Moodle.org posts recently marked as useful

Re: Moodle 2.2.2+ & GoDaddy 4GH

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:12:59 GMT

by Mihai Bojonca

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.

Re: Right -why is my quiz not showing the grade?

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:48:11 GMT

by Mary Cooch

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

Re: Migration or New Website on New Hosting

Wed, 16 May 2012 14:36:19 GMT

by Visvanath Ratnaweera

If the performance is your concern, all the initial pointers are in the introduction to the "Hardware and performance" forum: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=596.

Re: Migration or New Website on New Hosting

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:38:25 GMT

by Howard Miller

Well, you really need to measure it. On a Linux server those figures sound perfectly reasonable but it depends what the users are doing.

I would want to run something like Munin and see what's going on before doing anything else.

Re: Understanding mdl_context

Wed, 16 May 2012 11:10:20 GMT

by Davo Smith

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).

Re: Moodle 2.2 & a blank modedit.php after upload help please !

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:13:55 GMT

by Tim Hunt

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

Re: I have a problem using Moodle2.2

Wed, 16 May 2012 07:49:15 GMT

by Dan Marsden

SCORM 2004 isn't supported in Moodle yet - specifically the sequencing and navigation part of SCORM 2004.
http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/SCORM_FAQ#Supported_Versions

it looks like you are trying to use some of the sequencing and navigation functionality from SCORM 2004 that isn't yet complete in Moodle - you should publish your SCORM as a 1.2 package or remove the sequencing and navigation settings within your SCORM.

We have been slowly improving SCORM 2004 support (we also have a GSOC project starting soon) - I'm guessing the reason it worked for you in 2.1 but not in 2.2 is that there are various fixes to sequencing and navigation that landed in Moodle 2.2 but the work is not complete (we do not officially support SCORM 2004 yet).

Re: Migration or New Website on New Hosting

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:59:43 GMT

by Howard Miller

From what you say, yes.

Like any similar system, over a number of years a Moodle site will get full of all sorts of junk. If the opportunity presents itself for a clean start then it's worth thinking about.

One word of warning... the speed of the site may be completely unrelated. Moodle 2 needs quite a lot more system resources than 1.9 - your VPS might simply not be powerful enough for the size of site you are running.

Re: Log in automatically as a guest

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:00:01 GMT

by Helen Foster

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.

Re: where to change admin details

Wed, 16 May 2012 07:16:00 GMT

by Andrew Golightly

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

Re: where to change admin details

Wed, 16 May 2012 07:02:11 GMT

by Adi Tedjasaputra

Site administration > Server > Support contact

How I moved from CVS to Git on my Windows box

Wed, 16 May 2012 03:35:10 GMT

by Robert Chalmers

I've spent some time tramping about the internet looking for the best and simplest options.

I think I have it. I just did this, and it's all working.

You will need the Windows Bash, and it's available here.

http://code.google.com/p/gitextensions/

Installing this asks you to also install the Bash and Diff options. Accept and do it, as this installs the Bash you need.

This will create three items in your "All Programs" list.

Git
Git Extensions
KDiff3

The Git Bash is in the first one. 'Git -> Git Bash' and is a command line shell. Much like the old DOS, or Cmd for windows. You can strugglewith the GUI if you like, but this was is too easy when all you are doing is updating now and then.

Put the system into Maintenance mode

Back EVERYTHING up. Databases, and files.

Rename your existing moodle installation directory to something easy.

moodle -> x.moodle

Now, say I want to have my installation directory called 'StudyDesk'

run Git Bash

Create your new directory using this syntax," almost the same" as in http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Git_for_Administrators

only note the addition of StudyDesk (what ever you want to call it - even moodle!)

$ git clone git://git.moodle.org/moodle.git StudyDesk

$ cd StudtDesk

$ git branch -a                                                   (2)

$ git branch --track MOODLE_22_STABLE origin/MOODLE_22_STABLE      (3)

$ git checkout MOODLE_22_STABLE                                    (4)

The command (1) initializes the new local repository as a clone of the 'upstream' (i.e. the remote server based) moodle.git repository. The upstream repository is called 'origin' by default. It creates a new directory named moodle, where it downloads all the files. This operation can take a while as it is actually getting the entire history of all Moodle versions
The command (2) lists all available branches.
Use the command (3) to create a new local branch called MOODLE_22_STABLE and set it to track the remote branch MOODLE_22_STABLE from the upstream repository.
The command (4) actually switches to the newly created local branch.

Copy your config.php, and any other additional files you created yourself into the new (StudyDesk) directory

Now, when you want to update the install, just go to Bash, and type this

$ cd /path/to/your/StudyDesk/

$ git pull

Excellent documentation on Git here http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Basics-Getting-a-Git-Repository

Now, login to your Moodle Installation web address, and login as Admin. Everything will update nicely.

