I am struggling with performance also, so i tried many thigs. but if you are looking for a cheap VPS here is http://www.hetzner.de/hosting/produkte_vserver/vq7

They are German located in Germany, their VPS price cannot be beaten.

I  believe it's important  on these forums not to mock people who post about obviously stupid mistakes so I was merely following my own beliefs

That looks right to me, for the context you would be in when viewing the user's profile.

(Just to reiterate what Hubert pointed out above, I made a mistake in my previous post - context '1' is actually the SYSTEM context not the SITE context; 'system' being the whole of the Moodle install, 'site' being the front page).

Whenever you get a blank page, you need to turn on Debugging to get an error message.

Hi Jason,

You can enable auto-login of guests in Settings > Site administration > Users > Permissions > User policies. Please see the documentation Guest access for further details.

Thank you. Actually for my version it was Site administration->Server->Email

Site administration > Server > Support contact

I have finally had a clean upgrade from 1.9.13 to 2.2 but ONLY after applying the following MySQL commands to the database PRIOR to the upgrade:

Rgds
Petras

Context with ID 1 would be the system context, which is different from the front page context (which is actually a special course context).  ("Site" is another name the front page course, and it is easy to confuse "System" with "Site".)

As Davo mentioned, the context path has nothing to do with the URL used to access the page.  If you have a context path /1/2/3/4, then you would need to look in the mdl_context table at the records with IDs 1, 2, 3, and 4 to see what type of context they are.

The context path is not related to the URL you used to access the item, it relates to how permissions are inherited.

If, for example, you are granted a particular permission at the site level, then (assuming it isn't overriden further down the line) you will have that permission at the course category level, the course level, the activity level and the block level.

If, instead, you are assigned a permission at a course level, then you will have that permission at the course level, plus all activities and blocks within that course.

The context path translates to something like this:

/site context/top level course category/course sub-category/course/activity

So, if you are in a forum and want to see if you have permission to post a message, then the permission will be checked first at the 'activity' level, then, assuming no permission has been found, at the 'course' level, then 'sub-category', etc. all the way up to the 'site context'. The path is a quick way of getting the full list of contexts that need to be checked, in order, to find out what permission you have.

As an aside, there is no 'image' level for contexts, the lowest level you can get is 'module' (e.g. a particular forum, wiki or lesson).

If the context is at 'course' level, then the instanceid is the ID of the course (look in mdl_course to find the details).

If the context is at the 'course_module' level, then the instanceid is the ID of the course_module (look in mdl_course_modules to find the details).

Same for course_category, block, etc.

Thanks Howard,

Yes, it works.  I didn't do it straight off because I mistakenly believed I could use category enrolments to accomplish the task without the tedious process of enrolling the cohort (of one) into every course separately.  Trying to save time has cost me three hours of my day and a lot of frustration ("why doesn't it work?" etc)

I wish I were a Moodle developer.  I could spend my time removing useful functionality while leaving a trail of "re-enable" options just to wind up those old-fashioned enough to have used a previous version (which is now a terrible crime, it seems). 

For the benefit of anyone who comes here through google: to re-enable category enrolments DOES NOT WORK AND IS A WASTE OF YOUR TIME.  They will appear as site-wide or category enrolments but they will not actually be enroled at all.  There, I just saved you all two seconds by typing the important bit in red capitals.

I guess the time will be saved when I add the second, third member to the cohort.  I'm sure I will grow to love Moodle 2.2 someday ...

You don't need to do this in code, there is an existing option 'showuseridentity' (search admin settings) which is actually what that $extrafields array is used for... Just tick 'Department' in that list and it will then show in most of the report-type screens.

--sam

Well Mary - perhaps it was because you were so weary that you didn't notice the maximum grade was set to zero and that once you had changed it to a number it all works fine!

If you are doing anything at all complicated with questions, you will be much better of on at least Moodle 2.1. The new question engine means that the code is much cleaner and more logical there.

The problem you have is Moodle is set up to process quiz submissions synchronously, when the student submits them. One could image a way for the software to work where in response to the POST request it just saves, the data and processes it later, but one of the key points about online assessment is the possiblity for instant feedback, so it is highly unlikely the code would every support asychronous grading. (It would be much more complex to implement.)

