Web conferencing plugins (including BigBlueButton)

I'm checking out Moodle on BlueHost.  It's pretty limited in what I can and can't do - especially since I don't have ssh access.

I got the same issue as you with the unable to connect.  Switching to FastCGI helped a bit.  I checked the test URL and consistently got the "Success" message.

What I realized while hacking away at the plugin, it looks like it could be a timing issue.  When the plugin for BigBlueButton would try to connect - I got the unable to connect.  When I added a few print statements - I found that about half the time I was about to get the server version.  Without it, adding a conference room activity fails.

Leading me to make the following change here ("mod/bigbluebuttonbn/mod_form.php"):

        //Validates if the BigBlueButton server is running

        #print $endpoint;

        #print bigbluebuttonbn_getServerVersion($endpoint);

        $serverVersion = bigbluebuttonbn_getServerVersion($endpoint);

        #if ( !isset($serverVersion) ) {

        #    print_error( 'general_error_unable_connect', 'bigbluebuttonbn', $CFG->wwwroot.'/admin/settings.php?section=modsettingbigbluebuttonbn' );

        #}

I even wrote a PHP script that curls the ServiceURL just to verify that there wasn't an issue directly connecting to the service.  It was robust.  The issue seems to be timing out connecting from my host to BigBlueButton - maybe skimpy resources or my basic BlueHost plan - nonetheless, I like to see how far I can stretch out resources.

Since I have faith in BlueHost - and even if I were to host an instance, I'd prolly host it with them - I'm assuming their service url will have 99.999 uptime.

The next issue I found was joining a conference.

When doing it manually - I'd get the same issue.  I'd have to refresh a few times and then it would load.  Again, FastCGI did make things a lil better - but it wasn't reliable enough.

This resulted in the following change I made to the plugin ("lib/setuplib.php"):

function print_error($errorcode, $module = 'error', $link = '', $a = null, $debuginfo = null) {

    #throw new moodle_exception($errorcode, $module, $link, $a, $debuginfo);

    echo "Please wait...";

    header("Refresh:3");

}

It's better than a blank page and having the end user refresh - so I did it for them.  I added a please wait line of text and I'm having PHP refresh every 3 seconds until it is able to connect to the server and join a conference.

It may not be the world's best solution - however if you've been playing with Moodle and BigBlueButton for about 20 hours, and you just wanna play around and get to know the inner workings - it'll do.  If you're in a crunch and you do this - keep in mind it's just a band aid.

Good luck,

Kareem