Exit maintenance mode, and you are back in business.

Re: Upgrading to Moodle 2.2

Wed, 16 May 2012 03:37:46 GMT

by Petras Virzintas

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:

ALTER TABLE mdl_user MODIFY COLUMN lastip VARCHAR(45) NOT NULL DEFAULT '';
ALTER TABLE mdl_user DROP INDEX mdl_user_cit_ix;
ALTER TABLE mdl_user_preferences DROP INDEX useridname;
ALTER TABLE mdl_post MODIFY COLUMN uniquehash VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '';
ALTER TABLE mdl_message DROP INDEX mdl_mess_use_ix;
ALTER TABLE mdl_message DROP INDEX mdl_mess_use2_ix;
ALTER TABLE mdl_message_read DROP INDEX mdl_messread_use_ix;
ALTER TABLE mdl_message_read DROP INDEX mdl_messread_use2_ix;
ALTER TABLE mdl_resource MODIFY COLUMN reference VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '';

Rgds
Petras

Re: Understanding mdl_context

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:57:48 GMT

by Hubert Chathi

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.

Re: Understanding mdl_context

Tue, 15 May 2012 14:55:36 GMT

by Davo Smith

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.

Re: Site wide teacher role not cascading down - Category enrolments

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:23:42 GMT

by Paul Lovatt

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 ...

Re: Site wide teacher role not cascading down - Category enrolments

Fri, 11 May 2012 08:23:18 GMT

by Howard Miller

Once a couple of coffees have settled in I'll have a go and write the results in the docs.

Mind you, I only have a Maths & Computing degree from Newcastle University so I've got little or no chance

You're not the only one - we use this feature a lot in 1.9 to assign additional rights to whole departments (where department == course category). It's a really useful feature. I was really miffed when it was, effectively, scuppered in Moodle 2. If necessary, I'll have to write a new enrollment plugin to cover this.

The tracker was closed as "not a bug" which just means that Moodle is working the way it was designed to work. I'd better leave it at that...

Re: Completion Report Add Extra Fields [2.2]

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:25:25 GMT

by sam marshall

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

Re: Right -why is my quiz not showing the grade?

Tue, 15 May 2012 21:51:38 GMT

by Mary Cooch

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!

Re: Solving own web service (server) unavailability

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:07:44 GMT

by Tim Hunt

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.)

Re: Only admin can send messages

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 06:13:28 GMT

by Kurt Zahra

Hi,

I have a similar problem. Basically im setting up a moodle system for my school project. I have it set so that the online users block appears on the course page which will allow tutors and students to send a message to eachother. However, when logged in as a tutor or student and the message icon is clicked next to the name of an online user, the chatting interface appears however there isn't a place where to input text and send a message. On the other hand, when logged in with an admin account, this functionality works fine. Can anyone help me with this?

Re: Showing News in "Expanded" Form

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:41:20 GMT

by Itamar Tzadok

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.

Re: Showing News in "Expanded" Form

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:13:19 GMT

by Itamar Tzadok

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.

Re: Help!! Can't Restore

Tue, 15 May 2012 14:28:40 GMT

by Jon Fila

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.

Re: importing questions (aiken format)

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:29:11 GMT

by jean-michel vedrine

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.

Re: question type - edit_qt_form.php -> anchor

Sun, 13 May 2012 19:24:23 GMT

by Tim Hunt

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.

Re: Moodle keeps breaking down

Tue, 15 May 2012 13:09:38 GMT

by Howard Miller

Yes - that's what I mean. It does seem to be EAccelerator reporting problems so it makes sense to try it witout it. If nothing else to isolate the problem.

You would really need to check for your installation but there is usually a flag in php.ini

 

eaccelerator.enable 0

You might need to stick that in a .htaccess file:

 

php_flag eaccelerator.enable 0

...but this really depends on how it was all set up.

Re: New question types

Sun, 13 May 2012 19:26:04 GMT

by Tim Hunt

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.

Re: moodle 2 - how to bulk import user pictures using external code and cron

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:48:40 GMT

by Franco Pomidoro

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

Thanks! Best, Franco.

Re: Getting errors when registering with Mooch

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:14:53 GMT

by Helen Foster

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.

PaintWeb an image editor in TinyMCE

Fri, 04 May 2012 12:42:30 GMT

by Patrick Juhl

Hello everyone!

I have recently taken over the impressive work of Mihai Sucan in integrating the PaintWeb image editing application in moodle. I'm writing this post in order to give an idea of the work in progress and to coordinate with moodle developers in order to hopefully include this application in a future release of moodle.

