Now that the Essential theme is out of Alpha and into formal release, this forum has been started to allow for open discussion of bugs and feature requests.
You can watch an overview of some of the major features of the theme here: The “Essential” #bootstrap based #moodle theme has been submitted to the plugins DB and can be downloaded from https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=theme_essential.
Here is an overview of features: https://vimeo.com/channels/moodleman
WOW! Love it!
100% for presentation.
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:
If you can help me or guide me to any Moodle instructions (for total noobs) I'd really appreciate it.
Many thanks
C
Looking great Julian. I've been playing with it for the last hour trying to set it up for our school how I'd like it to look.
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. It would be nice if it hung around a bit longer when the page first loaded. The rest of the time it looks fine.
And a feature request. I really appreciated that in Rocket I could change the link color independently of the other colors. My school's colors are black and gold. For design reasons, I wish they were easier to work with. The gold is unsuitable for a general theme color which leaves black for the theme color. However that makes problems with telling what is linked and what isn't. In Rocket, I ended up making the link color blue just to keep it easy to see the random links like glossary entries and activity auto links. Having a place to set that independently of the theme color would be nice for me.
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;
}
Dear Julian:
Hi I downloaded your theme and have installed but I try not block navigation appears, or administration, nor those of my courses, which can be??
regards
(ESCRIBO MAS O MENOS EL INGLES)
How do I create another menu lade my dashboard or a menu link to any page?
hello,
first, fantastic work.
I have a small problem, when I open a scorm activity in a new window, I can not stop the navigation display.
I modified the config.php file
'popup' => array(
'file' => 'columns1.php',
'regions' => array(),
'options' => array('nofooter'=>true, 'nonavbar'=>true, 'noheader'=>true),
But still not working, any idea.
Thank you.
Hi,
This sounds like a BUG so can you please check if this happens in Clean theme too because if it does it needs reporting in [Moodle Tracker].
Cheers
Mary
One more little odd thing:
When I'm on any page outside of the site administration pages, the submenu for the Essential theme doesn't appear at all within the Administration block. Within any site admin page, the submenu for the essential theme appears just fine.
This is true when using Essential as well as a few other themes I tried (Clean, Leatherbound).
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
Finally the UI i was waiting for. Would be up and running soon on our system! Thaanks Julian!
Its so sleek, simple and easy! Always what i wanted! Just a few things i would like to change if your up for it.
Like how could we make it have only two column, (Content and Blocks)
Also, is there a trick to make all blocks on the Right, so automaticly the content space gets more.
When using iframes, it gets really untidy. I would love a whole space for a Book/Lesson etc.
I will promise to work on a two column option in the next release. Couldn't quite figure out how to get the dynamically adjusting content dependant on columns working in bootstrap and wanted this version to be as stable as possible.
As for iframes I have a simpler response. Adjust the width of your iframe. I dont see how the theme would be directly impacting that.
Julian
Dear Julian,
The current versions of Clean and Shoelace have adjusting columns (for three column) layouts when 'side-pre' or 'side-post' have no content. They both just implement it in a slightly different way.
The key here is for the definition of 'span9' to have a 100% width when 'side-pre' or 'side-post' have no content.
Cheers,
Gareth
Hi Julian,
Building on what Gareth said in his last comment, it is planned MDL-39777 that Clean will "inherit" the layouts from Bootstrapbase theme this is to make future developments easier to maintain. So Clean will only carry a standard set of settings for Inverse top menu, header logo, footnote & custom CSS in the settings.php.
The way the blocks are loaded is all changed too. Lots of stuff is all done in core. Gareth know more about this side of things has he has been instrumental in getting the layouts to work.
Cheers
Mary
Hey Julian,
Can I say fantastic theme! I am very new to Moodle, so my opinion won't carry as much weight as the more experienced Moodlers out there, but after spending time looking over themes etcetera, yours came top of the list!
I have one problem though. I installed your theme and straight away I am greeted with: Coding error detected, it must be fixed by a programmer: Trying to reference an unknown block region side-post.
I am not experienced with Moodle, so any advice on how to remove this would be greatly appreciated.
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
I have followed your instruction Mary, and all I have on the page now is what was there before:
[main content goes here -4pqm7h1j8f]
and coding error detected.
When I logged out as system administrator I was able to see this at the bottom of the page:
This page is: General type: frontpage. Context Front page (context id 2). Page type site-index.
Hello,
we have got the same problem under Moodle 2.5.2+ (Build: 20130913) with the latest Essential theme (Release 2.5.4 (Build: 20130904)).
We have got some older assignments (2.2) activities. If I go here: "Assignment upgrade helper / List assignments that have not been upgraded" and check some box to upgrade selected assignments (with using the button at the botttom of the page), I get the same error:
Coding error detected, it must be fixed by a programmer: Trying to reference an unknown block region side-post
[MAIN CONTENT GOES HERE - Jn1nvWUuCC]
But if I use the upgrade link which can be found all the rows of each older assignment name than the upgrade works perfectly.
I don't know what I must do with this information, who can I give it to the developer so I type it here.
I found that Essential is a fantastic theme! Great job, many thanks for it!
Bonjour,
ce thème est graphiquement génial ! Merci.
Cependant je rencontre une erreur lors de l'affichage des cohortes ou des notes.
"Trying to reference an unknown block region side-post"
Hello, this theme is graphically awesome ! Thank you !!
However, i encounter an error when displaying cohorts or grades.
moodle/grade/report/user/index.php?id=3 [MAIN CONTENT GOES HERE - t99XPScuMz]
moodle/cohort/index.php?contextid=3 [MAIN CONTENT GOES HERE - 91TpnVTrvu]
Thanks.
Didier
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
Hello,
Yes, i have got the current version...
Thanks.
Didier
Hi, going on the Grades, i am getting the same error :/
Hi, i just copied the theme on github and updated on Moodle, as u said the newest update, i am facing these problems:
-- Secondly i want to ask how can i make the width of the Boxes a bit lesser then the original, (.rowfluid .span6 ??) and move it more to the right. So i get more "CONTENT SPACE"
Thanks.
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
Looks like some great changes have come in 2.5.1.
I have attached a screenshot showing that it goes to two columns now, not just three.
Best thing is, I have changed nothing in Essential to do this. As Essential inherits from Bootstrapbase and bootstrap base has had significant work done in 2.5.1, the magic has all happened behind the scenes.
If you upgrade to 2.5.1 please give feedback to let me know if you are having any issues using two rather than three columns.
Julian
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.
The default block locations are not set by the theme. So you will need to move them. Looks like your two blocks are in the "left" column. Just click and drag them to the right.
Julian
Sure yes, how can i make the blocks width a bit smaller?
To do that you will need to add additional CSS into the Essential theme settings. But this is not as easy as you think.
In bootstrap widths are now based on spans. The page contains 12 eque-distant spans that content is put within. In this case the blocks cover 3 spans each and the content covers 6 spans.
Understanding this is important as changing widths will have a greater impact.
The current CSS states.
Hi Julian,
I am in the same situation where I need to decrease the blocks width a bit. Right now it stands at 30% something , but hardcoding this in my inherited theme throws the responsiveness out of place. What would you suggest to start going deep a bit to see how the mechanisms work behind it ? LESS ? I'm not really that familiar with LESS ( apart from whats stated in the moodle docs), so any help will be really appreciated. I have inherited the CLEAN theme to suit our university theme.
Many thanks
Hittesh
I would recommend that you consider changing the z-index for the da-slider to a value such as -1.
As it is now, things such as glossary terms displayed on the front page appear under the slider text (see example 1). Simply changing the da-slider in the custom code area fixes the issue see example 2).
I don't see any reason why the z-index shouldn't be used to push the slider back. And in some instances it is a benefit to have it back. So, I hope you will consider the change.
Thanks,
Rod
Getting the same error as someone else. I am running the most current version of this theme and Moodle
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
Thank you. Even with the latest version of this theme from github, I still get the error, "Coding error detected, it must be fixed by a programmer: Trying to reference an unknown block region side-post" .
Dear G K,
As I cannot replicate the issue, please could you turn on developer level debugging (http://docs.moodle.org/25/en/Debugging) as a stack trace would help.
Cheers,
Gareth
Thanks for your help in advance. Turning on debugging renders the following info:
I cannot replicate your issue either. Are you sure you have the most recent version of the codebase?
Julian
Hello
This is the BEST Theme
Thanks a lot Julian
I'm testing this theme in my site http://giselebrugger.com/moodle/
and today i installed this format course : https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=format_tabtopics&sesskey=Ytmuyrempr and when a access administration to finish installation i had a error 
Thank you
Dear G K,
Odd as the logic is sound in 'general.php' with and without using an RTL language and with having no blocks in 'side-post' on a three column layout with editing on and off. I cannot replicate or see a coding fault by looking backwards from line 186.
What version of Moodle and Essential (with branch) are you using? Where did you get it from? Have you made any modifications?
I'm using Moodle 2.5.1 (Build: 20130708) 2013051401.00 with Essential theme from the MOODLE_25 branch on GitHub 2.5 (Build: 20130705) 2013070500.
Cheers,
Gareth
Hi Julian
Just wanted to reitterate everyone's comments and say what a fantastic theme. Great work.
Quick question. Our site has 2 or 3 admin accounts. If we use the 'hide blocks for admin' feature at the bottom, do we get different views or the same?
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
Thanks Julian - makes sense.
Am testing out different modules and have noticed that the appearance of the Feedback activity looks a bit 'bleak'. There used to be styling templates in the old Questionnaire module - should Feedback look different or is this the standard layout?
This is just the standard bootstrap layout for feedback. Essential has added nothing to the formatting here.
Julian
I use the feedback module a lot and there are significant problems with formatting the feedback when using the essential theme compared to other standard themes
The formatting is generally poor (eg 2 lines for each multiple choice as in the screenshot shown above) - have never seen this in other themes - but more importantly settings I have adjusted (eg texbox width for long ansers) have no effect - ie all textboxes are the same width (about 50) whatever setting I select. This problem does not occur in other themes.
This is a serious issue for my use of the essential theme which I generally really like. I hope someone can come up with a solution.
It does happen in other thees. Any bootstrap theme to be precise.
Sadly until they fix this in core there is not much I can do.
Julian
Thanks Julian
I'm only just getting my head round the concept of the bootstrap theme.
Hi Ray,
I also like using the Feedback module. So I wanted to find out how it looks in Moodle 2.6dev (Build: 20130823) with Survey2 (a combination of Feedback, Survey, and Questionnaire) installed.
I am not sure whether Survey2 will be available in the next Moodle version, but the layout looks good to me. Of course, this doesn't help you for the current Moodle version, but may give you a perspective.
With kind regards,
Hartmut
Hello!
Very nice theme and very easy to modify . I wanted another background-color, while the page-background (#page) stays white. So i changed body-background to a certain color and #page to white in custom.css.
This change of colors showed there is something wrong with the footer: Only on the frontpage it is part of the page-div (check with firebug).
