Moodle in English: The Lonely People Block

There was debate before about whether editing profiles should be done through the admin block or the People block. The end result was that the People block was gutted and has become simply a receptacle for a single link, which is a bit odd looking and seems to be a wate of space.

I had an idea just now to combine the People block with the Online Users Block. It could still be called "People" but it could have a link to "Profiles of All Participants" at the top of the content area, and below it there could be a line reading "Participants online (in the past 5 minutes, 1 hour, whatever)", and below that, links to all the profiles of people currently online as is currently in the Online Users Block. What does everyone think of this?

I think it would make sense.

Ps. From the post title I thought this is about a "dating block"

I've added this to the bug tracker as bug 4175. If you like the idea, feel free to vote for it there.

I've voted for this Nicole, but I had already altered by Online Users block to include "participants" some time ago. A copy is attached if you want to use it in the interim. The ONLY change to this block is the addition of a link to the participants page.

I don't think its a good combination since seeing who is online is not as ubiquitous as the participants link. Many choose not to use the Online User's block who would want to use the participants link. I have moved mine to the Admin block for now (which I call the Course Tools block).

(A dating block--he he)

Good point Chardelle, but perhaps it could be made configurable and leave it up to the admin (or teacher) whether to enable the online user aspect.

Jon-I took your version and made a few additional changes to it so it is clear what the purpose of the block and each of its sections is. I'm attaching my version. Note that I made some necessary language pack changes, as follows:

In Moodle.php

$string['listofallpeople'] = 'Profiles of all participants';

In block_online_users.php:

$string['blockname'] = 'Participants and Profiles';
$string['periodnminutes'] = 'Active in the last $a minutes';

You can see it in action here, at the upper right corner of the page.

Nicole - Ah! Much better - nice one

Chardelle, I'm with Nicole on this one - I think it should be configurable.

You know, I didn't think of the dating service idea when I came up with the title of this thread, but every time I see this thread I can't help but hear the words of the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" running through my head....

Yes, having it configurable would solve the problem for those who do not want to show who's online--however then the link is once again sad and lonely sad

But is there another block the participants link would logically fit with? I can't think of one right now.

Where can I download it? Both links at modules page point to discussion...

Here's my adaptation of N Hansen's adaptation of Jon Bolton's adaptation.

I wanted to NOT have the "participants" list on the "home page", but to have it only show within the courses.

My commented changes are in lines 130 to 157.

It works for me in Moodle 1.6.3, with the exception that the wrong "no image uploaded by the user" icon gets shown for users. (This happened in Hansen's and Bolton's versions too, I think.)

Instead of /pix/u/f2.png being displayed, /pix/i/user.gif is displayed.

That doesn't bother me so much, so I'm using it this way. If anyone can fix it so it displays the proper "no image submitted by the user" image, I'd appreciate it.

Hi,

all versions of this file report errors in the admin menus.

Version mismatch: block online_users can't downgrade 2006030100 -> 2004111600!

Can I change the version in the file without any problems?

Francis

The Block didn't work for me in 1.7.x anymore (took the one of Charles Kelly) so I did a little change of the if-condition (it's now $COURSE->id). The old condition is still there but commented out.
I also made a slight change in the string because I felt about it more beautiful this way.

Improvements are welcome!!

Greetings
Timo

Hello

I am an Adminstrator of moodle but I do not host it and and therefore I didn't install it. Can anyone tell me how I might go about changing my online user block into one of the ones attached to this forum. Even a point in the right direction would be appreciated.

Thanks, Dai

I'm not shure what you're up to. You have to have access to the Filesystem so you can change the Sourcecode or replace the file with anotherone.

cya

After the Upgrade to 1.8 I made the changes to the online_users_php manually so there won't be any loss to the upgrade...

Works great thow!

greetings

This works in 1.9 also, i've just checked.

One question : Why cant the online users block show all the users who are presently online than showing who all logged in during the last 10 or x minutes ?

If I just login and logout of moodle, it shows me to be online for the next 10 mins ! On the other hand, I i am logged in for more than 10 mins, others cant see me online. Ideally, as the name suggest , online users block should show 'online users' at that moment, even if the last refresh is a minute old, thats ok.

Where can I download this block? Download link opens this forum!

Looks like this is actually not a separate or new block but rather a patch. It also looks like the latest file is at the link above in the forum which points to:

http://moodle.org/file.php/5/moddata/forum/396/342570/block_online_users.php

Ideally, I would like to see this either maintained as a separate block called Lonely People or listed as a patch. I will contact N Hansen who seems to have contributed this initially and see how we might best handle this to avoid further confusion.

Peace - Anthony

Blocks

The Lonely People Block