About PaintWeb -

PaintWeb is an online image editor program making use of HTML5's canvas element. It is standalone but also extends TinyMCE as a plugin and can be used directly from the editor.

Try PaintWeb within TinyMCE and get a feeling of what could be offered to moodle!

Integration -

Work has been done to integrate it in previous versions of moodle (1.9 & 2.0) but unfortunately was never fully included in moodle and it now needs minor modifications to work with the more recent versions. I am now hoping to join moodle developers to fully integrate this feature in a future release of moodle as an addition to the TinyMCE editor.

I have started testing this feature inside my own copy of moodle 2.2.2+ and I'm pretty close to having a fully functional image editor inside TinyMCE. See my results so far in the image below:

The next step is to coordinate my work with moodle developers in order to include in a future release of moodle (2.4 would be awesome! ;).

For this purpose, I am trying to revive the originally posted feature to gather some interest and attention upon my work. So, if you drop by and you'd like to see this happen in moodle 2.4, please add your vote!

Work in progress -

I'll post my progress to this forum, so you can keep track of what is happening. Right now I am trying to adapt the current code in order to have it work with moodle's current file API in order to allow saving the edited image.

Comments and questions are welcome. I hope to hear from people around the moodle community!

Cheers,

Patrick Juhl

Re: Understanding mdl_context

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:23:01 GMT

by Hubert Chathi

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.

MathJax in Use with Wikipedia, but not Moodle Docs

Fri, 04 May 2012 00:45:51 GMT

by Marc Grober

As the core devs get dragged into thinking about Math as an integral part of a virtual learning environment we may at some point progress past having to use Blahtex in the Moodle docs.

Certainly, thanks to nageh and others, the font of MediaWiki has now adopted MathJax as a preference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2012-04-23/Technology_report Among other things that means that one can have Wikipedia parse asciimathML, Tex, MathML, etc.

Efforts have been made to move the Moodle docs and the Moodle forum to a Math-friendly environment andthe response has been glacial, the highpoints being DragMath in the editor (only after Moodle went to 2.0) nd Blahtex in the docs, both far from any bleeding edge and now ancient history.

Bottom line, is whether one says it in ASCIIMathML root(d)(x^{n}) =x^{ n/d } or Maxima ((x^n))^(1/(d))=x^(n/d) it should still come out

Time for Moodle to "move on up"......

Re: RE: upgrade and move

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:48:16 GMT

by Howard Miller

Some points...

- if you don't have many courses and don't care about user data you can use backup and restore

- if you do care about user data, consider upgrading to 2.x (I assume that's what you mean) in place and then using backup and restore.

- this can be where you come unstuck with the one-click installers as they are only really intended for evaluation. However read [[Moodle_migration]]

- The debate over Windows/Linux is never ending. Which do you know most about. I would say that Linux is much less trouble but then I've been using Unix forever.

Re: Disable file picker pop-up

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:01:33 GMT

by Davo Smith

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.

Re: [Moodle 2.1.2] Coding error with Collapsed Topics [solved]

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:16:57 GMT

by Gareth J Barnard

Thanks

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

Any chance on editing a feedback after submission?

Tue, 08 May 2012 14:43:24 GMT

by Jaume Albaigès

Following what I exposed in my previous post (Converting feedback answers into useful information for all users...), I'd like to know if there is any way (built in, plugin, etc.) to allow users (or admins or whoever) editing feedback answers already submitted.

As I said, we are using the feedback module in order to gather knowledge from everybody and offer it to everybody too. It's not unusual that somebody misses some information or makes any kind of error that should be solved.

Any ideas on how to do it? Maybe we should be using any other activity module? (Notice that we also need to obtain global statistics, so this is why we are using the feedback module).

Thanks in advance,

Jaume

Three new plugins (not very exciting)

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:24:05 GMT

by Tim Hunt

These are not really reports, but we don't have a 'Course tool' plugin type. What they do is provide you with a huge form where you can edit all the dates / group settings / idnumbers throughout a course on one page.

Re: Is the theme for Moodle.Org available anywhere?

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:42:26 GMT

by Mary Cooch

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

Audio/Video repository plugin for Moodle 2.3

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:42:46 GMT

by Ankit Gupta

Hi everyone,

I would be developing the Audio/Video repository plugin for Moodle as part of the GSoC programme. I have created the fork of the template by Dongsheng and pushed some initial code on this https://github.com/ankitdbst/moodle-repository_mediacapture/. I would be initially working on the audio recorder plugin and using https://github.com/sammarshallou/ouaudioapplets or the Nanogong applet (which has previously been used) for the audio recorder.

The doc for the project is http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Audio/Video_Capture_repository_plugin

The Tracker for the same is http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/CONTRIB-3631

I would be happy to receive feedback & suggestions for the development of this plugin.