Footer integrated on frontage
footer not integrated on other pages:
Is this "a bug" or am i wrong. I only modified custom.css.
Gehrt
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?
Your not being thick Colin. In this theme you cannot.
Essential, like the Sky High theme in Moodle core is designed to put both columns of blocks on the right hand side of the page. This cannot be changed. Well, not without rewriting the theme.
Julian
Awesome theme...by far the best I've seen! I downloaded from github today.
I've got two minor problems.
1) When previewing a question it complains of coding error "Coding error detected, it must be fixed by a programmer: Trying to reference an unknown block region side-post". I switch back to "Clean" theme and all is fine.
2) Its seems the first slide in the slide show does not show when page is first loaded but rather starts on 2nd slide after a few seconds. Eventually it will cycle through and show the first slide.
Thanks for the great contrib!
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
Hello Julian, there are no changes to the github version. Latest changes where 5 days ago ...
Hi Julian,
You may well have fixed this, but did you PUSH the fix to your GitHub?
I think not!!! 
Sorry everyone. I swore I aded the commit. Serves me right for swearing.
Today I updated GIT and the plugins DB with Essential 2.5.1.
In this release I have:
Grab the latest now and be sure to leave your feedback
Julian
Well done, Julian!
The theme looks really good. I will try it next week in a sandbox environment to make sure that it suits our needs.
In mean time, as we are using the Grid layout in our courses, is Essential compatible with it?
Hello, Can anyone help me adding these content.
I was trying on this theme I could not add content to Center portion of the home page and the Banner of Sponsor.
Please Please Please help me how can I add this. Please.
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
The best thing to do is go to Site Administration > Plugins > Add-ons > Un-install the Essential theme.
Then go and checkout the latest version. It should be time stamped with yesterday's date.
Hello Mary
Thank you I will do as you say and re-install the essentials and see what happens.
Many thanks Sarah x
I am with Mary here,
This theme has now been installed on dozens of sites. So you should not see major errors like that.
How did you go with the reinstall?
Julian
Hi julian
I deleted the essential version I was using - then tested with another theme - everything worked well - I then uploaded the latest version of essential and again I have this error
"Trying to reference an unknown block region side-post"
ALSO with new version having a huge problem selecting the Change Theme button - when I hover over the "clear theme caches" I see the changes. But when I hover over the 'change theme' I can't do anything.
----- following on from the error code, I deleted the essential theme, selected a new theme 'clear' removed edited the topic - all ok. I then removed the topic.
I uploaded the latest version then selected the essential theme, front page settings add topic > edit topic >ERROR .
Sarah
Hi Sarah
Did you add the theme under Administration > Plugins > Install Add-on?
Or did you upload it yourself to the server?
Also after you click the "Clear Theme caches" button, you need to make sure that the Theme selector is the Default one and NOT the one for Tablet as it seems to default to that page. So please just test it.
Also can you test that the Coding error is in the Clean theme as it could well be associated to a bug I have just fixed.
Cheers
Mary
@Mary Evans
Ad mentioned above, I encountered the same problems of being unable to change the theme, even if I cleared caches and switched back to default theme.
Also mentioned above, I did not encounter this problem with the Clean theme.
I'm somewhat flummoxed about your asking whether the theme was uploaded or installed via Administration->Plugins->Add-on... is there a difference in the outcomes of each?1
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
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
Hello,
nice job ! Thank a lot.
I need add a other social network. I can use a not-used in the make a link in the social networking admin page. But I have't the right icon on the top page.
could you give me a process ? (I'm not a programer but I can cut/past on html table )
thank you for help.
(xuse my english)
Regards
jm
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>
Read through this whole thread so my remarks wouldn't be redundant. I have tested with fresh unadulterated clones of Moodle 2.5.1 (20130712) and 2.5+ (20130630) and experienced the same results while working with essential version 2013070300:
All of these work fine using the Clean theme (which I had to select by going into mdl_config table.
Hi..gr8 wrk...Awsmme theme...I am using Essential theme version 2.5.1...Actually on clicking the create new account button for the creation of new accounts by users its giving the coding error detected..I am not able to fix it..Plz reply asap..Thank u..
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.
I tried with the link that you posted but still it was not able to rectify it.The problem still persists...can u tell me how to fix it..thank u..
Please see my previous message above in answer to your reply. Still seeing the error.
Sarah
While I do not want to take away from the fact it is happening on your site, I have tested now on three different sites (one 2.5 and the others 2.5.1) and cannot replicate your error while visiting the same respective URLs.
My last hope for a solution is to get you to enable Theme Designer mode which will also force oodles to not use the cached version.
Julian
Just stayed up so I can catch up with you!
Essential is a beautiful theme, and one that I personally would like adding to Moodle core.
I've just been testing your latest updates and all seem to be working OK.
Just one point I would like to make for those wanting to download the newest version. You need to click on the Branch link in https://github.com/moodleman/moodle-theme_essential.git and choose moodle_25 as the updates are in that branch.
I don't know if that was your intention Julian, but I figured if people know how to use GIT then it's easy enough to clone https://github.com/moodleman/moodle-theme_essential.git into a localhost/moodle25/theme/essential then checkout MOODLE_25 branch. I did just that and then deleted the master branch.
Like I said all is working OK and no errors (as yet)
Cheers and thanks.
Mary
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.
The quickest thing for you to do is remove the Essential theme from your server.
Then once back in to the site, you can try installing the zip file using the Administration > Plugins > Install Add-ons
Care must be taken as to which version of the Essential theme you add back as there are two different ones floating about. As far as I know the following link is the correct one. This is the one I am using and as yet is working OK.
This is the link to the zip file it was updated on the 14/july/2013
https://github.com/moodleman/moodle-theme_essential/archive/MOODLE_25.zip
Cheers
Mary
Hello,
Thank you for this great theme.
I'd like to know how to change the breadcrumb separator from "/" to this ">" or using the icon-caret-right on "http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/cheatsheet/".
I'd tried adding $THEME->rarrow = '>'; to config.php but I couldn't make it work.
Thank you.
Philippe
Here's what I've discovered though its been such a mixed up mess I could be in error on some things:
I think its rather a pita to have to check out a theme especially given that the published links to the theme are always for the zip which will not get you the most updated version.
After finally successfully upgrading to 20130715 I still see the issues with being unable to change theme selected even after I've cleared theme cache, purged all caches, cleared browser cache and run CSS Cachebuster. I have no themes listed in "Theme list" and I am in Theme designer mode. I do however have access to the Essential configuration links now which I didn't before this version. Again, clean 2.5.1 install.
EDIT: I cannot click on add an activity for my topic section on the front page, still unresponsive.
I can do all of these things with the clean theme.
Firefox 22 on Mountain Lion
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
Its easy to miss some of the nuances of this discussion because its so long so I'd like to point out the salient points I'm making in my previous post:
Here is my screenshot of the repo created when I cloned to my desktop:
Here is my theme/essential folder of my working branch:
First of all Bob, you will need to rename the theme from moodle-theme_essential to essential
After that it should work.
If you also enable Debugging (Administration > Development > Debugging) then you would have had notifications of missing strings and such
I'm sorry if I'm getting a little cautious here but I feel as though people are talking to me like I am an idiot or else they're just not reading. I've posted two screenshots, the repo "moodle-theme_essential" and my working copy which is theme/essential.
I don't know if I'm supposed to get debug information for buttons and links that simply don't work when using a particular theme but I'm not getting any and I have my debug set to Development.
EDIT: I'm very interested in seeing this theme get into STABLE condition. guess I'll include pictures and maybe that will result in better understanding:
DEAD CHANGE THEME BUTTON (no notices or errors)
Sorry Bob, but being partially sighted does have it drawbacks. I just failed to see the delineation of the two images I just took it as one after seeing the name at the top of the list. I just assumed you were thick...which was wrong on me of course. You obviously can't be so think if you can use GIT.
Dear Mary,
Just testing for Bob now - not finished yet - but occurs to me that this might be the dreaded Byte Order Mark?
Cheers,
Gareth
Ok, using the version cloned from https://github.com/moodleman/moodle-theme_essential/tree/MOODLE_25 (screen shot e1.png) this is what I have found:
Cheers,
Gareth
You've made more headway than I have however I'm not having trouble with the course add and activity, I'm having trouble with the front page, topic section add an activity.
Dear Bob,
There is a bug in 'layout/frontpage.php' - to fix move line 367 containing '<div id="page-content" class="row-fluid">' to line 363.
Edit: Pull request https://github.com/moodleman/moodle-theme_essential/pull/13 added.
Cheers,
Gareth
Thanks Gareth -- that fixed that problem. Can't change themes with FF but can with Chrome. Did you give FF a go? OS X Mountain Lion here.
Also, unless I can figure out a way to get "Enrolled courses" displayed front-and-center without all the extra instructor and pending items info, this will be a deal killer. Ideally what would be looked for is cascading categories for only those courses in which you're enrolled (same thing one gets from NAV->My courses... except NAV is now quite a ways down the page without apparent remedy.
Dear Bob,
I cannot replicate the theme selector issue in FF 22.0.
I thought the 'extra instructor...' was a display option issue not related to the theme - I'm sure there is a setting somewhere, just cannot remember where.
I think the category cascade would also be a Moodle improvement outside of the remit of themes.
Cheers,
Gareth
Okay... fair enough, I've not found where I can remove extra info under each course listed on the center (with essential, "total") column but will continue to hunt.
Hope I'm not becoming too pesky but I think I read that this forum was setup so we could debug the theme and give feedback. To that end I'm wondering why the marketing blocks will only take a URL for a picture contained in the information section and not take an uploaded file?
That's because we are restricted in how things are set up in a setting page. We really could do with a form that would allow such things as a file picker, but then we get into Database territory and this can in turn cause overload and slow everything down.
I think it is time that every Moodle site front page should be a stylish web page that uses only HTML5 and nothing else. Moodle could then begin on the general page that the front page links to via a login portal.
Definitely cannot get beyond why the front page is the way it is, i.e., anything displayed (news items, courses, topic section) take up the entire width with all blocks on the page in one straight line down the left side and unable to be moved. My home does not provide an alternative because it suffers from the same things its always suffered from, inability to customize the critical things (how courses are displayed), ability to add or take away blocks -- nobody at the schools I know wants to use it.
Otherwise this theme works quite well for courses, if people just didn't have to visit the Home page (where they want to see only categories of the courses in which they are enrolled -- again in the NAV block, WAAAAYYY down the page).
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
I have tried to add font awesome capability to clean theme, by copying the fonts folder, custom css, font awesome css files across and amending config.php to add the font awesome style sheet. However the icons for blocks appear as blank squares. Anyone got any ideas what I am missing?
Dear Colin,
You are missing the 'at font-face' style code in the layout files.
Cheers,
Gareth
I have a related problem to what Colin has described. I have just installed the latest version as of July 16th (2.5.2 - Build: 20130717). Everything appears to work as it should, except for the icons are all missing from all the blocks and header. The course icons appear as they should. I am not sure what to adjust here.
