How to link to Moodle documentation

How to link to Moodle documentation

by Mary Cooch -
Number of replies: 24
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

It's great to see so many people, especially Particularly Helpful Moodlers, linking to Moodle documentation when responding to queries smile I thought it might be worth reminding people of a couple of documentation-related things:

  • We've tried to make the documentation pages have appropriate names, so very often if you want to point someone in the direction of, say Conditional activities or Cohorts, the relevant docs page actually has that name. So all you need to do is type double square brackets either side of the name and it takes you straight there : linking to docs makes Text editor for example.
  • If you have to search the docs however, the link you come across via Google is quick to copy and paste but is often an older version (presumably because Moodle's faster than Googlebig grin)  See here:

Googling Moodle cohorts

It links to Moodle 2.2, which might  be fine but might be out of date depending on the exact  information required.Since Moodle 2.0, every major release has got its own documentation version. So another useful thing to do is when you paste the link into forum posts, just take out the number (22 here) and then you will always get the latest version (such as: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Cohorts) Please help me spread the wordcool

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by Guillermo Madero -

Hello Mary,

So... Text editor works at the forums like in the wiki? (edit. Yes, it does!)

Yes, the endless cutting and writing of the version number smile

In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by dawn alderson -

Mary, hi

this is really helpful.  Makes a lot of sensesmile

Cheers,

Dawn

In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by Séverin Terrier -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Thanks Mary for this detailed explanation.

In fact, i know all of this since a long time, but don't often think/remember to use these brackets...

Séverin

In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by Derek Chirnside -

Helpful Mary.

But I very much dislike having hidden knowledge in a system like this.

  • What about a button in to do his for us like Wikpedia?  ie add a Type Docs Pagename here Button?
  • Or a tiny bit of help text at the bottom of the text entry window?

-Derek

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by Davo Smith -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

What about dev docs?

((Migrating contrib code to 2.0)) = Migrating contrib code to 2.0

((Migrating_contrib_code_to_2.0)) = Migrating_contrib_code_to_2.0

((dev/Migrating_contrib_code_to_2.0)) = dev/Migrating_contrib_code_to_2.0

(I have no idea how you managed to put a double-square bracket into your original post without it becoming a link).

 

 

In reply to Davo Smith

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

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

Dev docs is not my domain so anything you can offer there is most welcome Davosmile And if you were referring to me and the double square bracket not linking, it's an image 

 

In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by ben reynolds -

Well, I just guessed about Windows downloads because I've been there so often, and I succeeded! Neat trick.

Agree with Derek that it wants to be a public trick. Typically, I use another tab/browser to go find the link. It's probably too much effort to catalog all the pages in one place so we know what they are, eh?

In reply to ben reynolds

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by Derek Chirnside -

@Ben.

No it is not, it's easy.  It's a built in Mediawiki function.

But the list will be overwhelming.

Search via Google is quicker.

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by ben reynolds -

Hey Derek,

Yea, I figured what you said. Darn.

Also, I keep getting JSON errors when I read emails from this site.

In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by Itamar Tzadok -

Mary, with forum posts automatically parsing double brackets as docs links it may be useful to adjust the filter (I'm assuming this is done via a text filter) to recognize the <nowiki> tag and skip double brackets which are nowiki-ed. We have a problem explaining and posting working examples of double bracketed patterns such as the Database module's because the double brackets are filtered out. smile

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In reply to Itamar Tzadok

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

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

Itamar - perhaps you'd like to make a tracker issue for improving the custom filter used on moodle.org as you describe? smile

In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Mary

Apart from what those gentlemen were saying, I get (non-html) mails like the one attached below. Not very helpful.
sad

So this is yet another highly non-geek idea. But let's not waste more time on them.
Attachment doublebrackets.png
In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by dawn alderson -

Visvanath, hi

hope you are good there.  To be fair, Mary has set out to be innovative here, so it seems to me-can't fault that eh.  Agree- what is that saying....oh yes-can't please them all-all of the time! mixed  So, it seems a generic formula is a bit of an issue....well hey ho...........I have been thinking that maybe something permanent in the file picker might be an idea....you know a link that peeps can just click on to include in their post to help others........tricky I know.......have a geek T 'shirt here, have done since about the age of six..........but still struggle with a solution to this problem........essentially I think Mary was trying to address a major issue in Moodle-in that the user needs to rely on the docs for success......making that navigation easier- all round, appears to remain a challenge for all thoughtful

cheers,

Dawn 

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In reply to dawn alderson

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Begum Dawn Alderson, Namasté

Oh, no! For heaven's sake, don't build the world around cynical geeks. The creative one you live in, is much nicer!

P.S. What happened to your Avatar? Nothing against bicycles, but that one looks like the quadrycle of Alfred Escher.
;-(
In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by dawn alderson -

Mahodaya Visvanath Ratnaweera, namaskar.

Cynical geeks eh.....awwww now now smile

RE: Avatar, tis a sculpture by Ai Weiwei, the chap who taught himself about architecture and did the design for the stadium at the Beijing olympic games (2008) 'bird Nest'. I like the pic here because it is unusual to see circles squared in a square frame also.  

Not heard of A. Escher, have heard of M. Escher, was inspired by geometry and logic of space...I remember seeing some work with tesselations, for example.

Bahut Bahut wink

Dawn   

In reply to dawn alderson

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Dawn

Talking of Ai Weiwei, this is how an icon is being wasted: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-26613538.

Coming back to our original topic of cynical geeks, here's another suffering: "How to stop Moodle hijacking my hyperlink?" https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=256371.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by dawn alderson -

Visvanath, hi

thanks for that link...will look at it more closely later today. 

I must say, there is something most interesting about that code in the thread you included-pattern strings can be intriguing, yes I recognise the detail must get a bit nauseating at times, but the end goal, when achived must surely be satisfying.

Have you thought about having a crypto party? Jazz up things a bit Yes Something to be said about random numbers eh...

not sure if you will be able to pick up on this link:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03xzyy5   (BBC Radio 4-Crypto wars) There is a three day listening period left on it.

smile

Dawn

 

 

 

In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: How to link to Moodle documentation

by Robert Brenstein -
May be a fix can be something a simple as requiring a keyword, for example: [ [ doclink:Dataform module ] ]

This would allow to the filter to leave other uses of square brackets unaffected and also make this more meaningful in emails until the filter learns how to make the replacement in emails as well, if that ever happens.
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