Re: Find a connection between a resource and its permissions

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:31:25 GMT

by Martin Raymond

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

Re: [Moodle 2.1.2] Coding error with Collapsed Topics

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:39:00 GMT

by Gareth J Barnard

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.

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

Re: [Moodle 2.1.2] Coding error with Collapsed Topics

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:57:36 GMT

by Gareth J Barnard

Fixed version now downloadable from:

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

Just upgrade as normal

Cheers,

Gareth

Re: Creating Themes using website templates

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:04:37 GMT

by Mary Evans

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

Re: Help Required for Testing 2.3

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 11:29:02 GMT

by Julian Ridden

They don't call me the cowboy for nothing! I'll be in. Keen to gather some data on the new beast. Julian

Re: Web Services and WSDL creation

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:55:11 GMT

by Federico Ghigini

Hi Jerome,

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

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

Fede

Re: How do I prevent an error message if the user clicks ‘submit’ without choosing an answer?

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:16:20 GMT

by David Nash

I don't know how many questions you would have to change, but changing the question type to multichoice with the two choices being true and false will make moodle respond the way you want.

Re: Help!!

Mon, 14 May 2012 23:39:27 GMT

by ben reynolds

Jodi,

Moodle is affected by lots of issues.

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.
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.)
If you have many sections and links on your course front page, it will take a long time in most browsers to load.
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.

Re: Help!!

Mon, 14 May 2012 19:54:56 GMT

by Floyd Saner

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

Web Services and WSDL creation

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:28:32 GMT

by Federico Ghigini

is someone working on this task: http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-28989?

The main reason I am using only the ws OkTech (btw great job!) is that moodle does not generate a WSDL from which you can automatically generate the classes in Eclipse or Nebeans for the soap protocol.

If more services become available this function will be very useful!

Re: Web Services and WSDL creation

Thu, 03 May 2012 12:45:26 GMT

by Federico Ghigini

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).

Support for decoupling DragMath

Mon, 14 May 2012 19:54:30 GMT

by Marc Grober

Can I have a show of hands, as it were , of those who feel that DragMath should be decoupled from the Moodle Tex Filter , as well as any argument from those opposed to such rational change

Re: Support for decoupling DragMath

Mon, 14 May 2012 21:02:40 GMT

by Mikael Kurula

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

Re: "Standard Plugin" vs. "Extension Plugin"

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:43:42 GMT

by Tim Hunt

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.

Re: How to upload files at system level

Mon, 14 May 2012 02:38:24 GMT

by Ken Task

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

Re: Moodle 2.2 on Mysql

Fri, 11 May 2012 05:01:49 GMT

by Guillermo Madero S.

MySQLi = MySQL improved.

Re: Moodle 2.2 on Mysql

Wed, 09 May 2012 17:42:24 GMT

by Marcus Green

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

Re: Where is searching "Global Search"

Mon, 14 May 2012 18:15:44 GMT

by Ray Lawrence

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.

Re: Wish there was a better way to have a resource/activity for just a group? Please read

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:15:59 GMT

by Gavin Henrick

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

Re: Problems with new question type

Fri, 11 May 2012 19:52:37 GMT

by Tim Hunt

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).

Re: Problems with new question type

Sat, 12 May 2012 15:38:36 GMT

by Tim Hunt

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.

Re: Problems with new question type

Sat, 12 May 2012 11:53:48 GMT

by Oleg Sychev

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.

Re: Moodle 2 Repository plugin : DSpace

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:21:13 GMT

by Guillermo Madero S.

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

Re: Hide HTML content from logged out user on Front Page

Mon, 14 May 2012 11:22:14 GMT

by Mary Cooch

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

Re: How to create user using web services.

Mon, 07 May 2012 07:39:33 GMT

by Jerome Mouneyrac

Hi Pratik,
two web service entry pages are worth starting reading:
* http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Web_services (to understand how to set up web services as administrator)
* http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Web_services (to start creating client or your own web service function)

Cheers,
Jerome

PS: there is a wen service function to create user that already exists. Admin > Plugins > Webservice > API Documentation

Re: How to create user using web services.

Tue, 08 May 2012 06:52:38 GMT

by Jerome Mouneyrac

For the coding of a client I would take example of the demo client: https://github.com/moodlehq/sample-ws-clients
For the coding of a web service you can have a look to : http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Adding_a_web_service_to_a_plugin (there is a demo plugin too)

Re: Safari with Moodle 2.2 issue

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:39:01 GMT

by Glenys Hanson

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

Re: Safari with Moodle 2.2 issue

Fri, 11 May 2012 07:44:29 GMT

by Tim Hunt

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.

