Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Happy Circles -
Number of replies: 18

I work at a 4yr college that hosts with Moodlerooms.  We do not want to get "Blackboarded" again as when Blackboard purchased WebCT and announced that they would maintain WebCT as a product option and did not hold to their word.  Nor did they give much notice.

Has anyone migrated their moodle instance from Moodlerooms to another host provider yet?  There has to be someone out there, and I was hoping you would share your experience and discuss which provider you selected to replace Moodlerooms.  My biggest fear is that Blackboard will wrap itself so tightly into their version of Moodle 2.0 that noone will be able to escape.

Thanks for your help.

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In reply to Happy Circles

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Floyd Saner -

I know the history of Bb with respect to WebCT and Angel (and Wimba & Elluminate).  However, I believe Bb's relationship with Moodlerooms and Moodle will be different.  A major difference is that Bb did not purchase Moodle (the software).  Blackboard purchased only two companies that provide Moodle hosting and market additional services and products that tie in with Moodle.  

I expect Moodlerooms (and NetSpot) will continue to support Moodle, contribute to Moodle core and release developments to the open source community.  But what if that does not happen (the scenario you fear)?  That would be a very stupid, risky move for Bb and Moodlerooms.  Moodlerooms would likely lose its Moodle Partner status and customers would flee Moodlerooms in droves - there are far too many options for Moodlerooms' customers to easily shift to another host provider.  Bb and Moodlerooms have much more to gain by supporting the Moodle project and contributing to the community.  

Your best guarantee against being locked into Moodlerooms' joule is to build courses that use only Moodle core features and plugins from the Moodle.org site.

- Floyd Saner
e-Learning Consultant
Learning Contexts, LLC 

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In reply to Floyd Saner

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Happy Circles -

Floyd,

Thank you for your reply.  I definitely agree that it would be dumb for BB to discontinue support of Moodle, but we are already seeing them creating their own version of Moodle as Joule.  I'm sure BB and Moodlerooms will most likely move their version of Moodle deeper into this proprietary realm, with the guise of sharing some of their code with the Moodle society - and ultimately leaving Moodleroom customers screwed. 

Our organization does not use any of the features of Joule, and are still not able to restore Moodlerooms backups to a local version of Moodle core.  We are still working through this to see if it's something we are doing incorrectly, or if there is something in the backups not allowing this to happen.  BB has never cared at all for customer service or preference so I don't anticipate that ever changing.   We cannot afford to have all instructors begin from scratch If we cannot take our backups to another Moodle core host provider. 

I would still like it if someone can share their experience if they actually took their Moodlerooms 2.0 instance elsewhere.  Thanks!

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In reply to Happy Circles

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Floyd Saner -

"Happy Circles,"

I'm quite certain Moodlerooms did not fork Moodle core for their joule product.  I have successfully backed up a Moodlerooms joule 1.9 course, downloaded it, and restored it to a different non-Moodlerooms Moodle server.  However I have not tried that with joule 2.x

Several suggestions:

  1. Be certain the two versions of Moodle you are using are exactly the same.
  2. Be certain the course file you are trying to restore is not larger than the permitted upload filesize on the new server.
  3. Try creating a small sample course in joule and see if that can be restored to another Moodle server.
  4. Contact Moodlerooms help and ask them the question directly.

Floyd

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In reply to Floyd Saner

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Happy Circles -

Hi Floyd,

I will definitely do what you suggest.  Thank you so much for the ideas.   I suppose many people might think that I'm concerned that Moodle core will disappear; as I've seen that as one of the threads with people expressing that concern. 

I have NO fear at all that Moodle itself will be taken over by anyone.  I wasn't even concerned originally about Moodlerooms Joule products -- it is when BB took over where I can foresee BB taking Joule and making a proprietary version of Moodle.   The issue with the backups put a little more fear into me as well, but I haven't given up that it's something we are doing wrong.  

I also don't believe that the people at Moodlerooms have intentions to fork (I loved that term) Moodle core, but I do think BB has intentions to fork Moodle core in order to make it difficult or impossible for current Moodlerooms clients to go elsewhere.   That's just plain business; not paranoia.   And a business plan that BB has employed during their long history.   I don't anticipate that the people at Moodlerooms will have much clout in the business decisions, as BB is the one with the money.  So please don't think I'm even criticizing Moodlerooms.