The layout folder contains the following files:
course.php; essential.php; footer.php; frontpage.php; general.php; header.php; standard.php
The style folder contains:
custom.css; font-awesome.css; slides.css
Any ideas what might cause the icons to not show?
Okay, I think I have an idea of what you mean. I am assuming that you mean
<!-- Google web fonts -->
<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Oswald:400,700' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=PT+Sans:400,700,400italic' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>
needs to be put into the relevant section on the clean layout files, column1.php etc.
Am I on the right lines?
Okay I need to correct my above post. I have added the following to custom.css
@font-face {
font-family: 'FontAwesome';
font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal;
src: url('setting:fontwwwfontawesome-webfont.eot?v=3.2.1');
src: url('setting:fontwwwfontawesome-webfont.eot?#iefix&v=3.2.1') format('embedded-opentype'),
url('setting:fontwwwfontawesome-webfont.woff?v=3.2.1') format('woff'),
url('setting:fontwwwfontawesome-webfont.ttf?v=3.2.1') format('truetype'),
url('setting:fontwwwfontawesome-webfont.svg#fontawesomeregular?v=3.2.1') format('svg');
}
but I see no change after caches are purged etc. I am clearly missing something.
Good day ...
I found these errors:
1) When you click to view note:
http://prntscr.com/1fu8bk
2) When we click edit summary on the main page of Moodle (you must enable editing):
http://prntscr.com/1fu8mr
Anyone know how to fix or is to provide the theme fixed?
thank you
@Julian -- design question... why so much wasted space near the top of the front page with News items, or Courses, or Combo list all taking up the full width of the screen?
Hi
If you look at
http://vle.ashs.norfolk.sch.uk/?theme=essential
The pic for Street Snooker fills the entire width of the News section in IE10 - but in Chrome it doesn't.
is it possible to add a feature that disable frontpage slideshow and marketing spots after login. Maybe it can go the settings under frontpage setting when login show slideshow and marketting spots etc.
hello everybody,
some stranges things...
1) I can't remove a logo in general settings. 
2) my site don't use full width of screen
Thanks for help
jm
Although this discussion has already gathered many replies, I'd like to point out that I find the wording of its title "Essential Theme Discussions" not quite clear, especially to non-English speakers.
Joseph
Master Joseph talked.
You've earned a famous french distinction - the Capelo's badge.
Philippe
Hi
Thank you - so much for this - but got a couple of errors. (using current version at time of posting)
1. Icons will not appear (see
http://vle.ashs.norfolk.sch.uk/?theme=essential
inc. those for menus and social network
2. I get an error message when using IE10 that it needs upgrading
3. If you go to http://vle.ashs.norfolk.sch.uk/course/view.php?id=48§ion=0
4. When trying to add an image to the Slideshow the AJAX? spinning loader will not stop.
I get a comment above the Calendar saying "This is essential" and the link to Moodle Docs in the Footer and a line saying Footnote.
Thanks again and thanks again for all your help!
J. (out of the woodwork again now 2nd child is 4months old!)
Hi
Fixed all issues in my previous post APART from the following:
Can not upload images in either the logo or the Slideshow positions. The spinny thing goes round and round!
Also the message that appears that says I should upgrade Internet Explorer when I am using IE10!
Otherwise it is working excellently. (Solved by uploading the master from Github)
I found two problems in this new version ...
The report notes not displayed and the menu icons (pictures) as well.
Can anyone fix?
thank you
I have posted this in the 2.5.2 thread, but just to recap.
ARRGGGGHHHH. I stuffed up in my testing and released it with a bug the messed up the icons. I have now fixed and released. Please try and keep comments related to 2.5.2 in the other thread as it will make it easier for me to keep track.
Julian
Went looking for a clean, modern new theme and found this. Love it and want to use it. One of our requirements is to move the navigation to the left instead of the right.
I had thought it'd be a simply float:left, but turns out that's not the case. I've been searching through the theme and can't seem to nail it. If anyone can let me know, that'd be seriously appreciated.
Hello,
It seems you have an answer here : https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=232669
Philippe
I noticed an error in the subject ...
The images of icons of social networks do not appear ... View:
Can anyone fix it?
thank you
Hi,
I need you help, I loaded your theme and its great and I added some blocks in footer i.e. HTML block, site news etc. but I'm facing issue i.e when I edit front page then only I can see them (blocks in footer), otherwise its not coming, if I'm logged in or logged out as site administrator, How to fix this please tell me
I really required you help
Thanks,
Vipin Goyal
I'm having trouble installing this theme? Every time I drop the "essential" folder into my themes folder my moodle instance admin page goes blank and unresponsive? The only way I can get my site to respond is if I delete the essential folder from the themes directory and reload the page?
I'm just using the windows (5.1+) install as a test site? Is there something I'm missing?
Hi Grant. When you get the white screen it could be anything. take it out first, enable debugging at the Developer mode level and then put it back.
That will then give you a detailed report of what is going wrong.
P.S. I just pushed a new version to Github (2.5.2) if you want to grab that as it has the latest fixes. Should be pushing it out to the plugins DB next week.
Julian
Am about to push 2.5.2 out for general release but keen for the usual suspects to test it before I push it live.
If you are an advanced user and would like to double check my work please grab the new MOODLE_252 branch from github and give it a whirl.
P.S. The first slide on the slideshow is still bust, but lots of other fixes and numerous new features added. Check the readme for a breakdown.
Julian
Moode 2.5.1 - How can I move the block in the red area at the bottom of the front page?
I tried the "role" icon but get the message:
The blocks were all usable in the Arialist theme.
Rgds
Petras
Would like to see some color in the header... any chance we could get the native colors on the social network icons (like red for G+, green for Twitter)?
Thanks for the tip, David. I took a look at this and you are so right, it is easy to customize the colors. Love this theme and I don't think I've heard anything but good comments from faculty.
I have had few private requests for colours in the social icons as well. I will make this change in the next release.
Keep that feedback coming.
Julian
Is it possible somehow to change the colour of the spacer (of the sections in the courses)?
Thanks in advance!
Hi Jen,
Sadly I don't have an answer for you. You will see a couple of others have reported the issue, but for most it works just fine. Why on different Moodle sites we see this and not on others is an absolute mystery to me and one yet with no resolution.
Have you trued in 2.5.1? Wondering if this is something to do with 2.5.
Julian
Julian, this is also happening with Clean theme in the qa.moodle.net site for Admins only, and that is running 2.6. So there is a problem somewhere in Moodle bootstrap that is causing this.
I did get an Error when testing one of my own themes the other evening, but that was to do with loading blocks before main content. Which is more than likely the real problem. Which is a Moodle CORE problem and NOT bootstrap themes in general..
Anyway you cannot do anything for anyone if they don't copy and paste the full ERROR code and stack trace. 
Cheers
Mary
As usual you are full of useful bits of information. Thanks for passing that on. As others asks the same question I shall be referring to this post moving forward.
Julian
Here's what I'm getting. Maybe it will help. Unfortunately I can't include a log since I am not able to display ANY System Admin pages in order to activate debugging messages.
I have two sites running 2.5.1 Bitnami stack on AWS. One site has system default language as English the other Hebrew. I installed Essential Theme yesterday on both sites directly through the Plugin Installer.
The English site is working fine and I have modified parameters, added content to the slideshow and marketing spots and it looks fantastic!! (Thanks for this terrific theme). On the Hebrew site, immediately after installing and without changing any parameters I got the error [MAIN CONTENT GOES HERE - bMITp3dJxt] on every page I selected. Even when I switch the interface Language to English I get the same result.
I can access pages that are not Site Pages - like courses and my profile but everything else returns this error. I previously selected both Clean Theme and Aardvark on the Hebrew site without any noticeable problem so it doesn't seem to me a general bootstrap problem (although I don't have any real understanding of how all this works).
If you can help me activate the debugger not through the interface (I am the admin but not a programmer) I would be happy to activate and send log. I would also love to be able to switch the theme back without having to restore my last backup if there is a relatively easy way to do it outside the app.
BTW - I would be happy to help test this theme for RTL languages - I understand it is on the roadmap
The version of Essential currently in the Master branch on github should now support RTL. Let me know if you have any issues testing.
Julian
Hi Heidi,
You might be better contacting Nadav Kavalerchik directly about this problem as he is currently working on fixing RTL in Bootstrapbase.
Without going into great detail, there are a few problems with this and is causing us a lot of stress right now.
In the mean time I'll take a look at Essential and see what is actually causing the problem.
Thanks
Mary
is it possible to add a auto menu feature to this theme just like aardvark automenu theme. Which will create the top menu(Custom Menu) from the course categories automatically.
Not in Moodle 2 it was easy in Moodle 1.9, because of the way the code was structured.
I tried to copy the code over to Moodle 2.0 in 2010, but failed as some of the sort function was different and other things wrong. Now the code is completely changed and structured differently and so harder to get to the categories to build the menu.
Mary
Would really like a custom profile switch that would allow slideshow to be removed by user.
Is it possible to use the Font Awesome icons on Custom Blocks ?
Same Question here,
One thing I would love to see (or may be its already in there and I am unaware of using it), is using Font Awesome in HTML.....
For Example, if I am typing a label in course or even menu bar, can I use Font Awesome Icons? if yes, how? if No, can this be added into update?
You can use them (and many other exciting Bootstrap styles) anywhere you can add HTML.
If you're comfortable with HTML then the basic format is:
<i class="icon-pencil"></i>
The original purpose of Font Awesome was to replace the Glyphicons from Bootstrap 2.3.2 (which used a single large image with all the icons in it, rather than a font) so the basic HTML is compatible with the examples in their documentation:
http://getbootstrap.com/2.3.2/base-css.html#icons
Many of the Bootstrap things can actually be copied and pasted directly into the TinyMCE editor, though I note with this particular feature TinyMCE tries to be helpful and changes the i tag to an em tag, and the icon font becomes italicized.
David, Thanks for your assistance, I have had tried doing that, but all it shows was a small box like icon. Julian just has explained proper way to do this. But thanks to you as well who responded on crying souls!
Julian's method is necessary for adding things to the interface of Moodle, but for adding to the content the way I described is easier. If you're getting a box then that points towards problems with the font loading which you might want to look into.
Adding
<i class="icon-pencil"></i>
certainly works for me in the Essential theme, (though sometimes there are areas in Moodle where any kind of HTML just gets stripped out e.g. Block titles).
David, of course your method is straight forward, and thats what this discussion was all about, adding to HTML in preference.
I have tried using this <i class> code in adding to a SECTION NAME, but it simple removes the code once saved, anything that I am doing wrong here?
Just to give you idea of,
I am trying to add icon right in front of text, so if I use the <i> tag thing, like you explained, on saving nothing shows up and if I edit it again, code just vanishes.
if I added just the code of the icon, like for example  then it shows up a small box like shown in picture.
I need help in that.
Ok Dokie, no worries if I cant use it in section names, still cooooooooool enough for such an awesome theme.