Re: Accessing my site via internet

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:06:24 GMT

by Robert Brenstein

Judging from info you provided, your computer is at home behind a DSL router. You can fix its IP address within your local network. However, on the outside, your network has a different IP address, which it gets dynamically from your service provider. In order to connect from outside, aside from port forwarding, you need to know the current external IP address of your network (you can look it up at your DSL router, but it keeps changing once a while). The mentioned DynDNS offers a workabout by giving you a name that is being translated on the fly into you current IP address. The latter is achieved by you installing a program on your computer that regularly tells DynDNS what your address is at the moment. This works but but it is not really optimal solution. Furthermore, unless your home connection is really fast, you will find that the response of yoru Moodle may be too slow for proper working. You might be better off using a computer at work to do the same. Of course, your home computer must also have enough memory and fast enough CPU to handle the chores. That depends on the number of simultaneous users and the tasks they do. Final word of caution: many of those simple-to-use internet packages for Windows are not meant for production, that is for using on open Internet, due to insufficient security (cf. Moodle installation instructions for Windows).

Re: Accessing my site via internet

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:52:44 GMT

by Glenys Hanson

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.

Re: Accessing my site via internet

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:43:43 GMT

by Howard Miller

Does your home computer have a fixed IP address or are you signed up with a dynamic dns service (like dyndns.org)? Do you know how to set up your router to forward port 80 to your PC?

Home computer internet connections are generally set up to discourage you from doing this sort of thing. While not impossible it's tricky. You are better getting a moodle course on one of the free/cheap Moodle sites and moving your course.

Re: How to upgrade settings in auth plugin

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:00:18 GMT

by Mark Johnson

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.

Re: How to add Icons for new Mime Types?

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 21:04:57 GMT

by Res Hotz-Pohlmann

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?

Re: OU wiki: stable (ish) version now available

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:52:26 GMT

by lauren shawl

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!

Re: Pass fail basis on particular question

Fri, 11 May 2012 19:49:29 GMT

by Tim Hunt

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.

Re: Pass fail basis on particular question

Fri, 11 May 2012 16:28:47 GMT

by Itamar Tzadok

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

Re: User Profile Fields

Fri, 11 May 2012 20:05:33 GMT

by Tim Hunt

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.)

Re: afterburner: MyMoodle page sideblock on left

Sat, 12 May 2012 23:40:42 GMT

by Mary Evans

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

Re: HELP WITH The MDL_CONTEXT Table

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 05:31:52 GMT

by Yu Zhang

Hi Anthony,

The mdl_context_rel is a relationship cache showing the relationship between contexts. It is basically saying context A is a child (or child-child) or context B. This is used only when resolving capabilities override during log in.

The issue is that for example, we have a user with a student role in "Course 101", and an override for the student role in "Teacher's Forum in Course 101", then we have a pair of contexts. We need to know if this override indeed applies. This pair of contexts in this case is valid, because the forum context is a child context of the course context, but another pair could or could be invalid (say course 102 and teacher's forum in course 101), and that row should be discarded and not contributed to the overall permissions.

Since the db tables does not know what contexts are related, we can either load everything and do a loop through, discarding invalid results, or just cache this information in db, which is significantly faster for larger sites.

Cheers,

Yu

Re: HELP WITH The MDL_CONTEXT Table

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 04:30:38 GMT

by Anthony Borrow

OK - the mdl_context table is starting to make a little more sense to me. If the contextlevel field is 50 (i.e. a course) then instanceid means the course id number. I suspect that if it is a user then it is the mdl_user id number. Course category would be the id number from mdl_course_categories, group corresponds to mdl_groups (I am not positive about this as I am not familiar with the new groupings concept), module to mdl_modules, block to mdl_block. I am not sure about how CONTEXT_SYSTEM and CONTEXT_PERSONAL are used. I suspect that CONTEXT_SYSTEM always has an instance id of 0. I would welcome any insights on CONTEXT_PERSONAL.

Re: HELP WITH The MDL_CONTEXT Table

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 04:21:29 GMT

by Anthony Borrow

In /lib/accesslib.php I found the following which helps to explain things for the contextlevel field. Any help on the instanceid?

00025: // context definitions
00026: define('CONTEXT_SYSTEM', 10);
00027: define('CONTEXT_PERSONAL', 20);
00028: define('CONTEXT_USER', 30);
00029: define('CONTEXT_COURSECAT', 40);
00030: define('CONTEXT_COURSE', 50);
00031: define('CONTEXT_GROUP', 60);
00032: define('CONTEXT_MODULE', 70);
00033: define('CONTEXT_BLOCK', 80);

Wish there was a better way to have a resource/activity for just a group? Please read

Sun, 13 May 2012 23:54:53 GMT

by Julian Ridden

Morning all.