We had to grapple with this question of the reliability of connecting to a web service during question grading for https://github.com/timhunt/moodle-qtype_opaque, and some of the quiz exception handling code was imporived because of it. However, it is still the case that if the remote server is down, then you cannot attempt those qustions in the quiz that rely on it. (Fortunately, our OpenMark system, which is what we are connecting to, is highly reliable.)

You don't need to change forum type. Only forum settings. For a news forum effect you need to force subscription and set permission to prevent non-managers from posting.

Haven't tried it myself, but the social course format uses a forum as the main course page. It should be possible to set the forum to serve as news forum. See if that gives the effect you're looking for.

It could be a number of things. The first thing I would try is to make a backup without user data. When you make the backup and download it are you able to open that zipped file on your desktop?

Also, is it a particularly long course with a lot of labels? One course that was giving me trouble restored fine when I made a backup of it without the labels.

Hello,

the reason why you can't add an image to the question text is because there was a bug in some versions of the Aiken format (this problem is now corrected in more recent versions) and the format of this field was set to "Moodle auto format" rather than "HTML" as it should.

Use the drop down menu under the field to change the format of this field from Moodle auto format" to HTML. Save the question. Re-open it and the editor wil be here.

To find the id of a suitable element, just use firebug. If you have an element with id="elementid" then putting #elementid at the end of the URL will jump there when the page loads.

However, a better approach might be just to keep the same scroll possition. That is what we do when a student submits a question in adaptive mode. Have a look at the code in question/qengine.js to see how that works.

 

eaccelerator.enable 0

 

php_flag eaccelerator.enable 0

I would not try to put multimedia in the drag boxes. Instead, I suggest writing questin text like:

Clip 1: [ media player here ]

Clip 2: [ media player here ]

Clip 3: [ media player here ]

And then making drag boxes with the words Clip 1, Clip 2, etc.

Well, we manage to solve this editing "function render_user_picture" at "lib/outputrenderers.php".

Thanks! Best, Franco.

Hi Kay,

The problem you describe has been reported in the Moodle Tracker as CONTRIB-3645. It rarely comes up because generally it's admins with username 'admin' who register their sites.

A workaround to the problem is for you to edit your profile on your Moodle site and change your username to something with only alphanumeric lowercase characters e.g. kpatterson, save changes and then try registering your site.

The instanceid depends on what type of context it is (what the contextlevel is).  For example, if it is a course context, then the instanceid is a course ID.

The path is the path of the the context within the context tree; each component of the path is a context ID.  For example, if the path is /1/3/20/42, then it means that the context with ID 42 has parent context 20, which has parent context 3, which has parent context 1.  It is a way of getting all the ancestors of a context without having to do multiple database lookups.

Not in Moodle 2.2.

But in Moodle 2.3 threre will be the ability to drag and drop files directly from your desktop into the file manager element (the blue box) - assuming you are using Firefox, Chrome or IE10.

There was also a 'quick add' button planned for Moodle 2.3 (which does what you want), but I'm not quite sure whether or not that is finished yet.

Thanks

Fixes for Moodle 2.1 and 2.2 now in the plugin's database.

It's not available but there are other themes you can download that do nice things if you look for themes in the plugins link on the Downloads menu. Also in any standard Moodle 2 you can make flyout menus by adding links in the box in Settings>Site administration>Appearance>Themes>Theme settings

I finally find out the solution, and I'm going to explain it if someone has the same issue someday:

As a matter of fact, the main thing to know is that the table mdl_context can be seen as a "core" table of Moodle's database.

Moreover, this table provides a 'contextlevel', and each level match a specific context, but the database does not provide it! Here there are:

SYSTEM 10

PERSONAL 20

USER 30

COURSECAT 40

COURSE 50

GROUP 60

MODULE 70

BLOCK 80

Once you know that, you can find the type of connection I wanted (see title).

So, if you want find out if a specific resource is prohibited for a specific role, and you want to display it via a sql query, for anyway, you have to:

• Know the mdl_course_modules.id matching the resource targeted
• See where mdl_context.instanceid = mdl_course_modules.id and mdl_context.contextlevel = 70
• See mdl_role_capabilities where mdl_context.id (find out due to the previous point) = mdl_role_capabilities.contextid. You'll have, if existing, a list of capabilities where the value -1000 indicates that the resource is prohibited in anyway (see mdl_capabilities to know exactly what is the point) for a specific roleid.

