HTML pages and links

HTML pages and links

by Owen Siddals -
Number of replies: 5

We are changing over to Moodle 2.2. We have courses that have been constructed from 3rd party material. 

In Moodle 1.9 we would FTP the course material en masse into the course shell.

The material was delivered organized into folders by module, picture content, audio content etc.  Each module contained an html page devoted to each topic within the module.

By simply "linking to a file" we could add an asset to the content area of the course. When clicked on in the content section the page appeared with all its referenced material intact.

In Moodle 2.2 this is not the case. Only the page's text will show up. It's obvious that the new file structure and the html code refering to where to find a component do not match.

I have seen explanations where with a single html page one build the page and upload it and its content file into Moodle 2.2  designate the html file as the main file..and have it display.  Clearly though this would be a most tedious process as we'd have to completely dis-assemble the 3rd party content combine all assets for the html page into a folder, rewrite the html page to reflect the new asset locations then load each page as a seperate zipped file... etc.

Has anyone had experience with a similar situation explained above, wherein the material is set up using the old file conventions and you have successfully transferred / migrated / the content into MOODLE 2.2? 

What was your solution?

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In reply to Owen Siddals

Re: HTML pages and links

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Hello - see here for how to do it http://ourlearning.co.uk/2010/12/displaying-websites-index-html-files-in-moodle-2-0/ 

and also in the documentation here http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Folder_FAQ

I would have thought that if your folders have relative links rather than absolute  links then this should work -if they work like regular sites that have been made in ,say Dreamweaver, then this method should work.

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: HTML pages and links

by Owen Siddals -

Thanks this works very well. I thought one could only designate a single file in a folder as a main file.  Turns out that designate multiple main files.

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In reply to Owen Siddals

Re: HTML pages and links

by Tiffany Morgan -

We are in the same boat as you in that we receive an import of liscenced courses and accompanying assets (html, .doc, img, etc) and would link to that index or main page directly in 1.9.

 

Lets assume on one html page there is a reference to an image (image.jpg). If we get an updated version of that image but the name of the file remains the same (still image.jpg), what we used to do 1.9 was just replace the old image with the new image. No need to change the html code because the source image was updated.

 

Using this new file picker method, how would I replace an old image (or file) with a new one? From my  understanding it seems that I would have to create a new file resource (which would add a new resource on the main course page, right?) and then go into the page resouce that is my html code and use the file picker to select the new file?

(we do have access to the legacy file folder, but my understanding is the recommendation is to not use that so i'm trying to jump into this new paradigm with both feet)

I hope I am way off base here and there is a much simpler way to upload an updated version of a file smile

 

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In reply to Tiffany Morgan

Re: HTML pages and links

by Owen Siddals -

I wish I could say that we had a simpler idea.We've been thinking about this ourselves. I have to freely admit first that my coding experience in html is very limited and my understand of the "guts" of these issues suffer for it.  I do know that persons with far more experience we've called on have not come up with a solution.  We have a course in which  an instructor wishes to do some "fixes" . In 1.9 it is somewhat easy as you detail... It should be easier as we are just amending text but the "edit" function just won't work so we have to amend the file outside of Moodle then upload it.. In full disclosure the regular upload feature won't upload to the proper folder either...so we FTP it..

Our site is to be upgraded in place. I don't really know what the files will look like after that but doubt if there will be legacy files as they won't be "migrated."  Don't know what will happen, but we are assured by the folks doing the upgrades that all links will be fine. However after that.. fixing a problem as you mentioned is going to be daunting. Because of the complexity of some of the "pages" I can see we'd probably update whatever we needed to outside of Moodle ... zip the whole module? course? to ensure we had all the content and the proper linkage. upload it into a folder... Then as you say create a new resource? 

We did try to change the code on a trial html page but soon admitted defeat as we could not find the assets in the new file system. I'd sure appreciate hearing from you if you do come up with something.

 

 

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: HTML pages and links

by Tiffany Morgan -

Hi Mary

Finally getting a chance to get back in to testing and your steps for displaying websites with an index file worked perfect so thanks for posting that!


My follow up question might seem partly technical and partly philosophical. Though discussions like this one (https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=200616#p886106) and through my own testing and reasearch so far, and it would seem that the 1.9 model of saving all of your files (in my case html an associated files and graphics) within Moodle is a dead or dying model. And that, while there are steps (like the one you provided) that will work to create the same look/feel/functionality as was possible in 1.9, those are workarounds, and that ideally Moodle 2.x is designed to function best when all of your files (html, images etc) are stored in a server/site/repository completly seperate from Moodle.


Would you say that is accurate? Or would you say that there is still a case to be made for a workflow where you uploading and storing files within Moodle. I'd be more than happy to be wrong on this smile

Thanks again for your help! smile

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