 

 

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In reply to Happy Circles

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Floyd Saner -

Good clarification of the issues.  Thanks, and good luck!

-Floyd

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In reply to Happy Circles

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Tom Murdock -

Hi Happy Circles,

I appreciate the benefit of the doubt that you're giving Moodlerooms in your post.  And I understand the concern you might have about new and different practices from our company now that we are part of a bigger organization.  

I offer my perspective as a current MR officer, and a guy who has been warmly welcomed into Bb leadership circles.  I want to assure you that there are no business plans (or otherwise) to fork or make it more difficult for clients to make choices and migration paths to and from Moodle.  

Keep ready for some extra cool "openness" announcements that we are making this summer.   In short, since the merger we have been asked to be ourselves, as well as to increase our contributions to the Moodle community.  

-Tom

tom@moodlerooms.com (if you ever want to talk about stuff)

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In reply to Tom Murdock

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Pete Phillips -

As a client, I think the difficult part to swallow is paying $1200 to develop an Express theme that will only work on Moodlerooms servers. Or having my users get used to Joule components that aren't available elsewhere. Or the vivid memories of Blackboard saying they wouldn't mess with WebCT, then they re-branded the entire product. It's that openness that feels missing in these charges and memories. If my users get used to Joule feature, then Blackboard jacks up the price (as they did in WebCT days) and I have to move for cost, then my users suffer the loss of those tools. So I try to hide those components, but Moodlerooms is making it harder and harder to get just Moodle (without Joule) or hide those elements (new Joule Reports replacing Moodle Report links and the Joule gradebook added to the gradebook menu). I think Moodlerooms is open at a cost-- that being that you stay there in the future. And that uncertain future is nerve-wracking for a group who's been screwed by Blackboard before and is afraid of it happening again.

But back to the question at hand:
Has anyone successfully left Moodlerooms/Blackboard and gone to a new company? If so, what was the experience like?

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In reply to Pete Phillips

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Nitin Jain -
Picture of Plugin developers

Hi,

I understand your concern, and this is absolutely a genuine problem, which i beleive every CTO, IT profession would be facing in any manner either it is Elearning solution or any other solution or product..

As far as Elearning, i just wonder why people do not use thier own Moodle Instance.. everything is opensource and free.. just doing one time setup, initial customization and small development etc; results a full fledged learning management solution.

Can anyone suggest or put some light on my question please..

 