You can carry out the reverse thinking.

I hope it'll be clear for you, else you can post here and I'll try to help you

Dear Luggi,

There appears to be an issue somewhere in the core code that causes the string comparison on line '672' of '/lib/pluginlib.php' which is 'else if ((string)$this->versiondb === (string)$this->versiondisk)' to fail, where the value contained in my 'version.php' of '2012050300.00' has had the '.00' removed at the end and hence no longer matches the database'.

There are two soltions to this:

1. Update 'version.php' in 'topcoll' to be '2012050301', click on 'Notifications' to update the db.

or

2. Update 'version.php' in 'topcoll' to be '2012050300' and edit 'config_plugins' in the database 'format_topcoll' row to have a value of '2012050300' instead of '2012050300.00'.

It's up to you which one you wish to use - both should not make any difference in the long term as I'll fully change the date in the version.php file.

I hope this works for you , cheers,

Gareth

Fixed version now downloadable from:

https://github.com/gjb2048/moodle-format_topcoll/zipball/V2.1.8.2

Just upgrade as normal

Cheers,

Gareth

YES it is VERY important to use the CLONING process, but CLONE Base theme NOT Boxxie.  This is because you are making a NEW theme so you want the most UP TO DATE  files possible in order to build your theme on. And at this moment in time BASE theme is such a theme, especially the code which is on frontpage.php and general.php.

Why do people love cutting corners, and then wonder why things don't work?

I have attached the CSS I have on my website if that helps?

HTH

Mary

Hi Jerome,

i have solved this issue. How I can commit my code?

I have edite:
/webservice/lib.php
/webservice/soap/locallib.php

Fede

Jodi,

Moodle is affected by lots of issues.

1. You could be looking at a hardware/software issue outside of Moodle. For instance, the estimate of RAM Gb needed is often 50 concurrent users to 1 Gb of RAM. BUT, the definition of "concurrent user" is not easily made.
2. PPT downloads are no fun for users, as they are downloads. They won't start instanteously. Unless you make them into Flash files (Open Office will convert relatively simple PPTs into flash files. AND, Open Office is free.)
3. If you have many sections and links on your course front page, it will take a long time in most browsers to load.
4. If you have lots of links and files, etc. on any one particular link off the course front page, that will take time to load.

I advise you to take advantage of Flord's offer to look at the course. Communicate with him off this forum.

Jodi,

There are many reasons for a Moodle site to be slow, and some of those are related to the system setup and configuration - the responsiblity of your IT dept.

However if your course, in particular, is slow then I would start looking at your course.  The large size of your course leads me to believe you might have a lot of pictures or graphics loaded into your course, or perhaps a lot of large documents  - PDFs, PowerPoints, etc.

The first thing I look for is resized pictures or graphics.   Many instructors upload large, high resolution pictures, then set the size to something very small (e.g. 1" x 2", or 100px x 200px).  This really slows down your course for two reasons 1) it takes time to transmit the large picture file from the server to the browser, and 2) then the local computer has to resize the picture as it is displayed.  You can notice this if pictures in your course display very slowly.  The solution to this problem is to resize and compress your pictures _before_ loading them into your Moodle course.

A second problem I've seen (especially in Moodle 1.9) is courses slowing down when a page contains a lot of text copied/pasted from Microsoft Word.  MS Word puts a lot (and I mean a lot) of useless hidden code in documents that gets copied over when you copy/paste text into Moodle.  If you have done this, open the Moodle document edit window and click the HTML < > icon.  You might see several pages of code. If that is the case, use the editor's W (clean MS Word) icon to see if it can remove most of the code.  If not, you will want to delete the text in Moodle, then save your MS Word document in plain text format before doing a copy/paste.  Reformat the text in Moodle with the Moodle editor.

If you have a lot of large PowerPoint files (especially with a lot of graphics), those can make your course appear slow when students access the ppt file.  The solution is to save the ppt file with compressed graphics.