I recently have opened up a tracker item to debate the inclusion of a new feature in Moodle 2.3. I am keen to get as many users voting, or maybe arguing why not, to add this feature.

Many teachers are aware that Moodle does not allow for an easy way to set a task or resource just for a particular group. But it is something we need on a regular basis.

Advanced users are often made aware of the trick of creating a grouping just for a group. This however is not what that functionality was designed for and as such is difficult to set up, not intuitive and a it buggy.

I propose a different solution. Moodle 2 introduced "Conditions" allowing a teacher to set a pre-requisite for access to any resource or activity. To dat these include things such as:

restriction based on date criteria
restriction based on a required grade
restriction based on a prior resource/activity being complete or not

A condition is just that. A condition of entry/access. A requirement that must be met before something can be accessed. It (at least to me) makes sense that we add the following criteria to future release

Restriction based on group membership.

This would allow for a teacher to say "this homework task is just for Class A" or "this task is just for external users" and so forth. Ill try to better explain this below as I outlined my argument in the tracker.

A picture of this in action is shown below:

============

Groupings is critical. It sadly is being misused (abused) to meet a required need.

Groupings was meant to be for setting up tasks with specific grouping mechanics. i.e.

This forum is for class discussion. Use class groupings (class A, class B, class C)
This wiki is for group work in groups of 4 (A1, A2, A3, A4)
This assignment should be done in pairs
etc

In this use groupings is vital so that Moodle understands how to apply the specific grouping mechanic needed as set by the teacher.
The "for group members only" means that students not allocated to this task grouping methodology don't see it. And this is valuable.

The issue here of course is that in Moodle there is a STRONG need by facilitators to set activities or resources JUST for a group. 1.e.

This is a informal homework task for class A
This is a resource just for external users
This task is for the January intake only and needs a specific date.
For the above methodology I would either need to make separate courses (more work for teachers and more confusion for students), or create multiple resources and activities that all students see which also leads to confusion.

So let me reiterate:

Separating by groupings is not designed to be used this way and as such:

Groupings are a pain to setup. Often today a grouping is created with only one group in it to allow me to separate tasks out as listed above.
grades still show in the grade book for items that I may not see in the course
It is not intuitive as terminology does not make sense when used in this fashion

I am not suggesting the removal of groupings at all and I DONT believe it doubles up on functionality. It is a different tool for a different purpose and with different strengths and weaknesses. It is like saying lets ditch glossary because it double up on the database activity functionality.

Lets instead say "HEY! This is the wrong way to do it. Groupings are for grouping mechanics. As intended. Conditions are about setting conditions for access" When done this way I do not think there is a double up. It is a creation of a new feature that meets the needs of our facilitators.

=========

Am I wrong here? Do you agree? Is there a better way? I am keen to hear thoughts from the community on this matter so that hopefully it can be addressed i a future release.

If you do believe this is a good way forward, please be sure to go to the tracker and vote, otherwise I would love to see constructive debate here in this forum post.

Ticket address - http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-30554

Julian

Re: Multiple wikis

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:37:54 GMT

by Joseph Rézeau

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

That would be unfortunate... but understandable.

Joseph

Re: several Moodle docs

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:34:49 GMT

by Séverin Terrier

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.

Re: Performance docs in a mess

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 10:38:46 GMT

by Frank Ralf

@Mary

IMHO "... adding 'only for 2.1/.2.3' each time ..." isn't a bug, it's a feature because it points out the differences between Moodle versions and thus helps learning.

Structuring the wiki should be done using MediaWiki powerful features like categories, templates, subpages and transclusion (as used to be done in the good old times, when there was only one Moodle Docs ...). See "Sub-page transclusion (Re: Quick explanation of MoodleDocs version migration)" for a detailed description.

That way you can keep all documentation belonging to a certain topic together and move older documentation out of sight but not out of reach.

Re: Performance docs in a mess

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 22:13:19 GMT

by Colin Fraser

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.

Re: Global Search problem

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:16:36 GMT

by Ulises Guerrero

Hello !

My global search is working nicely, no errors. So it does work, but you have to check for the errors and see what's going on. This error seems to be that your php installation doesn't have the "PCRE unicode support" that's required.

It all depends if you are on a shared host and all that, how easy to change settings.

Regards,
Ulises

Re: Pattern Match error: Class Normalizer not found

Sat, 12 May 2012 18:34:11 GMT

by Tim Hunt

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.

