Moodle News

Moodle 1.9.3, 1.8.7, 1.7.6 and 1.6.8 released

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:28:34 GMT

by Martin Dougiamas.

We recently packaged a new maintenance release for the current 1.9 version of Moodle, as well as new maintenance releases for older 1.8, 1.7 and 1.6 versions.

Each of the new releases contains long lists of minor bug fixes (see the release notes for details). As usual, many thanks to all the developers and users who helped with finding and fixing these.

Several security vulnerabilities were also fixed in all versions, making it important that you upgrade existing Moodle sites.

Even if you can't make major upgrades in the near future, you should at least upgrade to the latest stable package for your version. (For example if you have 1.8 already, then it's very safe and easy to upgrade it to the new 1.8.7 because there are no new features, just bug fixes)

All releases are available, as usual, from the Moodle download site.

Moodle.org has over half a million registered users!

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:27:28 GMT

by Helen Foster.

As the statistics show, our community continues to grow rapidly. We have over 1,500 new users registering each day. Congratulations to our 500,000th registered user, who wins a T-shirt from the Moodle Shop.

Congratulations to Martin for winning the award of Best Education Enabler

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:47:06 GMT

by Helen Foster.

Congratulations to Martin Dougiamas, Moodle's founder and lead developer, for winning the award of Best Education Enabler at the 2008 Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards ceremony at OSCON yesterday.

The Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards are presented to individuals for dedication, innovation, leadership and outstanding contribution to open source.

Martin is now listed, together with the other 2008 award winners, in the Google-O'Reilly Open Source Awards - Hall of Fame.

Moodle 1.9.2, 1.8.6, 1.7.5 and 1.6.7 released

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:45:05 GMT

by Martin Dougiamas.

We recently packaged a new release for the current 1.9 version of Moodle, as well as new releases for older 1.8, 1.7 and 1.6 versions.

Each of the new releases contains long lists of minor bug fixes (see the release notes for details). As usual, huge thanks to all the developers and users who helped with finding and fixing these.

Several security vulnerabilities were also fixed in all versions, making it important that you upgrade existing Moodle sites.

Even if you can't make major upgrades in the near future, you should at least upgrade to the latest stable package for your version. (For example if you have 1.8 already, then it's very safe and easy to upgrade it to the new 1.8.6 because there are no new features, just bug fixes)

All releases are available, as usual, from the Moodle download site.

Vote for Moodle to win the Best Project for Educators award!

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:35:01 GMT

by Helen Foster.

Thanks to everyone who nominated Moodle for a SourceForge.net Community Choice Award, which resulted in Moodle being a finalist in the Best Project for Educators category.

Please vote now for Moodle to win the Best Project for Educators award!

You can also vote for Moodle to win the "Most Likely to Be Ambiguously Accused of Patent Violation" award.

Some exciting upcoming Moodlemoots

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:21:59 GMT

by Martin Dougiamas.

Looking at our calendar it looks like October is Moodlemonth this year!

- Moodlemoot AU 2008 - Brisbane, Australia, October 1-3

- Moodlemoot BR 2008 - Brazil, October 3-4

- Moodlemoot NZ 2008 - Napier, NZ, October 8-10

- Moodlemajlis Oman 2008 - Muscat, Oman, October 18-20

- Moodlemoot Italy 2008 - Rome, Italy, October 21-22

- Moodlemoot ES 2008 - Barcelona, Spain, October 23-24

If you haven't been to one before (or even if you have) then I highly recommend coming along to one and meeting other Moodlers in person.

(Edited by Helen Foster to update links - original submission Wednesday, 2 July 2008, 09:10 AM)

Moodle.org mail was affected recently

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:57:37 GMT

by Martin Dougiamas.

The mail server that processes all email from moodle.org was taken offline by a freak explosion at our ISP:

http://tech.slashdot.org/tech/08/06/01/1715247.shtml

As a result all email from this site (copies of forum postings and messages, as well as signup emails) was lost for a period of 36 hours or so.

Everything should be OK now, but if you're waiting for a signup email you might want to try signing up again. Please contact us via support@moodle.org if you continue seeing problems here.

Nominate Moodle for a SourceForge.net Community Choice Award

Fri, 30 May 2008 14:13:02 GMT

by Helen Foster.

Do you think Moodle is the Best Project for Educators? Or the Best Project for the Enterprise?

If so, please nominate us for one or more SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards.

You'll need to create an account on SourceForge.net in order to make a nomination, but once you've done so, you'll be able to nominate Moodle for several award categories, including a "Most Likely to Be Ambiguously Accused of Patent Violation" category.

Moodle 1.9.1 released

Thu, 22 May 2008 13:58:30 GMT

by Martin Dougiamas.

Moodle 1.9.1 was recently released and is recommended as an upgrade for all Moodle users.

There were no security bugs but over 400 issues were dealt with and there are a few minor new features, such as support for captcha during email registration. Thanks very much to our core team doing most of the work, as well the generous support of the community who helped with testing and reporting. See the release notes for some highlights.

As always, get it from the download page or your local CVS mirror.

Cheers,
Martin martin" width="15" height="15" src="http://moodle.org/pix/s/martin.gif" />

Google sponsors twelve new Moodle developers

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:02:37 GMT

by Helen Foster.