Large PDF files can also load very slowly and make your course appear slow.  Adobe Acrobat PRO can save PDFs in a compressed format.  Another option is to break the PDF file into several sub-files or pages and place them in a Moodle Book.

I also advise instructors to clean out unused files from the Moodle 1.9 files area.

I hope this gives you a start.  I'm willing to take a quick look at your course if you want to give me access (reply privately if you do this).

-Floyd 

I have corrected the type returned from the web services.

Now all the ws returning a multiple data structure returns an Object[ ].

This isn't the best option, i know. But this solution let the client collect the response without error. Moreover, if the client cast every element of the array to HashMap, all works (I'm using java axis 1.4 for the automatic class generation).

Ok, I have no idea of the background for the decision to couple them.

But from my perspective: I want to use MathJax rendering instead of the built-in TeX filter and I don't see why Moodle should try to artificially restrict me from using DragMath in my setup, since it seems to work technically.

Mikael

1. Yes, it is a complete list.

2. 'Standard' plugins are the ones included in the standard download packages from download.moodle.org (or equivalently, included in the main source tree in git http://git.moodle.org/gw?p=moodle.git;a=summary). Others are ones you have installed manually.

Site Admin menu -> Plugins -> Repositories -> Manage Repositories

File system is set to 'disabled' as default.

MIght check out:

http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/File_system_repository

and

http://docs.moodle.org/20/en/File_system_repository_FAQ

Unless you've done the above and there is a problem, in which case, please disclose the problem with some details.

'spirit of sharing', Ken

MySQLi = MySQL improved.

Mysqli is one of the drivers for the Mysql database so that is why it went through without a problem. It is slightly confusing.

Global search has been removed from 2.2 onwards because it didn't work very well. It might be best not to invest much time in it on your 2.1 site.

Having read the options, I gotta agree with Sam here, I think making the existing feature easier to use/activate would be more appropriate.

If you think about what you have say, you have not told us anything about the type of question you want to write. You spent the whole post telling us how the question will behave for the students.

So, that corretly points you in the direction of writing a quetion behaviour.

Of course, in the question engine, and with question behaviours, tracking the state of the question is very important. The question_attempt class (which is really a sequence of question_attempt_steps) is the class that represents the state.

http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Question_behaviours may help.

Of course, your behaviour will only work with certain types of question (any type of question that could be described as a two-part question).

As I said above, you need both qbehaviour_multistage, and qtype_whatever.

The behavioural aspectsa are to do with moving on to stage n + 1 after stage n is complete. Note how I can describe that whithout telling you anything about what type of question stage n or stage n + 1 is.

Then, as you say, you need a question-type to store the definition of what the question is. Obviously, you will need a richer API that questions compatible with qbehaviour_multistage mist implement to allow the necessary communication.

How are you planning to implement the quetsion types? There is a danger of combinatorial explosion (qtype_twostagemultichoicethennumerical, etc) unless you plan to do some sort of aggregate qtype like Cloze.

Hi, Tim. I discussed some things with Andrey and what he tried to do is a multi-stage question type (with different question text and controls on each stage). Behaviour can't really help since it couldn't have a form with instance settings (like a question edit form) and only question type, in a process like grading, would know to which stage should lead this or that student's response.

The problem is, basic question class functions doesn't seems to have access to $qa object (or steps either) and so unable to access question type variables, only student's response. So functions like grade_response coudn't really know what stage question is and coudn't specify the next stage. So the question actually is: are multi-staged question types possible in new question engine and how should it be achieved.

Hi Susana,

There doesn't seem to be much more info than what you already know:

http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-17025

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=77408

http://www.mail-archive.com/dspace-tech@lists.sourceforge.net/msg15738.html

Hello there. See this in the docs question 1 http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Blocks_FAQ

Hi everybody,

I use Firefox all the time on Moodle with no problems at all. I did have some about a year ago and not just on Moodle: I removed some add-ons and everything went back to normal. Sorry I can't remember which add-ons.

Cheers,

Glenys

Moodle can only support drag-and-drop of files if your web browser supports it. Look at a compatibiltiy chart like http://www.findmebyip.com/litmus/. Under HTML5 Web Applications look at File API. Moodle's file drag-and-drop feature can only work in browsers that have a tick in that row.

So, if you want to file a bug about Safari not supporting this, you need to report the bug to Apple.