One last thing, can I use icons in Custom menus?
in Administration > Appearance > Themes > Theme Settings > Custom Menus, if Yes, then How?
Are you talking about changing the icon that appears? If so YES!
There are a few steps.
You will need to enable this feature first in your Moodle install. Log in as an administrator and go to:
SITE ADMINISTRATION > PLUGINS > BLOCKS > HTML
Here you will need to enable the option to:
Allow additional CSS classes
Once enabled you can now add a custom classname to your HTML Blocks. This is needed so that we can identify them individually and place a custom icon.
When creating your HTML block (or any in fact that you want to change the icon of) you now give it a classname of your choice. For this example I am using the name "customtest"
Use the cheat sheet located at http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/cheatsheet/. This will be needed to insert into our CSS to generate your desired icon. I keep this printed next to my monitor these days
Now under the "General Settings" for the Essential theme you can add the following custom css. Please note that I have highlighted in green the custom class name we are using and in red the unicode of the globe icon.
Please ensure it is formatted exactly like below. Copy and paste if you like.
.customtest .header .title h2:before {
content:"\f0ac";
}
If you have followed these steps correctly, when you hit save you should see your block now has a new icon displayed.
Hi Julian, I had no idea you could do that!
Thanks for brilliant tutorial!
Julian, You ROCK! Thats what I had been looking for.
Bundle of Thanks Man!
A recent installation of another bootstrap theme for testing -- Zebra -- SEEMS to have affected the ability to change the Essential theme's logo, slides or marketing images. All of them just get stuck on the spinning thing (see attached).
I don't want to uninstall Essential and reinstall, because I'm afraid of losing our of our customizations. Other than writing them all down and resetting them, is there a way to save them?
P.S., I'm excited about the upcoming 2.5.4 release!
Hi Blair,
Unless I've missed something Danny has done very recently Zebra is not bootstrap based - it is responsive, but that doesn't have to mean bootstrap!
Settings from different themes should not impact each other in any way.
Try removing Zebra first -
hmm a thought - I believe the one thing the two themes have in common is their use of
require_once(dirname(__FILE__).'/header.php');
- and the same for the footer to get around the issue of one of the blocks or activities calling its own header/footer.php files. Were you perhaps testing by using the theme name in the url - as that may not reset the dirname variable correclty and so could potentially cause conflict between the active theme (Zebra in the url) and the set theme (essential in the theme selector).
I've avoided the issue in a theme Im currently working on in a different way - simply by calling the header and footer files I wanted to include mythemenameheader.php and mythemenamefooter.php
You could try that in one or both of the themes and see if that helps so that the include line becomes
require_once(mythemenameheader.php');
Richard
I need more space in the header for our corporate logo. The theme automatically shinks the uploaded image.
How can I make the header taller?
Hi Richard,
Did you get an solution to this, I have now run into the same issue.
Cheers,
Sam
HI Sam,
You can find the solution here. Just change the height and width to reflect your logo requirements.
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=255676
Anu
Hi,
I need help. I have the latest moodle and them version (2.5.3). All works ok. But I cant find the buttons that let me edit or delete a calendar evet or glossary entry. I see an empty space.
Please see the image ;)
Thanks.
Use the mouse to 'hover' over the area, and the icons appear. They use a function called 'autohide'
Autohide doesn't work with me... It's always hidden, hover function doesn't work.
I change the line 30 in editicons.css but I now have another problem (see the image):
.commands img {
display: none;
}
to:
.commands img {
display: inline;
}
Hello,
A really great theme! There is one urgent issue however: none of my iframe embedded objects are displaying, either in Page or Tab Activity. I use iframe for Hotpots and Quizlet flashcards.
Tom
I have been customizing this great theme and have had a lot of success. Bellow is the Custom CSS code I added to change certain aspects of the theme.
--------
.container-fluid {
max-width: 1900px;
}
.clearfix {
border: solid 2px #a71e38;
}
#section-0.section.main.clearfix {
background-color:#ffffff;
}
#section.main.clearfix {
background-color:#ffffff;
}
#section-0.section.main.clearfix {
background-color:#ffffff;
}
#section-1.section.main.clearfix {
background-color:#ffffff;
}
#section-2.section.main.clearfix {
background-color:#ffffff;
}
#section-3.section.main.clearfix {
background-color:#ffffff;
}
#section-4.section.main.clearfix {
background-color:#ffffff;
}
#section-5.section.main.clearfix {
background-color:#ffffff;
}
#section-6.section.main.clearfix {
background-color:#ffffff;
}
#section-7.section.main.clearfix {
background-color:#ffffff;
}
#section-8.section.main.clearfix {
background-color:#ffffff;
}
#section-9.section.main.clearfix {
background-color:#ffffff;
}
#section-10.section.main.clearfix {
background-color:#ffffff;
}
.li.section.main {
border-bottom: 0px none;
background: url([[pix:theme|bg/dot]]) bottom repeat-x;
}
.clearfix {
background-color:#ffffff;
}
------------------------
The last bit was added to try and make editing a little easier, because the text sometimes gets lost in the background. (I initially tried to create a 1x1 graphic with a 50% opacity, but I couldn't get the opacity to be recognized when on the site.) ANYWAY, the I got the areas to fill with color, but I have come across an issue with heading. It is merely a cosmetic issue, that I don't know how to fix. The heading for each area is half in the color and half out. In other words, they don't appear to be totally in the container.
Any suggestions? Most of this stuff will be seen by myself, although a few areas (like self-registration) will be seen by students.
Hi Julian is it possible to add an option to add site administration menu tree to the custom menu just as My Dashboard and My Courses.
My previous questions have been resolved, but there is another one. Before when I set the dimensions of images to be the same, the were the same, but now they are all slightly different in size and don't align edge to edge.
Is there a way to edit the speed of the slideshow? It's a bit fast for me and I'd like to change the length of time that each image stays on the screen.
Thanks, great theme!!
I'm also wanting to slow down the slider. You can't read the text before it disappears. Any way to tweak the code??
Hi,
Look in ../essential/jquery/custom.js and you will see this. Just try adjusting the interval value to a higher one ... try 10000 if that is too slow reduce it to suit. You will need to use Notepad or a Text Editor but NOT a word processor!!!
$(function() {
$("h2.pagetitle span").html(function(i, text) {
return text.replace(/[a-zàâîïôèéêëèùûü]+/i, function(match) {
return '<span class="firstword">' + match + '</span>';
});
});
$('#da-slider').cslider({
autoplay : true,
interval : 6000
});
});
I changed the interval to 10000 and 15000 but it still has the same speed (6 sec). I modified the default as well from cslider and still no joy.
You need t remember that the slider uses javascript and the JS is cached by moodle to increase performance. Annoyingly this is not cleared as part of clearing the theme cache. (which is why it is not a theme setting).
Once you have changed the timing you then need to "purge all caches" in moodle. Only then will will your change be applied.
Julian
Before posting, I did that 3 times to be sure. I even rebooted the server. The result was still the same (6 seconds interval).
I am not sure of your issue then. I have just done this test and confirmed on two test sites that this does indeed change the delay.
Have you also tried your browser cache?
Julian
I've been trying back and forth on different browsers, settings, etc. Whatever info I add there it still keeps the 6 second interval including the 2 seconds transition. Any other ideas?
Can you please upload a copy of the custom.js script as a zip file to this forumn in your next comment?
Also what server type are you testing Moodle and Essential theme on?
If it is Moodle for Windows then it could be a problem with the extension=eaccelerator.dll Read more...
Dear Marius,
Did you change the code on the web server instead of editing locally?
Gareth
I did clear my browser cache and tried from IE10, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Also tried from other machines.
Yes Gareth, I have a live test server (clone of our real one with students) and the changes I made were through WinSCP, editing the files directly through FTP.
Love it the theme!!!
But i would like to put the footer with size 100%, leaving the rest of the page with the original size. I'm trying to put out <footer id="page-footer"> from the <div id="page">, maybe after the div.
Does anyone know how?
We were having problems running the Assignment Upgrade Tool and then I discovered that if I changed the theme to something other than the Essential theme, it worked.
The two errors in the debugger that referred to the theme were:
line 222 of /theme/essential/renderers/core_renderer.php: call to core_renderer->blocks)_for_region()
AND
line 141 of /theme/essential/layout/general.php: call to theme_essential_core_renderer->essentialblocks()
After I successfully ran the upgrade tool, I changed back to the Essential Theme (because we love it!).
Dear Blair,
I don't remember the thread, but I believe this is fixed in version 2.5.4 of the theme.
Cheers,
Gareth
Thanks for that, Gareth, but that's the version we were on when I ran the tool.
Dear Blair,
That's odd as the 'config.php' on https://github.com/moodleman/moodle-theme_essential/tree/ESSENTIAL_254 is correct for the 'maintenance' layout which is set by '/admin/tool/assignmentupgrade/batchtool.php' in it's 'set_pagelayout' call. Odd, so check your 'config.php' has:
'maintenance' => array(
'file' => 'general.php',
'regions' => array('side-pre', 'side-post', 'footer-left', 'footer-middle', 'footer-right'),
'defaultregion' => 'side-post',
),
Cheers,
Gareth
Gareth the Maintenance layout should contain NO blocks: This is the one use in Bootstrapbase.
// Used during upgrade and install, and for the 'This site is undergoing maintenance' message.
// This must not have any blocks, and it is good idea if it does not have links to
// other places - for example there should not be a home link in the footer...
'maintenance' => array(
'file' => 'columns1.php',
'regions' => array(),
'options' => array('nofooter'=>true, 'nonavbar'=>true, 'nocoursefooter'=>true, 'nocourseheader'=>true),
),
In that case Essential's 'config.php' needs fixing.
Yes indeedy!
In fact I was trying to persuade Julian to update and use the columns1/2/3 and then he could perhaps dispense with all the $hasthisthatandtheother code but I think the work involved is too great a job for him to change now.
I'm not totally convinced the custom regions work as well as they should. Sam did some work on this area but it seems to have got lost in all the changes. Also trying to search Moodle Tracker issues is hard work.
Hi Mary,
I'm not to entirely happy with this whole 'columnsX' business as it has some odd CSS / JS to get over this whole blocks are there / not there / empty thing. I rationalised it down to the granularity of the grid not being fine enough as a non nested 3-6-3 solution has the blocks to big and a 2-8-2 the blocks are to small. So I changed the grid number in variables.less to '24' so I could implement a non-nested 5-14-5 solution (https://github.com/gjb2048/moodle-theme_shoelace/tree/MOODLE_25_FOOTER_BLOCK_GRID_24). Then discovered that the CSS / JS was mucking around with things with the block columns in editing mode. And the 'margin: auto 0' was playing havoc with the centre content column.
However I'm still convinced that some sort of tiles solution could help like: http://tiles.apache.org/.
