Hi Julian and Mary, 

I hope you can assist me. I'm a very new Moodler and am using Essentials. I love this theme and have enjoyed working out how to set it up to present my offerings effectively. It's still very much a work in progress but you can take a peek here, if interested. 

My problem is I need to make some small tweeks and have no idea how to go about this. I assume the changes need to be done via the code (as I have looked thoroughly in the edit options and can see nowhere that is relevant). I've not dabbled with Moodle code at all so far, and I don't want to break anything (eeek!), so I thought it was best to ask an expert. 

The tweeks:

1. Slow down the front page slide show a bit. It moves too fast for people to read the text.
2. Increase the size of the window where embedded .pdfs are displayed. The width is fine but the default height cuts most pages in half or less. 
3. Can I make my Site Guide (a .pdf) automatically pop up on the front page, without taking people (before and after login) to a page where they need to click a link to activate the pop up? 
4. This one is more of a query. I have an animated powerpoint presentation on the front page and have used iSpring to publish it. Is there any way I can include this on my site directly, without the need for a third party service like iSpring? Also, can its size be increased slightly? 

If you can help me or guide me to any Moodle instructions (for total noobs) I'd really appreciate it. 

Many thanks
C 

If you grab te latest version from github you will see I have added the ability to add custom css to the theme settings. This will allow you to change any particular nuance you like.

To change the link color you could add something like:

a, a:visited {
    color: #000;
}

> One minor issue so far.  The first slide in the slide show appears to barely load and then immediately fly away when the home page is first loaded.  
>

That what I feel too! Would be great if we could solve this one.

I think we have discovered a Moodle bug there. No themes (that I am aware of) have created their own category of settings before. This may mean it was not prepared to render such a request. If you are on any "Administration" page (i.e. notifications, theme settings, etc) the options will appear.

I have created MDL-40514 to log the issue. You might want to follow it to see the resolution.

If anyone else out there has ideas I would also love to hear them.

Update: Looks like this was a code issue. I have updated the version in the plugins DB and Github. It will now always show in the admin menu regardless of page you are on

Julian

That is an old BUG in bootstrapbase themes of which Essential is built upon.

I think Julian will be addressing this and other bugs in his new release.

The way round this is not to try and move blocks to the right hand column in that particular page. In actual fact it would be useful to know which layout type it is.  So to help identify this layout can you enable the "Show page info" (or similar wording) in Site Administration > Development > Debugging

After saving the settings go back to the page you were having that error and tell me what the info in the footer says regarding the layout type?

Thanks

Mary

Hello Didier

Have you got the current version I have attached a screenshot of my site using this theme and the same URL and I cannot replicate your issue.

Julian

Checkout the layouts in Clean theme.

Issues with the HTML editor will be not be related to the Essential theme. Be sure to try other themes as well and to empty the theme cache.

There is a related discussion on this thread - https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=232182

Julian

Okay gonna try that Julian. Cheers.

 Hi Julian, ive upgraded to 2.5.1, now how do i choose two column by default? or something like the screen u pasted.

Or did u mannually move them all on the right?

 

Also theres too much space on the right, can i move it right to the edge? Please :/

 

P.S: The Grades are working great after the update.

Dear all,

I tried to replicate the issues with side-post and 'MAIN CONTENT GOES HERE' with the M2.5 from https://github.com/moodleman/moodle-theme_essential/tree/MOODLE_25 and the master branch and cannot.  I worked on the recent 'side-post' issues in collaboration with Sam and Mary so thought I could help out.

Please see if you get the issues by using the latest code from GitHub.

Cheers,

Gareth

I have also seen similar errors at instances, for example, purging cache when blocks editing is on. When blocks editing is on with this theme you cant change to another theme either.

Hi Dan,

Thanks for sharing the love. Glad you like it.

You all see the same It is hidden based on role. If you are all Admins, you will all see it.

Julian

Okay I'm sure that I'm being thick but how do you make the frontpage and coursepage layout 3 column with blocks on the left and right and the centre column for courses etc as per the clean theme?

I see that in the clean theme there are three different columns.php files how do I get essential to "choose" one of these?

This was a bug. Well spotted.

I have fixed this up now and updated the github version. Grab the latest from there and you will see it has been repaired.

Julian

To get footer blocks to show on other pages you must set the blocks to show site wide.

Changed the frontpage file to achieve this and to my eye looks a lot better now.

