David Scotson

How does the local Google search interact with Moodle? I've often thought that an external search engine would be a useful addition to Moodle in campus settings.

Inside the theme there will be a header.html file. It contains a bit of PHP code that effectively says do this on the front page, and do that on the others, e.g. in the standard theme:

edit: the PHP code seems to be getting eaten (probably a security precaution). You can see it in the CVS browser. Look for the bit that says something like:

if ($home) {  // This is what gets printed on the home page only  

else if ($heading) {  // This is what gets printed on any other 

I'm guessing that's the root of your problems.

Well, not a coding mistake as such, as I fully intended the files to be differently named in order to allow for a upgrade path.

Oddly, Ralf seems to have got the file that uploads the image to a different location, but not the file that (optionally) looks for them in that location, which I'm fairly sure I checked in within minutes of each other.

But, that's neither here nor there as, on Martin's suggestion, I've rolled back this code and added a different upgrade path that leaves the filenames as they are.

However, I'm unconvinced that people should be running Moodle from an arbritrary CVS HEAD. But if they are, then updating to the latest version will probably fix their problem (and quite possibly introduce others!)

There was some discussion previously about posting guidelines for forums. I recently found some guidelines that seem pretty well thought out on the Java community site Java Ranch (A friendly place for Java greenhorns) :

http://faq.javaranch.com/view?HowToAskQuestionsOnJavaRanch

With subtopics:

Search First Carefully Choose One Forum Ease Up Patience Is A Virtue Use A Meaningful Subject Line Tell The Details Use One Thread Per Question Use Real Words Keep It Down Use Code Tags Use The Forum Not Email Say Thanks

With the many changes to the underlying HTML made in the most recent release you should find it relatively easy to customize Moodle if you know some CSS. It's pretty much a matter of how much effort you want to put in, as there is no longer a barrier to making changes to the site in the same manner as the multiple themes preseneted in the CSS Zen Garden. Personally, I'm not a fan of looking different for it's own sake in a web application such as Moodle, as it reduces the usefulness of community documentation and testing if every site is radically different.

For example, I like the look of the http://corporacion.campusadalid.com/ Moodle site. It's perhaps not extreme-ly different in layout but it is very well done and avoids what I believe is the number one Moodle-ism, namely putting a solid, dark border around almost everything. The newer 1.5 themes seem to generally avoid this, but it was a common theme(!) for 1.4.

I've also been experimenting with 2-column layouts, the first of which is called Kubrick, based on the ubiquitous Wordpress blog theme of the same name. Again, I think it's the removal of borders that does most to make it look un-Moodle while keeping the vast majority of the layout intact. (There's plenty of digressions in that thread too, you may want to just scroll down to look at the various screenshots or download the latest version of the theme).