And the thought has struck me that we could have 'theme plugins'. Because Essential has made huge strides in adding functionality and the 'formal_colourbox' I came up with the other day is just 'formal_white' with an added function - no styles where harmed in its creation. Therefore I believe we need to separate form and function in themes such that users can pick the style that they want and bolt on the 'extra's that provide the function. Like picking accessories on a car after you have chosen the model and colour scheme.
Cheers,
Gareth
Isn't that what some themes have been doing for a while Gareth, e.g. the profile block that first arrived in one of the earlier Aardvark themes is implemented by using an include('profileblock') call, the boxslider in krystle (as 'borrowed' from a theme I worked on with Mary even before that) is implemented by an include('bxslider'). Do we really need anything any more complex than that? If its really simple to do with a single php command already, why does it need another framework?
As for making the suggestion a bit wider and making those available as 'theme plugins' somewhere and standardising them - great idea!
Hi Richard,
They are just thoughts. Simple is good. Standardisation is good. Consistency is good. Object Orientation, refactoring and reuse is good . As for more complex I don't know it's just I've been looking at how templating engines work in Java and wondered about the same principles being applied here. Does not have to be the same code, just perhaps the concept however implemented.
But my thought about 'theme plugins' would be the same as other 'plugins' where admins would not have to hack code.
Cheers,
Gareth
Hi Gareth & Richard,
I think what might be a better solution is to make Moodle Themes 2 column themes only, as the days of 3 columns is fast becoming 'old fashioned', especially when using mobile devices.
Bootstrap is really only a multicolumn stacking grid which is great for adding custom blocks, if only the custom block regions would play nice with the page layouts. That said, however, I have been experimenting with block regions, and found if you ignore both side-pre and side-post and call the left/right block regions whatever you want, try 'pinky' and 'perky' works just as well. The down side is they don't work with D&D as they are not hard coded there which goes to show there is too much being hard coded in Moodle in general.
Also the <?php include('filename.php') ?> works great as Richard and I found when working on this theme together which is roughly based on Edumoodle by Dan Humpherson
Perhaps we should start a new discussion and try and come up with some really wacky ideas!
We could go Retro and delve back into Moodle 1.9 themes and give them a face lift.
Hi Mary,
I like the idea of 'pinky' and 'perky', but I'm more of a 'Statler' and 'Waldorf' sort of person . I think the D&D not working is just a matter of using a class which I think is 'block-region' - certainly I have my custom 'footer' working with D&D -> https://github.com/gjb2048/moodle-theme_shoelace/tree/MOODLE_25_FOOTER_BLOCK - have a look at 'shoelaceblocks' in the 'core_renderer.php' there and 'blocks' in 'core_renderer.php' of core. I'm considering some how hiding the blocks all together like docking but without the truncation.
I really like the idea of a new discussion for wacky ideas. A good old fashioned brain storm . How about a 'Harold Lloyd' theme or is that too retro?
Gareth
New to moodle so sorry if the way I posted is a mistake.
How can you make the slider images to be width = 100%?
I want to have the image to act as a complete background instead of just an image to the right.
Currently, the only way I have been able to achieve this is to set the HTML for the img tag directly and this is not what I'm really looking for.
Thanks!
Hi!
I've just updated to the latest version of the theme, I have a label on the front page with a description, photos, etc. The text is not set to be bold, just plain text but no, after the update it's bold!?! How can I solve this? Do I have to edit the CSS and if so where?
Thanks in advance for any help!
cheers
Trine
In Essential theme's settings page...
Administration > Site Administration > Appearance > Themes >> choose one of the options under the link marked "Essential" in the list of theme names listed at that point. You should find a Custom CSS box to add the fix which is this...
#page-site-index li.label {font-weight: normal}
I love the essential theme but there is one minor issue i don't like. I want to change the size of ".h2" because the Headlines of the courses in /moodle/my are too big for me.
So, i tried to customize the font size from 28 to 20px with a custom css (designer mode enabled). Unfortunately it doesn't work. Please, may some one can help me on this issue.
my custom css: (which doesn't work)
h2 {
font-size: 20px
}
http://www.knowledge-logistics.com/LMS/my/
Thank you guys
Social Network Icons Open in New Window
Just installed most recent version of this theme. LOVE IT! However, after adding a few Social Networking icons and testing them, I found that they open in the current window, thus taking the user away from my site. Currently, the theme's Social Networking settings has no option or "how-to" disclaimer for non-programmers to force these links to open in a new window. Perhaps a very minor improvement would be to add additional instructions under each field such as add " target="_blank" immediately following your own website URL to force the link to open in a new window (i.e. https://www.yourURL.com " target="_blank") , or perhaps a simple "open in new window" checkbox for the technological-challenged. ;)
My apologies if I missed the note, but are there known issues with this theme at Internet Explorer? Specifically, the slideshow on the front-page does not render at all and just appears as static items one after the other down the page. I have found this to be the case for IE versions 8, 9 and 10.
I must say though, when using a real browser like FF or Chrome, this is an amazing theme. Kudos for your efforts Julian (and others). Very well done indeed!
A minor improvement suggestion for the Dynamic Slideshow settings.... To be able to reorder them without having to redo them all.
I'm just wondering how to prevent the hover colour (in our case, green) from showing up as a border in our blue navigation menu, while still maintaining the hover colour.
Another improvement/enhancement request:
Please provide an option for the Marketing Spot button links to open in a new window. Adding " target="_blank" to the end of the link generates a "Some settings were not changed due to an error" and "This value was not valid" error messages.
Hi, i'm trying to find a "workaround" for this. Not only for the marketing spots, but for social networks too.
In this file: theme/essential/layout/includes/header.php
look for this line: <ul class="socials unstyled">
Under that, there's a line for each type of social network, with the link to the url previously set up. For each one, i've added manually the target="_blank"
As an example,
Original:
<li><a href="<?php echo $haswebsite; ?>" class="website"><span class="icon-stack"><i class="icon-sign-blank icon-stack-base"></i><i class="icon-globe icon-light"></i></span></a></li>
Modified:
<li><a href="<?php echo $haswebsite; ?>" class="website" target="_blank"><span class="icon-stack"><i class="icon-sign-blank icon-stack-base"></i><i class="icon-globe icon-light"></i></span></a></li>
It's propably a bit "dirty", and it involves chanching the core files of the plugin, but i haven't found a different way to do it. Now i'm going for the marketing spots and the slideshow, and i guess the solution will be similar.
I hope it helps someone
I edit myself, to leave more feedback about this:
Same thing with marketingspots.php
Look for "href" and do something like this:
<p align="right"><a href="<?php echo $PAGE->theme->settings->marketing1buttonurl ?>" id="button" target="_blank"><?php echo $PAGE->theme->settings->marketing1buttontext ?></a></p>
Do it with the three marketing buttons
And once again, with slideshow.php
Look for every "href" and add the "target="_blank" at the end of the anchor opening.
I have said this in other posts a couple of times already. There is no need to hack the code to achieve an "open in new window" function for any place in Essential that you add a URL. You just have to add the extra instruction to the address to tell browsers to open in a new window.
For instance. Lets say you were adding a twitter link for example. Normally you would type:
http://www.twitter.com/moodleman
To have it open in a new window you instead type:
http://www.twitter.com/moodleman" target="_blank
Please note that I am only using two quotation marks in those specific location. In short you are adding the text
" target="_blank
to the end of the URL.
You can do this to any place you type in URL's in settings (I often use this in the custom menu for instance to achieve the same result). No code hacking required!
Julian
Sorry Julian. I haven't seen your previous post regarding this.
I was looking for something to solve the same problem with the custom menu, and i found this issue in the moodle tracker: https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-35420 that offers the same "trick". Actually, it solves the problem that you find when trying to use this with a url that has parameters.
So i'll change it back to the original files, and use your trick instead
Thanks!
Oh my. I think i messed up.
" target="_blank is working in the custom menu, but not in the slideshow, or marketing spots
Works fine on social networks, but not on slideshow or marketing spots.
After "undoing" my changes on the files and see that it wasn't working, I uninstalled the theme, installed again, purged cache, everything. I even copied a link from the custom menu that is working fine
http://moodle.org/support" target="_blank
and pasted it in the slideshow link box, and nothing, i get a message like "couldn't save changes because an error occurred".
Any thoughts?
Thanks a lot.
The problem is that you cannot add HTML inside a setting, contrary to what Julian says. What you can do is hard code target="_blank" in the php code for the slideshow in essential/layout/includes/slideshow.php in each link like this...
Thanks, Mary.
The odd thing is that I CAN do it in Social Networking settings, but i CAN'T do it in Marketing Spots nor Frontpage Slideshow.
I did it the way you suggest, and it worked, but it's suposed to work the other way too and it would be cleaner. It's not a big issue, but i'm curious about what causes that it works with some settings and not with others. I'm a bit frustrated i don't have the skills to find out
Thanks again
That's what I am trying to say. When you have PARAM_URL as a setting only URLs are allowed: For example: If you add this: http://google.com and nothing else that should work. If you look in essential/settings.php, you will see PARAM_URL have been set for the Slideshow and Marketing.
The fact you can add the target="_blank" in the social network text box is because THAT is what it is a TEXT box, same as the Custom menu.
If you wanted to, you can use your Custom menu as a Notice board...that just types out a one line message like the alert message does.,,,
Like...
Happy Birthday Headmaster!
Moodle is all Fun & Games
As for an ugly hack I don't think so, it could actually be written into the code as an option if Julian wanted to.
Hi Julian!!!
Ciao
Mary
Lets do more testing. But I have done this in my social spots for quite some time.
Il test the other spots and confirm
Julian
Hi Julian, I'll confirm this one for you.
The " target="_blank option does work in the social media area. eg. https://www.facebook.com/itelswsi" target="_blank
It does not work in the front page Slide Link URL. When " target="_blank is added to the end of the Slide Link URL the page returns the following error. e.g. http://www.swsi.edu.au" target="_blank.
Ok im brand new at this and still wet behind the ears can some one help?
Trying to install the Essential theme but it keeps coming up with this problem.
if its a plugin problem how to i check to see what i need?
Either you are not running Moodle 2.5 or you have removed the '/theme/bootstrapbase' folder.
Gareth, I'm running Moodle 2.5.2 + (Build: 20131004) and I have the needed folder 'theme/bootstrapbase' but the same problem as Craig and I have no idea how to solve it
I'm lost with this issue :S
Hi Fran,
There is nothing in the image you posted to suggest there is a problem, so can you check if there is anything else in that list the shows up with a rose background, like Craig. If there is nothing then just CLICK on the Update database link at the bottom of the page. This will them install the Essential theme.
Hope this helps?
Mary
Hi Julian,
Love the Essential theme!
I have a couple of issues with the layout.
1. The logo is not vertically centred in the header space.
2. A second tier menu displays with scroll bars
3. I use only 2 columns. Main content on the left and Nav blocks etc to the right. This works ok but when editing is on the main content size is reduced as if there are 3 columns. I assume that is so I can drag blocks if I was to have 3 columns. This makes layout difficult as what you see is not what you get when you turn editing off. See image below with editing on.
