I've installed Moodle 3.2 (fresh) on both a Mac and Windows PC. I'm noticing that for courses using the Topics course format, the section titles are hyperlinks. And for all themes (Boost, Clean, More). I've never seen this before (at least on other Moodle versions). I don't want them to be hyperlinks. I can't find any new or old setting that might control this. I feel like I'm missing something. Does anyone have any info on this?
Thank very much in advance.... Brian
Yep, I noticed that too. And I too thought it was a little odd. What I discovered is that they kind of work like permalink in forums, that one could click on the topic and use its URL in communications when you want someone to click on your provided link and send that person exactly to that topic. But I am not sure that I really wanted this. Sure, I can agree that if someone had a lot of topics in a course with a lot of resources per topic, the growth of a course (depth of page) gets a little long.
Solution? I use the Collapsed Topics plugin. Solves both problems!
It was possible to link topics in previous versions of Moodle too -they were only linked by default in the "show only one section per page" option in the course edit settings. The option to do this was/is found in Navigation in the Appearance section of site admin - 'always link course sections'.
I do see the "Always link course sections" option in Navigation/Appearance. Thanks for pointing that out (this option isn't present in 2.7, our current Moodle site).
However, looking at the demo.moodle.org site (and my own test 3.2 site), this option is unchecked, which I assume should mean that course sections should NOT appear as links. Yet, on both sites, course section titles do appear as hyperlinks (when the Topics format is set to show all sections on one page). So something still doesn't seem right to me here.
On a 3.1 test site, I see that this option is respected. If unchecked, sections titles are not linked. If checked, they are. It appears that this setting isn't being respected in 3.2.
Is there some other option that impacts how course section titles appear, or has something changed in 3.2? Or maybe something isn't working correctly. I don't want the course section titles to appear as links when using the Topics course format, and I can't see how to change that.
Thanks for the help.... Brian
Hello Brian. Actually, I found the same as you when I explored it - perhaps this is a bug or if not, and it is intentional, then that setting should be removed as it does nothing. I will make a tracker report about it and perhaps you can comment there? At least that way we should find out the expected behaviour.
Here is the tracker report: MDL-57412
Mary -- Thanks for confirming that I'm not seeing things And thanks for the Tracker report. I've added a comment there (I hope this isn't intentional). -- Brian
Ok with 'Show all sections on one page'... in M3.1 if 'linkcoursesections' is false then the section titles are not anchor links on the same page, if its true then they are. It looks like in M3.2 (and I can replicate) that there is a bug and when 'linkcoursesections' is false then the anchor links are still there.
With 'One section per page' then that should ignore 'linkcoursesections' as the links need to be to the section pages.
Ok, tracked it down to the removal of:
if (empty($CFG->linkcoursesections) && !empty($options['navigation'])) {
return null;
}in /course/format/topics/lib.php just after line 123. Which was done in commit https://github.com/moodle/moodle/commit/99061152af3976dc276777463328a1295a65d4cb#diff-89ff5f61eab1061b736e7c3c27d44c0f being MDL-55074.
Thanks Gareth - I am glad you posted here as well as the tracker because yet again I went to the tracker and attempted to rate a tracker comment as "useful" only to remember - we can't do that
No worries Mary . I've commented this on the tracker:
"Ok, in putting the code back in and testing with 'Boost' as that is what it was removed for then the links go away, but... I can see why the code was removed as the 'Navigation' block in Boost has gone having the anchored links is used to make its own navigation - however the solution is flawed because its a theme specific solution and the theme should have overridden 'format_topics::get_view_url()' and 'format_weeks::get_view_url()' which it can do (as I believe themes can override the format_base hierarchy)."
So a 'Boost' specific change that has broken everything else.
Hi Mary,
Was this issue ever resolved?
We have recently moved to 3.2 and noticed this on modified Boost theme.
Ideally, I would like to change the URL or turn off the link. Is that possible without code changes?
Thank you!
If you look at the original tracker report I made, it is being worked on at the moment and so hopefully should be available in an upcoming release of Moodle.
Update: You will be able to turn off course section links in Boost in the upcoming releases 3.3.2 and 3.2.5. The navigation drawer will then be shorter, as it will no longer include all the course section titles.