Hi Georgios,

If you want your Moodle course to be accessible via the Internet well, you have to upload to the Internet first. There are number of free or very cheap Moodle hosts you could use. If your university has asked you to do this exercise, they should provide a Moodle site to which you can upload it.

You home computer is not normally accessible to people surfing the Internet - you wouldn't want it otherwise, would you?

Cheers,

Glenys

PS I see Howard has already answered. Glad to see I'm not contradicting him.

http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Upgrade_API explains how to write upgrade code for your plugin.  The section on upgrade.php talks about using code copied and pasted from XMLDB editor, but you can equally write your own $DB queries or other API calls (in your case get_config() and set_config() are probably the way to go) to do the necessary job.

Hi Helen

That's exactly what I tried.

Code snipet from lib/filelib.php (red line = new line):
...
    'm'    => array ('type'=>'text/plain', 'icon'=>'text.gif'),
    'mdb'  => array ('type'=>'application/vnd.ms-access', 'icon'=>'access.gif'),
    'mov'  => array ('type'=>'video/quicktime', 'icon'=>'video.gif'),
...

and naturally I added the icon "access.gif" to pix/f.

But it doesn't work! Even if I change any 'icon'=> - statement in lib/filelib.php it doesn't cause any effect on the file icons shown in my courses. eg:

...
        'doc'  => array ('type'=>'application/msword', 'icon'=>'text.gif'),
...

and my word documents keep showing their nice word icon. What could be wrong?

So -- we've got OU Wiki installed on our Moodle 2.0 box. I love the annotate feature! We'd like to have students use this feature for peer review (we used to use commenting with OU Wiki for this purpose). I notice that it is very easy to give students permission to annotate (thank you!), but that they can only annotate wiki pages that they have access to edit.

Do you know if it would be possible to build in functionality which would allow students to annotate any wiki page that they can view (say visible groups that they are not a part of?)? Again -- the goal is peer review. We don't want them to be able to edit other groups' wikis, but we would like them to be able to annotate/comment. This is how the commenting feature used to work - students could comment on wikis that they could view but not edit.

I'm sure we can find some sort of workaround if this feature doesn't become available, but I imagine others might find it to be useful as well!

Thanks again for your time and for the development work your group supports!

The other way to approach this (besides what Itamar suggested) is to just run it as an ordinary quiz.

Then, at the end, use the Results -> Grades report in the quiz to find the students who have failed that question (hopefully only a few, I assume) and manually edit their final grade to 0 in the gradebook. You can do that either by sorting the report on the grade for that question, or by exporting and doing the processing in a spreadsheet.

With one pf (for pass/fail condition) question this should be fairly easy. Just make the pf question mark equal to the sum marks of all the other questions + 1. This way, the grade of any submission with the pf question incorrect will be less than 50% and so easy to detect and nullify in the gradebook.

With more than one pf question you can try the following. Make the mark of each pf question some prime number that is not the mark or a possible partial mark of any of the regular questions in the exam. In the gradebook you construct a formula which takes the submission grade, subtracts the sum marks of the regular questions and modulo the result and the prime pf mark. This part of the formula should return 0 if one of the pf questions was answered incorrectly and non-0 otherwise. Normalize to 0/1 and multiply by the submission grade to get either 0 or the submission grade.

For example, suppose you have 6 questions such that the last 3 are pf questions with 5 as the pf question mark and 2 as the regular question mark.

2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 5

Here are some possible submissions and the calculated result. (normalize is just to abbreviate the part of the formula which will normalize the result of the modulo to 0/1; there is no such function in the gradebook formula)

2, 2, 2, -, -, -

normalize((6 - 6) % 5) * 6 = 0

2, 2, 2, 5, -, 5

normalize((16 - 6) % 5) * 16 = 0

2, -, -, 5, 5, 5

normalize((17 - 6) % 5) * 17 = 17

hth

Did you try looking in the documentation under User Profile Fields

Acutally, I am afraid I cannot resist: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Moodle+User+Profile+Fields

Moodle can certainly do 1. and 2. I think the only way to do 3. is to create a new type of 'User profile field' plugins that is almost identical to the standard text input one, but which enforces the additional rules.