Re: Customising Moodle 2.1.2 log in page

Sun, 13 May 2012 01:46:16 GMT

by Mary Evans

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

Re: Print exact sql statement executed - for debugging & documentation

Sun, 13 May 2012 06:26:17 GMT

by Davo Smith

$DB->set_debug(true);
Your database command
$DB->set_debug(false);

Re: edit mathematic expressions

Sat, 12 May 2012 21:27:23 GMT

by Craig Mackey

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.

Re: Safari with Moodle 2.2 issue

Sat, 12 May 2012 02:11:00 GMT

by Guillermo Madero S.

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.

Re: Safari with Moodle 2.2 issue

Fri, 11 May 2012 16:57:55 GMT

by Nadav Kavalerchik

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

Re: Can Someone Please Summarize - MOODLE 2.2/Google Apps

Sat, 12 May 2012 16:55:39 GMT

by Rob Johnson

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.

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

Re: Can anyone identify these moodle cookies?

Fri, 11 May 2012 11:55:54 GMT

by Petr Škoda

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.

Re: error on attempted login: auth_ldap/ntlmsso_iwamagicnotenabled

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 21:29:11 GMT

by Michael Kimbrough

Update: I was able to log in from home last night and turn off SSO so the error was only generated if I tried to log in at school. Authentication is working correctly. I had several teachers log in and it created their accounts exactly. The latest check I've made concerning SSO was on security settings of the moodledata folder. User IUSR has read, write and modify rights. I am wary of turning SSO on again without some guidance.

Re: error on attempted login: auth_ldap/ntlmsso_iwamagicnotenabled

Thu, 10 May 2012 19:13:39 GMT

by Simon Allison

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

Re: Aardvark Post It - Moodle 2.1 Fluid Theme

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:16:34 GMT

by Mary Evans

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

Re: Remote access to stand-alone installation

Fri, 11 May 2012 15:24:11 GMT

by Paul Noeth

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:

Set up Moodle test site on my local Windows7 machine using the Xampp installer package.
Associated a domain name with my router IP address using No-ip.com. Good instructions on their web page, http://www.no-ip.com/.
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/.
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

Proposing changes to moodle coding style

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:27:41 GMT

by Dan Poltawski

If you are working on features which you are hoping to get integrated into Moodle core then you should be aware of the Moodle coding style guidelines: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Coding_style

Every once in a while a discussion comes up about coding style where its not clear or there are requests for clarification or changes to the style. At the moment these things tend to linger on the wiki talk page and its difficult for people to follow the discussion or make a decision.

In order to improve the situation we have created a Coding style component in the tracker under the MDLSITE project. If you wish to request a change or clarification about style, please file a bug there. We hope that that this can be a place where discussions can be had and interested parties can keep informed.

I should point out that any coding style is never going to please all developers and so whilst we will strive to please everyone it is likely that the final decision will usually rest with the integration team and/or lead developer. We will also try our best to avoid bike shed painting.

Of course we'd be happy to hear your views on this.

thanks!

Dan & the rest of the integration team

Re: Youtube links not converting to embedded video

Fri, 11 May 2012 08:49:48 GMT

by Mary Cooch

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

Re: Course id,cmid and context in moodle

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 17:49:00 GMT

by Davo Smith

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.

Re: Images in lesson - branch table

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:28:08 GMT

by Joseph Rézeau

Erin,
You can not have images inside buttons. What you want to achieve (or something similar) is of course possible in HTML, but it is not possible in the Moodle Lesson interface as is.
Joseph

Successful SMTP setup on IIS6

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:28:18 GMT

by Ben Graham

After many hours of frustration, I finally figured out how to set up a Windows 2003 server to allow Moodle to send emails via SMTP. I decided to post some general instructions here for future reference and to save someone the same type of aggravation. I searched everywhere in Google and Moodle.org and noticed many windows users were struggling with this, but most gave up and started using a third party email pluggin as opposed to getting the IIS SMTP to work.

I was trying to get Integrated Windows Authentication through SMTP, because this is how I have been sending emails with other scripts for many years. Apparently, Moodle cannot use encrypted credentials, so the only way to get it working is via No Authentication (which is not an option), or Basic Authentication without encryption (and then create a stripped down windows account just for this).

Here are the steps for the Basic Authentication option:

1-Create a new SMTP virtual server in IIS

2-Under the Access tab in the SMTP properties, click Basic Authentication. Make sure Requires TLS encryption is unchecked.

3-Under Connection Control and Relay Restrictions, add all the local IP addresses (with Only the List below option) on your network that will need access to SMTP

4-Create a new windows user account under computer management-> Local users and groups. Make sure this user belongs only to the Guest group, and remove all rights to remote access, dial-in, and VPN. Strip down the rights as much as possible. Check password never expires.

5-Go back to the SMTP properties, Security tab. Add your windows user account that you just created.