4. Is it possible (and if so how) to set maximum width of the blocks column. When used at full width the blocks are too wide (in my opinion). How can this be adjusted?
I am using latest version of the theme (2.5.4), Moodle 2.5.2+ and viewed using Google Chrome v.29 and IE9.
Would appreciate you or others guidance with the above.
2. A second tier menu displays with scroll bars
I have same problem as well. Anybody found any workarounds to solve this issue. For the time being, I change all menu to single tier only to avoid this problem.
Hi Glenn,
3. I too am having the issue where editing gives me three columns. Which shoves the content over and makes editing a bit awkward. Did you end up getting a fix for this? We are currently on Moodle 2.5.2 with the Essential theme version 2.6. I was at least able to move the blocks all to one column and that seemed to work. But I had to do that with each page I visited.
Essential 2.6 with editing on:
With Essential 2.6 I could at least move the "Add A Block" Block to the same column as the other blocks and it would seem the other column would go away. It was a bit annoying cause I would have to do this for every page.
After moving the "Add A Block" block over:
Still, if there is a way to force courses to only use two columns, that would be ideal. I don't know what else to try.
Furthermore, I am trying Moodle 2.6 in our sandbox site with the Essential theme ver 2.7. The problem is worse in 2.7 because now when editing is on, it seems I can not longer move the "add a block" block, but instead can only move navigation and administration. The problem is, some of the activities blocks now can no longer be moved either.
Now showing Essential 2.7, and can no longer move lesson or add a block:
So long post short, is there a way to force 2 columns in the theme site wide?
this discussion was closed as it was getting hard to see the various threads within this discussion.
However, I will answer this. What you did is the correct way to do this. In fact it would be easier if all course and incourse layouts had a side-post-only layout, thus making it a two column page As people obviously don't need too many blocks In these pages.
Is there a way to disable the dynamic slideshow from appearing on the home page after a user has successfully logged in?
If you have access to your theme files, then you could try adding the following just above the start of the slideshow in your essential/layout/frontpage.php...
<?php if (!isloggedin() or isguestuser()) { ?>
<!-- Start Slideshow -->
and add this just after the end of the slideshow...
<!-- End Slideshow -->
<?php } ?>
This is saying IF you are NOT logged in (OR you are a guest user) then run the Slideshow, otherwise do nothing
That should fix it!
Cheers
Mary
Just wondering if anyone has found a work-around for the font-awesome not working with IE8. We still have several systems at work running Windows XP, which of course cannot run IE9. Although it's easy to tell someone to use another browser (and we do), we'd rather not have to.
Hi all,
I am having difficulty getting the slideshow to work.
I have installed Moodle 2.5.2 onto a localhost site on my laptop.
I have installed the Essential theme dated 8/10/2013. ver: 2013100800
All settings seem to work for me colour; marketing; social media etc.
However all I can get the Slideshow to do is either be not showing or if showing only the frame appears... no images nor text.
I am using 256px x 256px png files as the images.
Is there something I am missing? Setting etc?
Cheers
Mark
Assuming you have added the images and text via the Essential custom settings page, and made sure JavaScript is enabled in your browser, then try...
or
Cheers
Mary
Thanks Mary,
Yes I had added the images via the Essential Theme settings page, JavaScript was enabled in both Chrome and IE and had Theme Designer Mode on.
As this was only a local install I thought I would re-install the weekly total Windows Xamp package (bad thought!)... the package installed with no errors but now I am unable to add any form of plugin (block, mod, or theme) either by adding the folder manually or via the Plugin Addon Install ... it validates then I get a blank screen (presumably where the notifications page would be).
Anyway I will try to re-install a fresh and try again hopefully with a better outcome... if I have no joy which forum is best to request assistance on this issue or is this better for a tracker submission?
Cheers
Mark
This might sound like a stupid question, but I will ask it all the same.
When you say re-install the Windows XAMP package are you adding this package inside another server? Some people have done that before today!
I will assume NOT.
The blank page could be any manner of things wrong with any theme but usually you would get an ERROR message if you enabled Debugging and had it set to DEVELOPER settings.
Site Administration > Development > Debugging
Not seeing the images could be a server permissions problem. Have you checked that?
As for which forum, well it all depends on what the problem is.
General problems is a good start.
Themes if it is theme related.
If you think it's a BUG then report it in Moodle Tracker.
Cheers
Mary
CSS for changing the text color in the custom dropdown menus, particularly for a tablet in portrait view (see screenshot)? The text already difficult to read in the default color scheme, and is nearly impossible to read with the royal blue theme color I have chosen.
Thanks.
An additional quirk... The latter portion of the footer text mysteriously renders in the same color as the Footer Separator color when in iPad portrait view (see screenshots)....
Also having issues with the initial slideshow swipe when viewing in Firefox v.24 ... The image initially appears in reverted black background color, and then text briefly highlights black just as the first swipe occurs (see screenshot). Once the first slide swipes, the remainder of the slideshow works just fine.
Have you applied custom CSS? I built Essential in Firefox as it is my native browser and have never seen this occur. If you visit the http://features.demo.moodle.com.au you will see a standard version of the theme there running where I can guarantee you won't see the black.
If your theme looks different to the one on my demo site then I recommend you do the following:
This should fix your issues.
Julian
I need to be honest here and say the issue here is the colors you have chosen. I have no fix I can apply except to say choose an easier to view color palette.
Julian
I'm having this problem too - it's definitely not a colour I've chosen in the settings. Is there anywhere in the CSS this can be changed? Can't for the life of me work out where it's located
No, there is nothing else.
As I said above, visit http://features.demo.moodle.com.au in your browser.
That is a standard moodle 2.5 with the Essential theme installed. No additional changes made. If that looks fine then your site should look fine as well.
Julian
It looks like the above screenshot, with the dark grey text. It may just be my personal taste but I don't think it looks fine even against the blue on the demo (the only thing in the entire beautiful theme I must stress!)
Testing the Essential theme on smartphones today, I've found that when the browser window is less than 777 px wide, the "Move" edit icon disappears! (Also seen FireFox and Chrome - just scale down the window width to 776px wide).
Has anyone else seen this? Are there any workarounds or resolutions?
Hi Julian.
Love your work, a great theme.
I am setting up the theme on our dev server and have received the 'coding error detected' error below.
Coding error detected, it must be fixed by a programmer: Trying to reference an unknown block region hidden-dock
This is essential 2.6 ($plugin->version = 2013100800) which I downloaded yesterday and we are using Moodle 2.5.2+ (Build: 20130920).
Any tips? I can give you access to our dev if you want to troubleshoot, contact me in FB to organise it
Thanks mate
Shane
Hi again.
I just did a full theme reinstall and the problem remains.
We are running:
essential 2.6 ($plugin->version = 2013100800)and Moodle 2.5.2+ (Build: 20130920).
Any ideas on what needs to be done to fix this?
Sincerely, Shane
Coding error detected, it must be fixed by a programmer: Trying to reference an unknown block region hidden-dock
Hi Shane,
Any error, where it is trying to reference an unknown block region inside a theme, is usually cause by the theme designer. I know because I have, and still do make these same mistakes.
If you remove Essential theme folder from your server and Purge all cache then go to Site Administration > Development > Debugging and enable the setting that "adds General page information" at the bottom of the screen inside the footer. This will then allow you to track the page types you are using when going about your day inside Moodle. Don't forget to save your settings.
That done change your site to use 'Standard theme', and then surf to the page you had the problem with the missing block region where you saw the Error message.
Still in that page scroll to the bottom and in the Footer you should see the page information that says the page in Admin or InCourse or Course or Frontpage or MyDashboard, or MyPublic...whatever.
Now that you know which page layout type was causing you grief in the Essential theme, just check your Essential/config.php page layouts under $THEME->layouts for that page type.
When you find it you will probably notice that 'hidden-dock' is not listed in the block regions, this is what is causing the problem.
In fact there are lots of places where the 'hidden-dock' is missing as can be seen here...
https://github.com/moodleman/moodle-theme_essential/blob/ESSENTIAL_254/config.php#L52
Hope this helps?
Mary
Thanks for the info Mary. I will look into this and see if I can get it to work.
Should 'hidden block' be listed against each block region in each page? does it matter what order it is added?
Is this something that should eventually be added by Julian as part of the theme?
Once again, thanks for the info.
S
Hidden-block is only used on the frontpage layout. You should not need it anywhere else as it is not called in.
Julian
I came across this error after googling Coding error detected, it must be fixed by a programmer: Trying to reference an unknown block region side-post.
The error started when I tried install Collapsed Topics Course format. I changed to another theme and module then installed. It would then let me switch back to excellent Essential theme.
Using Moodle 2.5.4 with latest version of collapsed topics and Essential theme for my version of Moodle/
Since realised it is any new addon/plugin that is creating the error?
What do you mean any new addon/plugin?
Can you tell us what theme you are using when you get the error?
Also can you copy and past the error here. Usually it is possible to highlight and copy the Error message using your mouse.
I mean adding a block, course format etc. Anything that would trigger an install from notification menu.
I am running moodle 2.6.4 latest stable and latest version of Essential Theme for2.5
Error shown below. I have to fix this by switching to a different theme to install addons/plugins. Then switch back
Debug info:
Error code: codingerror
Stack trace:
line 884 of /lib/blocklib.php: coding_exception thrown
line 984 of /lib/blocklib.php: call to block_manager->check_region_is_known()
line 997 of /lib/blocklib.php: call to block_manager->ensure_instances_exist()
line 315 of /lib/blocklib.php: call to block_manager->ensure_content_created()
line 1249 of /lib/outputrenderers.php: call to block_manager->get_content_for_region()
line 222 of /theme/essential/renderers/core_renderer.php: call to core_renderer->blocks_for_region()
line 142 of /theme/essential/layout/general.php: call to theme_essential_core_renderer->essentialblocks()
line 860 of /lib/outputrenderers.php: call to include()
line 790 of /lib/outputrenderers.php: call to core_renderer->render_page_layout()
line ? of unknownfile: call to core_renderer->header()
line 234 of /lib/outputrenderers.php: call to call_user_func_array()
line 206 of /admin/renderer.php: call to plugin_renderer_base->__call()
line 206 of /admin/renderer.php: call to core_admin_renderer->header()
line 396 of /admin/index.php: call to core_admin_renderer->upgrade_plugin_check_page()
Running Moodle 2.5.4 not 2.6.4!
You say "latest version of Essential Theme for 2.5", but what is the specific version as stated in the themes 'version.php' file please? - post all contents.
I thought stating the latest official build would have implied the following? As stated it is only this theme that is causing issues with add ons, course formats etc
Moodle 2.5.4 (Build: 20140113)
BootStrap Base 2013050100
Essential theme
$plugin->version = 2013100800; // YYYYMMDD.
$plugin->maturity = MATURITY_STABLE; // this version's maturity level.
$plugin->release = '2.6 (Build: 20131008)';
$plugin->requires = 2013051401; // Requires Moodle 2.5.1.