(The other approach would be to enhance the standard text input field type, so that when they set one up, the admin can specify a regular expression that is used to validate the value.)

Hi,

If you look in the config.php for Afterburner theme, you will see that MyDashboard and MyPublic have different layouts.

If you want these to be a three column page then make the changes that I have highlighted below...

    // My dashboard page
    'mydashboard' => array(
        'file' => 'default.php',
        'regions' => array('side-pre', 'side-post'),
        'defaultregion' => 'side-pre', 
        'options' => array('langmenu'=>true),
    ),
    // My public page
    'mypublic' => array(
        'file' => 'default.php',
        'regions' => array('side-pre', 'side-post'),
        'defaultregion' => 'side-pre',
    ),

Cheers

Mary

Frank "I have to admit that I'm about to give up on Moodle Docs ..."

That would be unfortunate... but understandable.

Joseph

Hi,

I think that:

• most pages stay the same beetween Moodle 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 (and soon 2.3)
• it's not a problem (at least for me and other people) to have versions specific sections (or pages) : most of the time, new versions implies new features, thus new pages. There are rare cases (like Assignment in 2.3) where creating a (completly) new page would be necessary.
• i would better keep a doc for versions < 2, another for all Moodle 2.x (, another one for Moodle 3.x when it comes), and a developper one.

I have to agree with Howard, the split between v1.9 and 2.0 is reasonable, but I doubt the differences between v2.1 and 2.3 are not going to be that great they require separate documentation. Additional or refined documentation, certainly, but not separate. It is, after all, only the changes that we really want to document, not the ongoing elements, why reinvent the wheel? It would also make it easier to maintain them, I suggest. 

The thing that concerns me is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to actually find what you are looking for via any kind of menu within the docs. You can find so many things, but there is so much more that does not even make it to the menus on the first page of each version. I suspect this will kill the incentive to create and maintain some of those really helpful docs. What will be the point of writing somethng up if no-one can find it? It is all about organization of information, and the restrictions placed on that organization has left a lot of people wondering. 

Breaking Dev docs away from Admin and User docs also makes sense, but there needs to be clear distinctions here between what can be an Admin doc, applying to a site, and a User doc, applying to a course (as an editor or a non-editor). That is not clear right now, and I am not sure it ever was despite the previous structure.

Howard is also right when he suggests that there are a lot of "gray" areas between different types of docs. Perhaps the older structure, while not perfect, was a better approach.   

Normalizer is a PHP library (http://php.net/manual/en/class.normalizer.php) which seems only to be available as standard in PHP 5.3+. Since Moodle 2.2+ requres at least PHP 5.3.2, that should not be a problem. I don't know why that library is missing on your system.

Here is an example of a Moodle version of a customised login.php added to a theme's layout directory. it contains all of the code you would find in base/layout/general.php but with no header or footer other than the outputs of the top of body and footer HTML which are required. You need to change the theme's config to use your custom login.php instead of the one listed in $THEME->layouts.  The CSS was the hardest.  I have added the login.php for you here...the css you can get from my site if you use Firebug...and this is the result.

HTH

Mary

I use MathType. For the ease and convenience of what it does - it is well worth the cost if you use a lot of equations.

If you are using calculated questions, insert the wildcards after pasting into moodle.

If you know LaTeX you could use that also.

Here is some information:

http://www.dessci.com/en/products/MathType/works_with.asp#!target=moodle

http://www.dessci.com/en/support/MathType/works_with.asp#!target=moodle

Hope this helps,

Craig.

Hi Tim,

Maybe my wording is incorrect. Ok, I might be mistaken, however, as far as I know, the recommended browser is Firefox. Others, like IE, Safari or Opera, can certainly be used, but they might not work in each and every situation.

Until that happens... You can use Firefox or Chrome. They are great with Moodle

Hi Mike,

I will do my best to provide clear instructions.  This integration is not the best documented. ;)

The code you need to add to Moodle can be count at http://www.moodleinschools.org.nz/.  You will need to download the 2.2 package (it is the entire Moodle code) and copy over the following to your Moodle directory.

