Course for Moodle theme designers - need your input please :-)

Course for Moodle theme designers - need your input please :-)

by Stuart Mealor -
Number of replies: 3

Hi everyone

We've been running a course for a couple of years aimed at helping people needing to do some Theme design in Moodle. We would really love input from people in this Forum, whether you are new to Moodle Theming, or relatively experienced.  If you are new: What were the barriers to you starting developing Themes? What information did you feel was missing? What knowledge do you wish you already had? What skills did you find you needed to start?

Here is how our outline looks at the moment - but we would love to hear ideas from Moodle Theme designers old and new about how we could improve this - thanks !

Level 1

  • Pre-start (generic web understanding)
    • Accessibility - colours, fonts and screen resolutions
    • Accessibility - browsers and mobile devices
  • Week 1
    • Foundation knowledge
    • Essential Theme HTML and CSS
    • Web browser development tools you need
    • Setting up a test server and environment
  • Week 2
    • PHP basics
    • Theme structures
    • Making changes with CSS
    • Changing CSS in Moodle with external stylesheets
    • Custom CSS classes
    • Cloning Themes
  • Week 3
    • Beyond the basics
    • Adding fonts
    • Understanding Templates
    • Moodle.org and Moodle Docs resources for Theme designers

Level 2

  • Week 1
    •  Templates to alter the layout of a page
    •  Using SCSS
    •  How to display blocks horizontally
  • Week 2
    • Applying accessibility
    • Adding PHPUnit tests
  • Week 3
    • Configuration management with Git
    • Creating and using custom settings
    • Theme Maintenance and planning for change with refactoring
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In reply to Stuart Mealor

Re: Course for Moodle theme designers - need your input please :-)

by Adesuwa Dawodu -
I'm running an eschool, and I started a new theme on Monday. I have an adequate amount of experience with html and CSS, and a smaller amount with PHP. However, my main problem is with Moodle functions. For example, I want to create a custom course homepage that lists a certain amount of courses (6) for each category, with pictures and descriptions, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to automate that so instead I'm looking at doing it manually.

So, documentation for moodle functions, like if there was a listing for moodle objects, what $OUTPUT can call, that would be really helpful.

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In reply to Adesuwa Dawodu

Re: Course for Moodle theme designers - need your input please :-)

by Richard Jones -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Well there is this:

https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Output_renderers

and this:

https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Output_API

and the source code in moodle/lib/outputrenderers.php where it is defined and documented from about line 400 onwards.

They might be of a little help to you in understanding how it all gets put together.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Richard Jones

Re: Course for Moodle theme designers - need your input please :-)

by Adesuwa Dawodu -

Thank you. The outputrenderers file is really helpful. 

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