$plugin->component = 'theme_essential';
$plugin->dependencies = array(
'theme_bootstrapbase' => 2013050100,
);
Hi,
There are some areas in Moodle that 'throw a wobbler' when using a Bootstrap based theme. This is mainly because the page has been coded incorrectly. In other words Bootstrap themes are beginning to show up faults in the way Moodle has been coded, which were, for all intents and purposes, for Moodle standard themes. Now the race is on to rectify these problems.
It would help greatly if you could find out which Page layout is being used when the problem presents itself. In other words which part of Moodle are you in when you get the error.
To do this you would need to enable View general page info in Site Administration > Development > Debugging and then enable the option on that page which is to display Page info in the Footer.
Unfortunately Essential is coded in such a way that this general info is not shown in the footer so you would need to change theme to the Standard theme.
Knowing where the problem originates is half the battle of finding the bug that is causing it.
Also ... so that we are not talking at cross purposes .. it is the 'hidden-dock' that is the problem and not some other block-region?
Cheers
Mary
Hi Tim,
Thanks for posting the information. It is needed because the latest official M2.5 build on Moodle.org can be different to that on GitHub. Also in the time between you installing and us reacting to your posted problem the theme for that version could have moved on, so 'latest' is no longer the 'latest' that you had originally installed. So takes longer for the people helping you to find out. With the information you supply 'checking out' the specific version using Git is easier and hence quicker to set up the test environment upon which to verify the issue. Then once verified can then be in a position to work out a solution.
Software testing is all about repeatability. Therefore accurate precise statement of versions and configuration is essential for the process and checking that any given issue has been truly rectified.
Cheers,
Gareth
Ok, after much investigation the current version for M2.5 on https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=theme_essential being https://moodle.org/plugins/pluginversion.php?id=4481 which is 2.6 (Build: 20131008) of the theme is not the same as the same intended version on https://github.com/moodleman/moodle-theme_essential/tree/ESSENTIAL_26 having identical 'version.php' files. Therefore the version on Moodle.org needs updating as it has the problem and the code supplied on GitHub.org does not.
Please do not be confused by the build number of 2.6 as this is for Moodle 2.5.1 version 2013051401. However versions 2.6.1+ of the theme are for Moodle 2.6+.
To sort this, please download and install the code from https://github.com/moodleman/moodle-theme_essential/tree/ESSENTIAL_26 using the 'Download ZIP' button. Then extract the files, make a backup of the existing essential folder, delete the contents and replace with the extracted contents taking care not to have an 'essential' folder within another 'theme_essential_moodle25_2013100800' folder and for the contents to be in the 'essential' folder only, i.e. the version.php file of the theme should have the path '/theme/essential/version.php' from your installations root folder.
Julian: Please update on Moodle.org
The problem is in essential/config.php ...
In Essential 2.5 version these both contains block regions which is wrong since neither should NOT contain ANY block regions whatsoever. And since when Moodle requires maintenance page layout with no blocks it then looks to 'base' layout and so therefore throws up the error - trying to access unknown block region side-post.
In Essential 2.6 version both 'base' and 'maintenance' contain block regions but with a different error - trying to access unknown block region hidden-dock.
Gareth and Mary.
Thanks for your help with this. I can confirm that after installing the version directed to by Gareth that this indeed a different version. Like the menu's in this version.
There is now no longer an issue when going to to the Admin notifications to add new plugs/add ons/mods. It is picking up new add ons and installing them as expected.
Is there any more information you need from me on this?
Thanks,
Tim
PS been a while since I did much with Moodle our version is in school is getting on. So jumping from a 1.9 version to 2.5. So I am little rusty with my moodle
No more information Tim, thank you. The key thing is that it now works for you.
As Gareth says no need to give us any more information. It is clear that the old version is at fault and either Julian can fix it or remove it from the plugins database as it clearly is not working correctly.
Glad all it well with the new version.
Cheers
Mary
One query about the bottom 'bar' - it seems to be anchored to the bottom fine on the front page but on any page that does not have much content it is too high up. Is there any way to 'stick' it to the bottom?
Also, is there any way to extend it across the full width of the page (as the top bar is) rather than being fixed centrally with the rest of the content
Screenshot (black bar in the middle)
Rather simple answers to both those questions.
No, the footer is not anchored in any way. It just sits at the bottom after content. The frontpage just happens to have a lot of content.
The footer used to stretch all the way across in the first release but too many complained that it was overly imposing. So it was made the way it is today. To make it go all the way across would involve re-writing the layout files and adding new CSS. So from my perspective t won't be happening. If you want to rewrite those layouts you could but it will break every time that Essential is upgraded, so not recommended.
Okay great, thanks for the quick response and keep up the good work!
Hi,
just a quick check to see if anyone's having the same issue as i seem to be having with the theme.
In Theme -> Settings -> "Allow blocks to use the dock" is set to on. This in itself doesn't activate the dock functionality in the Essential theme, ie. my blocks don't have the < dock arrow.
Then i go to Essential's (v26) config.php and i set the
$THEME->enable_dock = false;
to true. After which i can dock, ie. the dock arrow appears in block headings, but when i click on the arrow, blocks disappear, ie. there's no navbar on the left side of the page.
I can use the docking functionality with other theme (e.g. Fusion).
Elementary description, but any clues anyone?
Thx,
Tom
Hi Julian
I would like to change font to Arial in new release of Essential theme. In previous I managed to do this altering the css style. In this version I don't know what to do. Please help.
This is the easy way to change font.
Just add it to the Custom CSS box inside Essential custom settings page.
Site Administration > Appearance > Themes > choose the link that leads to the Essential settings page(s).
html {font-family: Arial, sans-serif;}
.block {font-family: Arial, sans-serif;}
Thank you so much Mary I've entered the code into custom css field but it doesn't work. I would like to change the font to Arial in the whole theme (blocks, body, footer).
Still it doesn't work. Any ideas why?
Yes...there is a fault with the theme itself.
If you have access to essential/config.php change the order that the stylesheets are listed.
At the moment it look like this...
as you can see here...
https://github.com/moodleman/moodle-theme_essential/blob/master/config.php
It should be in this order...with 'custom' stylesheet last as this is where the CSS is added and needs to override any other css styling.
Thanks for that Mary,
I have updated github to reflect your suggested change.
Julian
Hi Julian,
My other suggestion would be is split the settings from fixed CSS, that way all the settings can go into settings.css with the custom css setting at the very bottom of the settings.css style-sheet. That way you could them rename custom.css and call it essential.css. So your new list would look like this...
$THEME->sheets = array('essential', 'slides', 'lightbox', 'font-awesome', settings');
Just a thought.
Cheers
Mary
Ok now it worked ... partly. In blocks I have Arial but everything else is in is in Georgia font (google fonts are disabled). I would like to have the whole theme in Arial. What should I do?
There is nothing in Essential, that I can find in the style sheets that suggest it is setting Georgia font, unless you have used that font specifically in the Text Editor, as I have in this text while typing this comment.
The other alternative is in your browser settings. Check that you have not got Georgia selected as your default font that overrides web page font styles.
In Firefox it is Tool > Options > Advanced > Fonts and be sure to check the box Allow web pages to choose own fonts.
Cheers
Mary
Hi!
I've just installed Essential and I have a problem with the header logo not appearing (not even the standard "laptop" site icon). I also tried to enable the "font Awesome from CDN" but it's not working.
Any idea why and how I can solve it?
Thanks.
PS. Great theme and very useful tutorial.
Sorry For Wrong post sir, can i ask how to make slider image full screan without any text
i edit the slider css and its look like this
Regrads
Bootloop
I am having big problems in installing Essentials theme on my server. I've cleared caches etc.Should the extracted folder name be so long, i.e moodleman-moodle-theme_essential-009ae506?. I have had no problems installing themes before. It does not appear in the list in Appearance\Themes.
OS Win7 Ultimate
Browsers Google Chrome Version 30.0.1599.101.m
Opera 17
Moodle 2.5.2 (Build 20130909)
Thanks
Hi,
The best thing to do is remove the Essential theme you added manually and then Purge all cache.
Next logged in as Admin go to Site Administration > Plugins > Install add-ons and then in the page that opens Click on the big button that says "Install add-ons from the Moodle plugins directory" .
From here you will be able to:
Hope this helps?
Mary
This is a great theme and well-designed! Thank you.
I'm testing the theme with iPhone 4S. When I read course content which is all text, the paragraph randomly jumps to the left by about 1 centimeter, and I can't see two letters of each word. Screen shot is attached. Using Safari browswer, the latest iOS and iPhone is not jailbroken.
If I re-size or zoom out, the paragraph shifts to the left again very randomly. I'm just wondering if you can shed some light on this and thank you!
Hi,
Can you do us a big favour and check out Clean theme as that theme uses the same CSS as Essential, meaning if the problem exists in both themes then this is a Moodle bug and nothing to do with the Essential theme, and I can get our FRONTEND Team to set about fixing it.
Cheers
Mary
Hi Mary,
I just set the Clean theme. The same thing happened when using Clean theme on iPhone. I also noticed the paragraph moves to the left when scrolling.
To be more precise, when scrolling down, paragraph moves to the left hiding out two letters and when scrolling up again, the paragraph displays fine. Not sure if it has to do with "Back to Top" that appears on pages.
Thanks.
This is a fantastic theme!
One thing I'd like is to be able to widen the middle column when using the "Standard Course Layout" option. Any way to do this?
Moodle 2.5.2+
Essential 2.6
Same, would love to know how to do this as well as reduce the width of the left and right block a little bit as well.
A lot of screen real estate seems to be lost as it is now.
The theme seems to limit the width to something like 1280px. Would be nice to make this 100% and be able to manually set the widths of the left and right block to 200px for example.
S
Sadly based on how bootstrap works at present this is not possible in Essential.
Essential uses the "fluid grid system where the age is split across 12 columns each worth 8.33%. This is what gives Bootstrap the ability to scale across various resolutions.
The left and right columns are not a set width but instead they each span 3 columns each with the main content spanning 6 columns.
Could you change this? Of course but not without loosing the responsive design. For more information n the Fluid Grid check out this link: http://getbootstrap.com/2.3.2/scaffolding.html#fluidGridSystem
Julian
I just moved from moodle 1.9 to 2.5 and went for essential at the same time. I really like it but would like to make the slideshow narrower?
Would this be in a template of css somewhere?
Thanks
Firstly, let me say that your ‘Essential’ theme looks fantastic. It will be the new look to my school website!!
The question I have is – how do you position the blocks on the left hand side of the homepage (as is the case with your site)? So, I basically want the homepage to have blocks on the left and then the main content on the right.
Thanks, Dave
Julian/Mary or who so ever can assist, can this be done in Essential too? As this screen has been taken from Theme "Aigne" by Franc, can this be done in essential as well, where course summary appears just beneath course title? rather than on to the right side? also, line spacing shows up more, even if <br /> tags used.
also, can you as well include the option of adjusting width in Essential for Moodle 2.5, like you have done in Essential version 2.7 for Moodle 2.6?