• auth/gsaml
• blocks/gaccess
• blocks/gdata
• blocks/gmail
• lib/zend/Zend/Validate/Hostname/At.php
• lib/zend/Zend/Validate/Hostname/Ch.php
• lib/zend/Zend/Validate/Hostname/De.php
• lib/zend/Zend/Validate/Hostname/Fi.php
• lib/zend/Zend/Validate/Hostname/Hu.php
• lib/zend/Zend/Validate/Hostname/Interface.php
• lib/zend/Zend/Validate/Hostname/Li.php
• lib/zend/Zend/Validate/Hostname/No.php
• lib/zend/Zend/Validate/Hostname/Se.php

This will trigger the installation of the blocks and auth plugin.  After the add ons have installed, go to the settings block > plugins > Authentication > Manage plugins.  Enable Google SAML authentication, and then go into the settings.  You will see these instructions there.

1. Set the Domain Name to your google service domain name then click Save Changes
   
   
2. In a new window open Google Apps Control Panel page as admin (Link to Google Settings)
   
   
3. Click the Advanced tools tab.
   
   
4. Click the Set up single sign-on (SSO) link next to Authentication.
   
   
5. First check the Enable Single Sign-on box.
   
   
6. Now insert this url into the Sign-in page URL text field.
   http://yourmoodledomain/login/index.php
   
   
7. Insert this url into the Sign-out page URL text field.
   http://yourmoodledomain/login/logout.php
   
   
8. Insert this url into the Change password URL text field.
   http://yourmoodledomain/login/change_password.php
   
   
9. Generate and upload a Verification certificate to Google (X.509 certificate containing the public key)
   
   
10. Upload the privatekey and certificate to Moodle as well and then click Save Changes

Since you are using Linux, you can use OpenSSL to generate the certificate.  Ask your school tech for help.  Once you upload the certificate, you can visit the diagnostic page in the Google authentication plugin page to verify it works.

Please post back with any other questions you have.

Rob

Hi

• MoodleSession - yes, it is the session cookie which is discarded when you close the browser, moodle can not work without it
• MOODLEID_ - is the remembered username in login form, it is mandatory in 1.9, optional in 2.x (controlled by "Remember username" admin setting)
• MoodleSessionTest - it is in 1.9 and earlier versions, I guess you should consider upgrading if possible, it is not in 2.x any more

The other cookies are most probably from some plugins code, I already created MDL-28631 for it. I hope they will be all removed at least in future Moodle 2.4. Please note these cookies most probably do not work when you enable "Only http cookies" setting.

Yes I had the same issue, with new moodle 2.2 - adding IUSR worked

Michael:

It may well be better to do any theme fixing in CONTRIB-3459 that way I can upload the fixes to my GITHUB and then when I've made a few changes upload a new version to the Plugins-DB. In which case, if you need any fixes doing prior to you going live with the theme let me know in CONTRIB-3459

As for the CALENDAR issue, that was caused by a throwback from Simplespace which this theme started off its life as Aardvark 2.1.  I never noticed it was set wrong in aardvark_postit/config.php. So it may well have contributed to other problems without me realising. In fact it may well be casuing problems in some old themes. 

As a quick fix I have added the config.php here for you to download, which has a further addition to the layout elements, mainly the redirect layout, so rather than getting a blank page you get a theme page. If you donlt like that you can change it from 'default.php' to 'embedded.php' in this line...

    // The pagelayout used when a redirection is occuring.
    'redirect' => array(
        'file' => 'default.php',
        'regions' => array(),
        'options' => array('nofooter'=>true, 'nonavbar'=>true, 'nocustommenu'=>true),
    ),

HTH

Mary

As a follow up I did get the remote access to work properly from the Internet. It now seems very straight forward and consistent with the forum messages and advice that I received. My problem had more to do with correctly testing the connection, but that is another story.
In review, what I did was:

1. Set up Moodle test site on my local Windows7 machine using the Xampp installer package.
2. Associated a domain name with my router IP address using No-ip.com. Good instructions on their web page, http://www.no-ip.com/.
3. Opened port 80 on my router to incoming traffic and forwarded it to my computer IP address. Good instructions and tools found at http://portforward.com/.
4. Modified my server/moodle/config.php file, editing the line $CFG->wwwroot   = 'http://localhost'; to read ‘http://domain name’.