Congratulations and welcome to our twelve Google Summer of Code 2008 students, who will be working on Moodle projects over the next 3-4 months.

We chose the following students and projects:

Andrei Băutu - XMLDB/SQLite
Sarveswaran Kengatharaiyer - Competency tracking
David Knight - Automatic accessibility checking
Grady Laksmono - Moodle IDE
Laia Subirats Maté - Detecting and solving specific usability issues
Avi Mehta - Web 2.0 language editing interface
Joey Morwick - Blog improvements
Luis Rodrigues - Messaging improvements
Askar Salimbaev - Secure RSS feeds
Daniel Servos - Animated grade statistics report
Akshit Sharma - New customisable theme
Chris Zubak-Skees - Feed aggregation library

For further details about the projects, see the GSOC/2008 page in Moodle Docs.

Please give our new Moodle developers help and encouragement wherever you can!

Google Summer of Code 2008 gets under way!

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 07:24:56 GMT

by Martin Dougiamas.

We are very glad to be involved in Google's Summer of Code for our third year in 2008. Previous years have resulted in lots of interesting new code (some of which is in 1.9 or will be in 2.0).

At the moment we are just gathering new mentors and students. See our student projects page for suggested ideas for projects and join in the discussions in the student projects forum!

Moodle 1.9 is now available!

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:23:36 GMT

by Martin Dougiamas.

After the longest beta-testing period in our history (over 5 months) including a successful Bugathon and nearly a year after Moodle 1.8, I am very glad to announce that Moodle 1.9 is now ready for use!

Major new features include:

An all-new Gradebook designed from the ground up for expansion and integration with other systems (sponsored by Open University).
Integrated support for Outcomes, so that learning goals can be tied to individual courses and activities, and can be graded against (Moodle.com)
A huge increase in performance due to review and refactoring of many parts of the Moodle code. Large sites especially will see major speed increases. Special thanks to Catalyst in particular for their scalability work on the core Roles functions. (Catalyst Pty Ltd, Moodle.com etc)
Tagging is now a core function allowing us to easily link things like users, blogs, courses etc as well as external sites like Flickr and Youtube through the use of simple tags. (Google SOC and Moodle.com)

and much much more, including hundreds of bug fixes and tweaks.

See the Release notes for full details and as usual, get your fresh copy of Moodle via your local CVS mirror or the (currently very busy!) Moodle download server.

Thanks to everybody in the Moodle community (and their families!) for supporting this complex project in a myriad of ways. It's just getting better and better, and I'm still having as much fun working with you all as the day I started.

Cheers and let's get working on Moodle 2.0 (ok, wait until tomorrow )

Martin martin" width="15" height="15" src="http://moodle.org/pix/s/martin.gif" />
Moodle Founder and Lead Developer

Bugathon prize winners

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 19:56:08 GMT

by Helen Foster.

As announced in the developer meeting yesterday, the Moodle bugathon prize winners are as follows:

Most bugs resolved

Dan Poltawski
Gary Anderson
David Mudrak

runners-up: Petr Kalis, Mike Churchward, Eric Merrill and Michael Spall

Most fixes verified

Nicolas Martignoni
Séverin Terrier

Most duplicates identified

Dan Poltawski
David Mudrak
Wen Hao Chuang

Most new bugs filed

Matt Gibson
Dan Poltawski
Wen Hao Chuang

Prizes consisted of cash, iPods and a choice of any item from the Moodle Shop.

Congratulations to all our prize winners and a big thank you to everyone who took part in the bugathon. It has certainly helped make Moodle 1.9 a very stable release!

(Edited by Michael Blake - original submission Saturday, 1 March 2008, 04:59 AM)

Bugathon and GHOP contest updates

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:16:54 GMT

by Helen Foster.

Just to update you on the two contests that have been running in the last couple of months:

Moodle Bugathon

The Moodle bugathon ends in less than three weeks on Tuesday, 12th February 2008. However, if you're quick, there is still time to enter and win a prize (cash, iPods and/or item from the Moodle Shop).

Everyone is welcome to participate - not just developers! Please check the various contest categories:

A big thank you for all the bugathon work done to-date - it's really helping Moodle 1.9 to become our best ever release!

GHOP contest

The Google Highly Open Participation contest for Moodle has proved to be extremely popular, with students completing around 100 tasks since the start of the contest. Completed tasks include video tutorials, language pack improvements, Moodle presentations, custom themes and lots of documentation contributions - see GHOP/2008 for a list.

A big thank you all contest participants, and to everyone who has helped in reviewing tasks and suggesting new ones.

Work on claimed tasks will stop on Monday 4th February 2008. We'll then choose the winner of the grand prize - an all-expenses-paid trip to Google's Mountain View, California Headquarters!

New mail server

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 04:06:50 GMT

by Martin Dougiamas.

Just a technical note: I've moved the moodle.org email processing to a separate server that can better cope with the huge volumes of posts everyone is generating in the forums on this site.

From the mail logs I can see some new bounces from people who need to whitelist mail.moodle.org in their configurations, so if you just stopped getting email from us, that's why.

Look for more improvements to moodle.org coming soon.