Hi, someone have problems with the 'activity reports'?, I can't see the link into navigation menú when I'm not an administration user,...what's wrong?
thanks in advance, it's very important too see this beacuse i'll need with the mentees block.
Hello
I do not speak good English, but I want to thank him for his work to this theme of beautiful design and better performance.
I updated my moodle v platform. I checked 2.6 and Essential teheme is not compatible with the latest version of moodle. Have you thought about upgrading your theme?
I believe several moodle users you'd be very grateful. Hopefully grateful rapid updating.
Greetings Angie
Loving this Julian.
Just throwing a few more ideas and questions out there.
Keep up the great work.
Shane
Shane
I agree with Shame. Brilliant Theme! Just what we were looking for.
I also am having a problem with IE regarding the styles. Changed colours to match our logo and all looks fine in Google Chrome and Firefox but all messed up in IE 9.
This is how it should look which is taken from Chrome.
This is what it looks like in IE 9
Any suggestions?
web address is http://e-learning.basics-scotland.org.uk
Also, is it possible to make the read more links in the banners open in a new window rather than the same window as the site? Would like to be able to point them to press releases on our main site without taking them away from Moodle.
Hello, First of all congratulations to the creator of this theme that really is very well done, and upgrades are great.
My question is how I can do that instead of "My Courses" and "My Dashboard" in the top menu display custom text, you can change those options somewhere? For that is all that appears in English on the site and would like to leave it in Spanish.
From already thank you very much and sorry for my English, is to use the translator.
Hola, Antes que nada felicitar al creador de este tema por que de verdad esta muy bien logrado, además las actualizaciónes son geniales.
Mi consulta es cómo puedo hacer que en lugar de "My Courses" y "My Dashboard" en el menú de arriba aparezca un texto personalizado, se puede cambiar esas opciones en algun lugar? Por que es lo único que aparece en inglés en el sitio y me gustaría dejarlo en español.
Desde ya muchas gracias y disculpen mi ingles, es que utilice el traductor.
Please grab the latest version of Essential from Github and let me know if that fixes your issue.
https://github.com/moodleman/moodle-theme_essential/tree/ESSENTIAL_261
I should point out that this is for Moodle 2.6
Julian
everytime I go to view assignment submissions i get this error 'TCPDF ERROR: The font definition file has a bad format: /home/server/public_html/moodle/lib/tcpdf/fonts/helvetica.php'
moodle 2.6
Hi, First this is a very good looking theme moodle looks now good.
I wonder if is a way to add a slide picture to have 5 instead of 4 ?
Thanks in advance
Hi I hope you can find the time to point me in the right direction. I was hoping to modify the menu bar so that the My Dashboard and My Menu drop downs would display as the first 2 items in the menu before the custom menu items as in the attached image. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Seconding this request, any easy way to do this?
@Patrick & @John,
You can only change the stack order of the menu items if you have direct access to the server where this theme is located.
If you do then the fix is relatively easy.
Here is what you can try...
All this does is changes the sort order, but do remember that if you have menu items at position 1 already it is actually better to use the minus value as this then shunts these to the front of the list. But remember the numbering order is thus: -3 , -2 , -1, 1 , 2, 3 , etc.,
Hope this helps?
Mary
First, thank you for your work this theme is really nice.
However, I have a little problem. Adding the button "Back to top" to the pages of course is a problem with some SCORM modules, if these modules show the button during scrolling module, the display back button hides the contents of the module (Show img attachements of this discussion).
Does anyone have an idea to hide this button? Would not it be possible to make the button display as an option in the theme?
(Moodle 2.6+ Essentials 2.6.1)
Great theme, but I haven't found the "back to top" remove option in the theme yet (hopefully soon!).
The back to top script is in each layout page (theme/essential/layout/*.php)
You can comment out the script - just look for and insert html comments before and after this bit of script
<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
var offset = 220;
var duration = 500;
jQuery(window).scroll(function() {
if (jQuery(this).scrollTop() > offset) {
jQuery('.back-to-top').fadeIn(duration);
} else {
jQuery('.back-to-top').fadeOut(duration);
}
});
jQuery('.back-to-top').click(function(event) {
event.preventDefault();
jQuery('html, body').animate({scrollTop: 0}, duration);
return false;
})
});
</script>
Hi,
This is a great theme and a life saver for us because it's probably the only theme that truly works on Mobile.
I have two quick questions:
1. How can I change the grey background on the header to white? I tried, but couldn't figure out. Pls see screen shot.
2. How can I disable the third sidebar on the right that includes Search Forum, News, Recent Activities, etc?
Thank you again! I give you the Oscar for this theme!
We have just passed 100 posts in this thread.
I don't know what that means, but just sayin'.
-Derek
Hi
everytime i go to view assignment submissions the styling is missing , please see below.
I was just wondering:
Who has copied from whom?
Boostrap theme Ericka: http://responsivewebinc.com/premium/ericka/ericka-b/
I seem to recall that there is a theme out there that had originated from Julian's site. The theme in question was not only copied from Julian, but they updated it, fixed some bugs, and cleaned up the CSS. From what I can gather Julian was so impressed he bought it back for a few dollers...and can still use it as his licence pre-dates the copy.
So this may well be that theme.
I'm wondering why the ability to collapse columns in the Assignment grader are gone from the Essential Theme. It took me a while to figure out that this was a theme-related issue. It would be great if this was added back, if possible. I found a way to permanently remove columns using custom CSS, but it would be better if the option were available rather than imposing this site-wide with the CSS fix.
I am not sure why you are seeing this. There is no code or CSS in the theme that removes this function.
I have just tested on three live sites and they are there for me in all three (see attached sample). I don't think your issue here is theme related.
As always, be sure to be on the current release of the theme to ensure you have the most bugs removed. But I dont think that will help you here.
Julian
Hmmmm... very interesting. Now I'm confused, again, but will investigate further. Perhaps we'll reset all of our customizations in our test environment and see if it makes a difference.
Thanks, for your quick response and testing, Julian.
Blair
I got REALLY lucky and discovered that when I uncheck the "Edit Icons V2" option, for font awesome use, the collapse icons come back! Unfortunately, we want to use the Font Awesome icons, so I'll think about this tomorrow!
Time to go for a drink!
So, I just thought of something while I was walking home from dinner, and tried it out, WITH SUCCESS!
I've discovered that the ability to collapse columns still, in fact, exists even though the show/hide icons are not visible (using Font Awesome, as I mentioned in my previous post). if you hover your mouse just under the first letter of a column name, you will see a tool tip "Hide ____" If you click, you will collapse that particular column. SEE ATTACHED IMAGE for details. If you want to expand it, again, just hover over the tiny dot you see, and you'll see a tool tip, "Show ____."
Such a lovely theme. Is there any way of always positioning the buttons in the marketing spots to the absolute bottom right of the spot? I have used css to ensure that the marketing spots all have the same minimum height so that they line up properly, but I would like the buttons to line up at the bottom of the spots as well. Can anyone help please?
I was browsing registered sites and saw this theme in use, then came upon the Essential theme. Brilliant! I ran into a snag in the download that puzzled me. I am running 2.5.3 and shifting from the Afterburner theme to Essential. The bootstrap base files seem to be in the general theme upload for 2.5.3. Did I miss a step?
There are some specific features in Moodle 2.6 that Essential 2.6 needs, so if you are trying to use Essential 2,6 in Moodle 2.5 it will not let you install it. You would need to d/load the Essential 2.5 version.
I did choose the version compatible with 2.5. I can delete and re-install to make sure. Maybe I need to enable the bootstrap plugin somehow.
Social Network icons do not appear at the top of the page.
I've already set the Facebook, twitter and youTube account but it doesn't appear, how i can make this icons appears?
Regards
Sorry if this has already been answered. I've trawled for a answer but am struggling.
I COULD clone the essentials theme in a older version - when the layout folder didn't contain an 'includes' subfolder.
But I'm unable to clone (rename) the latest version. I've tried replacing every mention of essential 1st across the whole theme folder. Then I missed out the 'includes' folder, then the whole layout folder.
Nothing works. I'm not a programmer so I've run out of ideas.
Can this theme still be cloned (renamed) ?
I have a problem I have seen a few users report, but that I have not seen answered fully.
On all versions of IE (8,9,11 on XP and W7) the following message is displayed at the top of the page:
"Sorry, this site requires Internet Explorer 8 or higher to display and function correctly..."
The slideshow is also disabled. I don't see any problems in Chrome.
We currently have Moodle 2.5.1 and the latest version of Essential for 2.5 (Essential 2.6 - 2013100800). Due to the significant number of XP/IE8 machines in the company, we are unlikely to upgrade to Moodle 2.6 soon (no IE8 support). I would really like to deploy this theme for my company's internal Moodle.
My questions are:
If it is something in the theme that is at fault, I hope it will get some attention, as I imagine there are quite a few folks that would like to/have to continue supporting IE8.
Cheers
Jonathan
Thanks David,
I have seen others commenting on the "compatibility view" possibility, but I have looked into that for IE11 and the behaviour is the same for whatever version of IE you ask it to emulate.
EDIT: Seems like you are on the ball there! (I was confused by my browser being set to Spanish!) So it is broken in IE11 only. Setting the user agent to older versions of IE works fine.
Why is that happening? Is the server forcing the browser in to compatibility mode? How do I avoid that?
Interesting what you say about IE8 support. Not sure how it will go selling it to my IT dept.
Cheers
Jonathan
The problem is that our Moodle is internal, so it is an intranet site. By default IE sets intranet sites to display in "compatibility mode", i.e. the IE7 renderer.
Go into IE settings and disable compatibilty mode for Intranet sites (it is explained here for IE8, but has been similar for me for IE11. http://www.sitepoint.com/ie8-compatibility-view-intranet/)
IE weirdness strikes again!
Cheers
Jonathan
Hello,
Congratulations for the work, this is undoubtedly the most beautiful and functional theme that I've met to moodle.
I have a small doubt want to put a picture to identify each course, but instead to insert under "Summary" image leaves a large blank side (Annex HOME) to;
To insert the image in the "File Course" field (Annex Editing Course), the image occupies the place that I want, but with lower than expected (Annex HOME) size.
How can I fix this so that the images of the course description are at the normal size 300px and below the name of the course?
Grate the attention.
Hi there,
I hope someone can help me. I am a moodle noob, so this may be easy to address but I can't work it out.
I have the latest version of moodle 2.6 and am setting up a new site using the (great) Essential theme. The problem is block docking is not working. All i see, regardless of the role i log in under, are + (show) and - (hide) options. I don't see the symbol for docking on my blocks at all.
I even uninstalled and deleted the Essential theme and reinstalled a new copy but it's still the same. Is this supposed to be a standard feature or is there something I need to configure? I have my site set up as fixed narrow, could this be part of the problem?
Looking forward to any help or suggestions.
Thanks,
C
