

It's a real challenge to figure out how to simplify the gradebook, whilst at the same time adding the extra features that people are requesting.

As Mark Pearson says in the discussion Moodle Gradebook "Level-Setting":

"Problem is that the way things work in the Tracker you get a heap of bugs, improvements and feature requests that can add rather than reduce complexity of the gradebook with no easy way to sort them out."

I'd like all our planned improvements to be listed in Development:Gradebook interface improvements for Moodle 2.0 for discussion at our next developer meeting.

Security overview report

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:12:29 GMT

I've been checking out a new feature currently in Moodle 2.0 - the security overview report (Administration > Reports > Security overview), which is being developed by Petr as part of his privacy improvements project (MDL-17205). I think the report will be a great help for Moodle admins in ensuring their Moodle sites are kept secure.

Moodle Programming course enrolment

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:04:36 GMT

It seems there are lots of people around the world interested in learning more about Moodle programming, as almost 150 people are now enrolled in our new course - Introduction to Moodle Programming. After receiving a couple of requests from people wishing to be unenrolled from the course, I edited the role of student to enable users to unenrol themselves (as described in the documentation on Unenrolment), and enabled guest access to the course, so that people can take a look inside the course before deciding whether to enrol.

The Moodle Developer Courses site is networked with moodle.org, which is proving useful for identifying MNET issues such as MDL-17782. As users are currently unable to edit their profile on the Moodle Developer Courses site, I made use of a new enrolment setting in Moodle 1.9.3 and disabled the course welcome message.

Thinking about usability

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:49:04 GMT

Today I've spent some time looking at MDL-6160 from a usability perspective. Tim and Petr had added a new feature to Moodle 1.9.4 - email notification of course requests - and I suggested possible forms for the admin setting. The issue has lots of votes, which is probably why Tim and Petr chose to fix it.

I also created a new issue in the tracker - MDLSITE-591 - Create a welcome template for new Moodle Docs contributors. I added regular documentation contributor Chris Collman as a watcher, hoping he'd like to help. Sure enough, within a short time, Chris had come up with some suggestions.

New Moodle language pack - Kazakh

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:56:40 GMT

As usual, I've been helping with the weekly code review. Kudos to Tim Hunt for resolving tons of issues in the past week and for ensuring changes are fully documented.

The Moodle 1.9.4 release notes seem to be shaping up nicely - much better to note items as they are added to Moodle, rather than waiting until just before 1.9.4 is released.

Moodle 1.9.4 has a new language pack - Kazakh, the official state language of Kazakhstan. Thanks to Калима Туенбаева and to translation coordinator Koen Roggemans for his assistance. Kazakh will be available on the language packs downloads page and installed on moodle.org in the next day or so.

Using Moodle recent activity

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:31:36 GMT

I've been catching up with Using Moodle recent activity today - rating any useful posts which I come across (to identify useful posts for newcomers to the forums and also to help determine particularly helpful Moodlers), deleting duplicate posts, occasionally moving a discussion to a more appropriate forum and replying to one or two posts. Fortunately spam on moodle.org is quite rare. (Any spammers I come across have their accounts blocked by setting their authentication method to No login.)

I've also approved some entries in the moodle.org front page databases. The Moodle Jobs database now has plenty of interesting-looking Moodle-related jobs offered and wanted.

Moodle Developers site is popular already!

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:23:45 GMT

Our Moodle Developers site seems popular already, and a number of developers have offered to help evaluate the Introduction to Moodle Programming course. The site is networked with moodle.org for ease of access and also to help investigate and resolve networking issues. Please help us by reporting bugs and/or commenting on open issues. Of course I couldn't resist having a play around with the site, adding a Planet Moodle RSS feed block etc.

I've also added further suggestions to MDLSITE-132 about improving moodle.org so that people can easily find what they're looking for.

Introduction to Moodle Programming course

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:02:44 GMT

Today I received a backup of the Introduction to Moodle Programming course, developed at Humboldt State University in collaboration with staff at San Francisco State University as part of their Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration. I restored the course to my local 1.9 site and then to our newly created Moodle Developers site. The plan is to use the course to encourage and support new Moodle developers, such as GSoC students.

I've also made a start on some documentation about Increasing privacy in Moodle.

Planet Moodle and Tuesday testing

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:14:35 GMT

This is my first ever blog entry! After encouraging Planet Moodle to be set up, I figured I ought to be contributing too.

Planet Moodle aggregates developer blogs, so people can find out what Moodle developers around the world are working on. If you're a Moodle developer and would like your blog to be added to Planet Moodle, please let me know.

As it's Tuesday today, I'm helping with the weekly code review. I'm also going to make sure Petr's latest privacy improvements (MDL-15785) are fully documented.