Course content not loading

Course content not loading

by Ross Lovell -
Number of replies: 5

One of my courses won't display any content when it's opened. When I click the course's link only the its title and the Turn Editing On / Off button is displayed. None of the topics, activities, resources or blocks appear. When I try opening other courses in the category they work fine.

I've tried changing the the theme from evolove-D (which is our main theme) to Clean but it makes no difference. I've also tried creating a test course in the category and that displays all of the content without any problems.

I'm running Moodle 3.1.5+ (Build: 20170324).

If anyone has any advice or suggestions on how to fix this it would be a great help.

empty course

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ross Lovell

Re: Course content not loading

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

Can you post a screenshot of what it looks like in the Clean theme? ( I know you can't see anything in Clean either, but I am more familiar with Clean and I don't know EvolveD)  Can you remember what is in that course, the resources, topic sections etc? Is it one you have edited yourself or another teacher has edited?

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Course content not loading

by Ross Lovell -

Hi Mary thank you for your reply.

I've attached a screenshot of the course in the Clean theme. Apart from the Moodle nav bar the runs across the top of the site, this is the only content that appears when the course is opened. Even the Administration block doesn't appear.

Moodle course in Clean theme

Another teacher has created and edited the course. I'll have to check with them as regarding the topic sections and resources later today. According to the course settings there should be 10 topic sections. Going by his other courses I'd say the content is likely to be a mixture of quizzes, PDF's, and Microsoft Word documents.

Worst case scenario if he's got the resources to hand I'll get the teacher to recreate the course. I created a test course and everything worked fine.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ross Lovell

Re: Course content not loading

by Joost Elshoff -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

If you're investigating later on, do also check the Inspector in your browser to see if there are any errors being generated while loading the page. This may tell you where to correct the issue. Could be a block with faulty code, or something similar causing all this.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Ross Lovell

Re: Course content not loading

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

More often than not when this happens it is because the teacher has pasted in content from Word which has corrupted the page. Usually though the course itself is accessible but cannot be edited -or the layout has been completely broken and is all over the place. I'd do what Joost says and see the source code. You can also check out this old forum post which might help point you on the right track. If it is just one element of MS Word copy/paste then you might still be able to retrieve the rest of the course.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Course content not loading

by Ross Lovell -

Thank you so much Mary and Joost your advice really helped.

Mary: I followed your link to the forum post and then a link to your blog where I found a video you had uploaded. From there I used the ID method you described to access to summary area of the course. Inside the summary I found that the teacher had pasted in a malformed URL. After I removed the URL the course started working again.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)