I recently upgraded our PROD Moodle server from 2.7+ to 2.9 Build: 20150625. For the most part everything looks great except some very weird behavior on the front page. None of the drop downs work (user profile, admin menu items, etc). All these items work every where else but the front page. My front page does have the Main Menu block with just a single item in it, Site News. This sounds a lot like MDL-50446, however the only thing I have in my Main Menu Block is the default Site News. We have a few other blocks on the front page that link to a PDF. I don't have the ability to remove or configure any of our other blocks (options are greyed out). The blocks all have the option to dock, but not hide. This exact sme upgrade was done on our test system and does not have this issue. Any suggestions?
Re: Moodle 2.9 upgrade from 2.7 front page issues
First I would purge the Moodle caches. Does that make a difference?
Then I would compare (diff) the Moodle code folder on the production box and the Moodle code folder on the test box where Moodle is working to make sure all the Moodle code was correctly uploaded to the prod box when the upgrade was done.
Then I would compare the PHP settings on the two boxes to make sure prod = the test box.
Then I would check the web server (IIS / Apache) settings to make sure the prod box is configured properly.
I would also check the permissions on the Moodledata folder on the prod box to make sure they're correct.
Then if none of that fixes it I would restore a backup of the pre-upgrade 2.7 site onto the production box and then try the 2.9 upgrade again.
Some people prefer to wait a few weeks/months before upgrading to the latest version of Moodle. Or they keep one version behind the latest release. That gives the Moodle developers time to iron out any glitches in the main release.
Re: Moodle 2.9 upgrade from 2.7 front page issues
I found the issue, we had an old RSS block on the front page which was pointing to a feed that no longer exists. Putting Moodle in DEVELOPER debug fished out the issue. Removing the RSS block fixed my problems. Moodle 2.7 didn't trip on this, and I never noticed the block as it wouldn't show on 2.7, on 2.9 this hung up the front page. Thanks for responding!