Hi there

Love this theme - so very easy to use thank you.

I have come across a problem/error can you help please. see attached.

I was using magazine upgraded to essentials. using moodle 2.5 this area is relating to the 'topic' I added on the front page as a welcome message

Sarah x

 

Hi,

You would need to go to the Essential custom settings pages. Log in as Admin and then go to Administration > Site Administration > Appearance > Themes > > Then CLICK on the link for 'Essential' which should be listed at that point in the side block. This will open a list of setting pages.

Hope this helps?

Mary

Check the frontpage template file there is a section of code commented out near the bottom, don't know but this might be what your looking for (sponsors bit). Edit: forgot to add the imoot section is just the frontpage label option that moodle provides.

Hi Ankit,

What you saw there was hardcoded into the theme for iMoot. Of course 90% of sites on't want this so it has been removed from the Essential theme.

As mentioned earlier, the code for sponsors is still in the frontage layout but commented out. You can reactivate these if you know your way around code.

The top part of the page was just a label with nice formatting added.

Regards

Julian

Hi Jean, at essential/layout/header.php add the following line of code after line 93 before </ul>

 

<li><a href="YOUR-SOCIAL-PAGE-URL"><i class="icon-theicon"></i></a></li>

 

Where you can get theicon from http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/cheatsheet/

 

E.G: if i want to play instagram icon on the header:

 

<li><a href="http://instagram.com"><i class="icon-instagram"></i></a></li>

</ul>

</div>

Good morning, When you click to view the note, gives error:

http://prntscr.com/1fhahb

When clicked into gear to set up a resource or tool main page gives an error:

http://prntscr.com/1fhaog

I finally have a theory why this is happening and only to some users. Can you please grab the latest version from Github by clicking here and let me know if that fixes your issue. Please test and if this fixes it I will ad it to the main release asap. 

 

Thanks Mary. i keep forgetting to switch before committing which has been a pain.

The production version will be the MOODLE_25 branch. The master is where I commit things before I am sure they will work. I only merge after significant testing.

If you are using GIT, please be sure to take Mary's advice and grab the MOODLE_25 branch to ensure you get the best experience possible.

Julian

Hi Mary..can u plz elaborate... like i said i m not able to fix the issue.On clicking the add new account and forgot new password there is an error..I m struggling with the problem since last week nd not able to find my way out..Thank u.

 

Essential seems to just inherit the Bootstrapbase/Clean breadcrumb so you could copy and modify this renderer to control how it looks:

https://github.com/moodle/moodle/blob/master/theme/bootstrapbase/renderers/core_renderer.php#L50-L65

Probably that renderer should have been written to pick up the "/" character from $THEME->rarrow in the first place.

With pure CSS you can use ul.breadcrumb span.divider {display: none;} to hide the current divider character and then the following to add new dividers:

ul.breadcrumb li:after { content: "\f054"; }
ul.breadcrumb li:last-child:after { content: none; }

Which adds a right-chevron to the end of every link, then takes it away from the last one (on everything but IE7). You might need to change the text color of the li as well.

I got the \f054 from the Font Awesome CSS here:

https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/blob/master/css/font-awesome.css#L620-L622

Dear Bob,

It is standard practice to publish stable versions / tagged beta versions as zip files on the plugin's DB and have branches on GitHub that are newer as they contain the very latest code that is more often than not is unready for release.  But this theme is in the process of being developed which is why requests are being made to use the branches on GitHub.  The 'head' branch is an internal local branch so I'm not sure why that is showing up.  The 'master' branch is traditionally the main development branch for the next version of Moodle (i.e. M2.6) and 'MOODLE_25' is for Moodle 2.5

I do not know exactly what is causing the issue with the theme not showing up and causing the issues etc. as it works fine for me.  My gut says that there is an installation issue.  So, please could you post a screen shot of the '/theme/essential' folder just to be sure that it looks ok .

Cheers,

Gareth

Dear Bob,

If you want to customise the way a course is displayed then use a course format, there are lots of different ones available.  Edit: Just re-read your comment to realise it pertains to 'My Home'.

'My Home' was once 'My Moodle' and I can remember Martin D saying that it has not turned out to be what he imagined.  Perhaps its time to change that and specify out what we would like it to be such that software engineers can make it happen.

Cheers,

Gareth

Dear Colin,

You are missing the 'at font-face' style code in the layout files.

Cheers,

Gareth