With those changes made the test site is accessible from the Internet. Access set up in this manner is not recommended for a production site. I don’t understand the security issues with doing this, but as a precaution I only open and forward my router ports when I have a specific need for a colleague to access the test site.
Regards,
Paul

in Moodle 2.0 and later, in your course in Settings>Course administration>filters

Courseid identifies the course you are on - look at the 'id' column in the table 'mdl_course'

Contexts (identified by their contextid) are used for authentication / permission checking - you can have persmissions granted at the system, course category, course, module or block level; each individual course, activity, etc. has an associated 'context' record which is used to assign and check those permissions (the context record also identifies the contexts above it, so that someone granted a permission at the category level, also has that same permission at the course and individual activity levels, within that category).

Cmid - see course module documentation here: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Course_module

get_context_instance_by_id - loads the record from the table 'mdl_context' with the 'id' equal to the contextid you supply to it. This gives more information about the context - what 'type' of context it is (category, course, etc.), what particular instance it relates to (which category, course, activity, etc.) and what the parent contexts are.

Mark -  you mean like the "click here to make a donation now" button that's on this page of Moodle.org http://moodle.org/donations/  ? 

There are two Moodle Issues filed that cover this. Please vote on these if you share the concerns.

MDL-29310

MDL-32161

The My Moodle page is essentially a container of blocks. So what you need is a specialized 'Latest News ++' block which would display the rich content of the latest news.

Odd, I use this block as well and have never had any problems with it.  There was a core hack that needed to be made to lib > outputrenderers.php.  Did you remove that hack as well?

Scott

Hello Nicole,

We have done something similar to what you want here:  http://moodle.dearbornschools.org

You can download the page and look at the code:

http://blog.dearbornschools.org/webmaster/files/2012/05/DearbornSchoolsMoodleLogin.zip

I just upload the files to a folder on any server and then let Moodle know where the alternate login URL is. In this case I just use the /login/ folder with my own login /login/dps/ directory. 

This login page uses css to create a full screen image that resizes with the browser.  Works well on Chrome, FF, and IE 8+.

Hi Glenn,

OU blog does not support the 'rating' system. The rating system wasn't suitable for the way we grade work here anyway.

Instead it supports another kind of grading screen which we call 'participation'. This is only available in recent versions though (I don't think it's in our 2.1 stable version, sorry - it should be in the 2.2 stable version if there is one, which I don't think there is because I haven't really figured out a good way to automatically set up those stable versions without doing manual work).

Basically, you click 'View participation' or something and it shows you a list of all the students and how many posts/comments they made. You can click on their name to view all posts/comments from that student on one page. From either of these two pages you can set their grade. (Students can also use that page to see a list of their own contributions, although obviously they probably can't set the grade.)

--sam

I believe that they will work. Indeed, I have them installed in my Moodle 2.3 development environment, and have not spotted any problems.

The OU will be moving to Moodle 2.3 within a few months of the release, so if you find any problems, then they will get fixed.

Hi Cory,
sounds like your in the hot seat!

You mentioned that you had taken a backup of the files - well done. It is also important to backup the database, for example by using "mysqldump" in its Moodle 1.9 form, so that you can retreat later if necessary.

I advise that you do all that you can to install the missing php_extensions. On some Unix/Linux systems, there is a a mechanism for downloading and compiling software fairly painlessly. For example, on CentOS you can use "yum" to get the php_extensions, or on FreeBSD you can install the php_extensions from the "ports" collection.

If you can't get the PHP extensions now, and Moodle will let you continue with the upgrade, then you should be OK to continue without the extensions.

You can safely ignore these messages about the missing activity modules and blocks. Those items did exist in standard Moodle 1.9, but in Moodle 2.x they have either been removed or they are available only from the Moodle plugins repository. If you were using any of the "missing" activities or blocks you can install their Moodle 2.x versions later.

regards
Gordon

Cory,
a bit more info about the availability of those "missing" plugins

• Moodle plugins repository: book
• Moodle plugins repository: hotpot
• Moodle plugins repository: journal
• lams - maybe available here
• podcaster - maybe available here

• admin - replaced by standard Settings block
• admin_tree - replaced by standard Settings block
• loancalc - not available for Moodle 2.x (R.I.P.)

regards
Gordon