Nitin
~~~~~

 

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In reply to Nitin Jain

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Vicke Denniston -
Picture of Testers

Hi Nitin,

I can't speak to anyone else's motivation, but ours was to tie into our SIS. Moodlerooms is one of the few Moodle partners that offer this, that I know of. Had I known 60 days prior to signing what would happen, who know what we would have done

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In reply to Pete Phillips

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Tom Murdock -

Hey Pete,

Thanks for posting.  Lots of stuff to look at here.  I've written a short opus for clarity.  And I hope that you'll write to me offline, if I miss things that are important to you.

In regards to the whole joule/Moodle model:  As you've inferred, joule consists of plug-ins that naturally fit into core Moodle.  Conduit (our authentication/enrollment plugin), builds on Moodle's flexibility and offers some features that the other core (16 auth and 15 enroll) types don't offer.   And if you decided to stop using Conduit, you have all those other options.   

As an admin, you can disable all joule plugins (like Conduit, the grader report, as well as joule reports), so I'm challenging your statement: "but Moodlerooms is making it harder and harder to get just Moodle."  The support teams can help you with configuration.   We also do a lot of work with our plug-in matrix lists, and configuration teams to clarify what plugins are part of core, community, vendors, or results of our own development, so that our clients can make decisions about the experience of their users. .

joule has a block called the Express theme that a) allows users who know CSS (but not PHP) to create great themes, b) allows users to edit a handful of "template" themes and c) allows users who don't know CSS to change some colors, upload some images, and generally make good-looking sites very quickly.   We started using the Express theme about three years ago because we wanted to make theme creation easier and we also had a SaaS hosting requirement that made the uploads of thousands of themes (that were only slightly different) very technically inefficient.

I hear your point that if you wanted to build a manual theme, you would need to build it in the Express plugin, rather than as a regular Moodle theme.  NewSchool Learning is great at creating both.  They can also easily convert one from another.  So if you don't have a theme developer with CSS experience, this is an added expense, but we have done everything we can to minimize migration costs.  The rest of a migration is straight forward: we package the Moodle database and data into a package, then we sftp it to its new home.  We have had very successful handshakes with Remote-Learner (for instance) who has received the package from one of our former clients, figured out which plugins to install on their end, and pushed the site back into production.

Finally, some words on the business model.  Moodle Partners offer a variety of business models to meet the needs of Moodlers.   I think the Moodle Partner services are made stronger by our different approaches.  Our model (SaaS hosted Moodle with enabled/disabled joule features) is only one flavor.  Blackboard liked our model because they saw that our clients like it.  Blackboard also liked NetSpot's model which is very different from ours and very cool.  But our business models are not changing.  As I mentioned earlier, we've been asked to be ourselves, except even more open when we can manage it.  

-Tom

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In reply to Tom Murdock

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Pete Phillips -

I appreciate your response, but since it seems to be getting specific, I'll email you off-forum. I'm not a total Moodlerooms hater-- in fact, I think it's great for people who don't know how to use Moodle.

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In reply to Happy Circles

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Here is the polit-story, as told by the moodle.org community:

"Blackboard acquires Moodlerooms and NetSpot"
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=199248
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Derek Chirnside -

Because of a little bit of work I was asked to do recently, I revisited the March 26 news of the acquisitions recently and did some surfing and reading.

I found this, that probably all of you know about, written by Martin, about Moodle: http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/cs-moodle.xml

It is interesting to me the description of how Moodle is run.

I also found this from Educause: "Vendor Monitoring" http://blog.thehigheredcio.com/2012/05/07/monitoring-vendor-risk-ellucian-blackboard-and-open-source-software/

April 18th: from Lou Puigliese: http://www.moodlerooms.com/blog/__node/page-1/post-5752291290589024957/

There are a few other articles and reflections I came across written a little later in the piece when some of the dust had settled, like late April - early May.  But I've lost track of these.  It will be interesting to see how the landscape looks in a year.  Blackboard taking over two of our Moodle friends?  Of Moodle infecting Blackboard with something in return?  Who knows,  The jury is still out.

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Joseph Thibault -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Personally I like to think of it this way: 

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Floyd Saner -

Derek, I love your choice of words, " O(r) Moodle infecting Blackboard with something in return?"  Let's hope for that scenario!

-Floyd

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In reply to Happy Circles

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by E. Airheart -

I know it's been two years, but I just found this forum and have the same question ... no need to reply with political commentary, I'm just looking for the technical side of the equation.   So...

  1. Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider or just went back to a standard core install of Moodle 2?
  2. If yes, how do you get Joule 2 courses converted back to standard Moodle 2?
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In reply to E. Airheart

Re: Has anyone left Moodlerooms for another host provider?

by Jez H -

I have not used Joule, but as I think you will struggle to get a reply from anyone with this specific exerience I will tell you in rough terms what is involved. I would add the best people to ask are Moodle Rooms themselves.

Its the database you need to get back to core. Assuming they have continued to extend using Moodles plugin architecture you should be able to un-install all their add ons leaving you with a database that has only core (and possibly public 3rd party plugin) features.

You should then be able to hook up a core Moodle codebase (again with 3rd party plugins if your using any) and run the upgrade to bring your database up to the version of the standard code base you are using.

The upgrade process will help you out here listing "missing from disk" if it finds something in the database which is not represented in the code base, essentially telling you it is missing a plugin. At that point you would have to go back to your original code base and un-install those add ons, re-export the databse and go through the upgrade process again.

Eventually you would get to a point where the Moodle upgrade is not flagging up any "missing from disk" notices and be able to run the upgrade.

I guess you would want to know which version of Moodle your Joule site was based off, the more recent that is the easier your path to 2.7 will be.

Another option to consider would be asking Mrooms to get you back to core Moodle and continue hosting with them for a while. They do host core Moodle sites as well as Joule.

Then should you decide to move later it will be much easier to do so.

In my opinion the benchmark for service in this area was set by Remote Learner who not only released their code but have been seen to offer advice to 3rd parties on how they could remove ELIS code from an ex clients site:

https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=240781

That thread may give you a little more insight into what maybe involved, but of course ELIS is not Joule...

The crux of it is going to be wheter MR follow the same process RL do in working with removable plugins, and if they do how much content you have tied up in those plugins.

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