General help

Peteris,

This is surprisingly straightforward provided you want this on every course!

Open the file... blocks/participants/block_participants.php in a text editor meant for php and html.

In version 1.9 this contains a class with 3 functions, including get_content().
In this function find the lines...

$this->content->items[] = '<a title="'.get_string('listofallpeople').'" href="'.$CFG->wwwroot.'/user/index.php?contextid='.$currentcontext->id.'">'.get_string('participants').'</a>';
$this->content->icons[] = '<img src="'.$CFG->pixpath.'/i/users.gif" class="icon" alt="" />';

Make a duplicate of these two lines immediately after them, but wrap the new lines with a conditional that prevents them being seen by anyone below the Teacher role...

if (has_capability('moodle/course:update', $currentcontext)) {
$this->content->items[] = '<a title="'.get_string('listofallpeople').'" href="'.$CFG->wwwroot.'/user/index.php?contextid='.$currentcontext->id.'">'.get_string('participants').'</a>';
$this->content->icons[] = '<img src="'.$CFG->pixpath.'/i/users.gif" class="icon" alt="" />';
}

Test this step by entering a course as a teacher. You should see...
Participants
Participants
...switch to a student role and one will disappear!

Note: if you don't want this to happen on the front page (for admins or teachers with a front page role), make the conditional...
if ((has_capability('moodle/course:update', $currentcontext)) && ($COURSE->id > 1)) {

Now you can edit you lines to provide your hyperlink and an icon to go with it.

Do not forget that all this will be lost on upgrades!

Regards,

John