Importing into a Book

Importing into a Book

by Fred Riley -
Number of replies: 6

Our institution is using, AFAIK, Moodle 2.1. I need to import a mini-website into Moodle as a Book. The 'site' is actually an old WebCT Learning Module, consisting of a bunch of HTML docs, images and a common CSS file, all in one directory. I might be missing something obvious, but I can't find out how to import this.

There's a UCL guide on importing (PDF) but that must be for an older Moodle version as it refers to an import option when you click the red cross to add a new chapter which isn't there. There's Creating a Book on Moodle Docs which refers to an Import link which doesn't exist. There's zip on the Book Module page on Moodle Docs. The Procedure for setting up a Book pdf is a pretty good guide to creating chapters from scratch but doesn't mention import. I can see no import options in any of the Book dialogues. According to a review of the Book Module "Book has also the ability to mass import content" but it doesn't say how this is achieved. On a title scan of this forum I can't see anything about importing, and searching for "import into book" doesn't produce anything useful, at least on first scan.

I'm getting rather lost in docs. Could some kind soul please point me towards relevant docs, and/or explain how sites can be imported? I really, really do not want to be cutting and pasting HTML code as I'd have to rebuild links to images, docs and stylesheets. Mercy buckets clown

Cheers

Fred

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In reply to Fred Riley

Re: Importing into a Book

by A. T. Wyatt -

Greetings, Fred!

Is there a reason why you need it imported as a book?  I have imported mini-websites as simple link to file resources.  Particularly if it has its own navigation, you can just upload the zipped file, unzip it, and then link to the index.html (or equivalent) page.  Just wondering what particular feature the book gave you that other methods would not.

atw

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In reply to A. T. Wyatt

Re: Importing into a Book

by Fred Riley -

Greetings, AT!

Yes, it needs to be a Book. I want a visible table of contents and chapters and sub-chapters which can be rearranged. A folder won't cut it, I'm afraid. This is what my colleagues are used to in WebCT Learning Modules, which are one of the very few features of WebCT that are any good.

I'm on holiday for a couple of weeks, but I will look at any contributions to this thread when I get back as it's quite an important issue for myself and my workgroup. We have to 'migrate' hundreds of courses from WebCT to Moodle, and perhaps 10% of those courses have Learning Modules in, some Learning Modules being quite large. It would be a pain to have to manually recreate the things in Moodle.

Cheers

Fred

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In reply to Fred Riley

Re: Importing into a Book

by Rainer Schaufelberger -

Hi Fred

I know what you are looking for. I had the same problem and idea.

Unfortunatly the import function is pretty basic and it it not possible to import a "mini website".

Although links to pictures, pdfs, and html pages still work. You will encounter ohter problems for example.

CCS-Formats will have an (bad) influence on your moodle.

An internal link to an other chapiter page doesn't work.

Javascript in an external file doesn't work.

Will see, maybe it will develop in a direction where we can make use of it.

Cheers Rainer

 

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In reply to Fred Riley

Re: Importing into a Book

by Fred Riley -

Further on this thread, in the Book Module page it says: "Previously created websites can be imported directly into the Book module." Which got my hopes up, but I've not seen any docs on how this can be done. Can anyone shed any light on this option?

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In reply to Fred Riley

Re: Importing into a Book

by Stephen Overall -

Hello, Fred:

This page describes importing an entire web site (a collection of linked HTML pages and resources) into a Moodle Book by creating "a zip file of HTML files and optional multimedia files and folders. If you wish to upload subchapters, add '_sub' to the end of HTML file or folder names."

http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Book_settings#Importing_chapters

I'm not familiar with WebCT, but I wonder if WebCT has some way to export its content as folders of HTML files and resources which could then be zipped up and imported into Moodle's Book module?

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In reply to Stephen Overall

Re: Importing into a Book

by Rainer Schaufelberger -

As I said before the capability of the import function is very basic. Fred would have to rearrange his pages in a way that he would have to change every single HTML-Page.

Furthermore all links in a page that refer to book-chapiter won't work.

If you edit a page in a book you don't have the possibility to link to an other chapiter in the book. You don't have the possibility to link to other files that you uploaded with the import. You don't find them.

If you use CSS in your HTML-Pages they affect for example your navigation blocks in Moodle.

Javascript is ignored if you have separated the code into a file.

I would appreciate if the book module gets some attention from the developers and it would have some more possibilties in the future.

smile Rainer

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