6-Now in the Moodle installation, go to Site Administration, Advanced Features, Plugins, Message Outputs, Email, set the SMTP hosts to localhost (if moodle is on the same server). Set SMTP username and password to the credentials of your new windows guest user.

7-Save Changes and enjoy emails from Moodle.

Re: Navigation Column Disappeared!

Thu, 10 May 2012 16:42:53 GMT

by Mary Cooch

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/ ?

Re: Confused -- Is Metacourse still an option in Moodle 2.0?

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:49:16 GMT

by Michael Spall

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

MDL-29310

MDL-32161

Re: Site news on My Moodle

Thu, 10 May 2012 15:40:03 GMT

by Itamar Tzadok

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.

Re: Navigation Column Disappeared!

Wed, 09 May 2012 22:14:38 GMT

by Scott Karren

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

Re: Moodle 1.9 backup and restore question

Tue, 08 May 2012 22:47:59 GMT

by Anthony DeCusati

Thank your for taking the time to look at this!

Yes, we are restoring to another installation of Moodle. No, I don't think the same set of modules are installed. However, the issue is occurring for core modules. Even the administration Block is missing after the course is restored. We are using

With debugging enabled, the restore output shows the following:
(truncated)
...
Creating gradebook
Grade letters
Outcomes
Grade items

Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in /path/to/moodle/backup/restorelib.php on line 2220

Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in /path/to/moodle/backup/restorelib.php on line 2221
Table 'moodle.mdl_hsuforum' doesn't exist

SELECT cm.*, m.name, md.name as modname FROM mdl_course_modules cm, mdl_modules md, mdl_hsuforum m WHERE cm.instance = m.id AND md.name = 'hsuforum' AND md.id = cm.module AND m.id = 0
line 687 of lib/dmllib.php: call to debugging()
line 481 of lib/dmllib.php: call to get_recordset_sql()
line 1679 of lib/datalib.php: call to get_record_sql()
line 2221 of backup/restorelib.php: call to get_coursemodule_from_instance()
line 8899 of backup/restorelib.php: call to restore_create_gradebook()
line 66 of backup/restore_execute.html: call to restore_execute()
line 174 of backup/restore.php: call to include_once()
...
(truncated)

I haven't had much time to look through the archive + restore code yet, but it seems like the restore process is halting when it cannot handle the missing block. It seems like it could be MDL-15489 (http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-15489), but there is no error message.

I will continue to look into the code and follow this known issue, but I was hoping this may have been an issue someone has already overcome.

Getting the Rocket ready for Launch!

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 23:26:39 GMT

by Julian Ridden

Morning all,

Today is a bit of a teaser Im afraid. But more is coming soon.

I am placing the finishing touches to my latest theme called Rocket. Like Mary I am really tryng to push some of the boundaries of what we can do with Moodle 2 themes. But this does take a fair amount of time.

Attached is a screenshot of the new theme and you can see it in action at http://ilearn.asam.mq.edu.au.

While the design is original, It is heavily based codewise on the fantastic work done on the Aardark theme by Mary and Shaun. I hope they dont mind my use of GPL as an excuse to use fair chunks of their code in this theme.

Whats cool about the theme do you ask?

New custom block locations to provide more design opportunites
dynamic course listings in the dropdown menu
theme colors and many other options adjustable through simple theme settinngs
designed to look "non Moodle-y"

Would love feedback. Hope to have the Rocket on the launchpad in the next few weeks as I tie up the loose edges.

Julian (Moodleman) Ridden

Re: Customising Moodle 2.1.2 log in page

Tue, 08 May 2012 13:30:40 GMT

by Chris Kenniburg

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+.

Re: OU Blogs aren't gradeable?

Wed, 09 May 2012 11:15:39 GMT

by sam marshall

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

Re: Users get logged out when selecting a course

Wed, 09 May 2012 12:36:45 GMT

by Petr Škoda

Hello,
sorry, you must use only one domain, please setup redirect on the other one.

Petr

Re: Will the OU Drag and Drop questions work in Moodle 2.3

Wed, 09 May 2012 14:00:13 GMT

by Tim Hunt

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.

Re: What is the difference between suspending and soft-deleting a user?

Wed, 09 May 2012 15:05:32 GMT

by Petr Škoda

Deleted users loose email, username, all preferences, enrolments, group membership, grades - as much as possible. The only exception is data such as forum posts or wiki entries which we can not delete because data of other users depend on it.

Suspended users can not login, but teacher can enrol them, etc. It is a temporary prevention of login. They also do not receive any messages from moodle.

Re: Upgrade message after updated Database data

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:32:30 GMT

by Gordon Bateson

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

Re: Upgrade message after updated Database data

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:58:50 GMT

by Gordon Bateson

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