Aardvark

Themes ::: theme_aardvark
Maintained by Shaun Daubney
The original 'menubar' based theme for Moodle, evolved for the modern student. NO LONGER BEING DEVELOPED
Latest release:
986 sites
404 downloads
299 fans
Current versions available: 7

The Aardvark project started in 2008 after a focus group with students led the development of our somewhat basic and neglected installation of Moodle into a (at the time) modern and engaging platform. The idea was to drive student use by creating a colourful, MySpace-inspired, student intranet as the front-end, with the functionality of a VLE behind it. Pressure from those students would then ultimately drive adoption by tutors.

Over the years, Aardvark has been an exciting and arguably inspiring project, started at Newbury College, but benefiting from the contributions and expertise of many other developers. It was the first open-source Moodle theme to include a drop-down navigation menu, a concept that would eventually become a core element of Moodle theme engine, and at its peak was installed on over 5,000 Moodle installations around the world.

Development of Aardvark slowed down a few years ago as many of its advantages were adopted as features in the core theme engine of Moodle and a lack of development time meant that I was no longer able to keep up with the changes required to make the theme compatible with the latest releases. Unfortunately I have had to make the decision to cease development of Aardvark to focus on other commitments.

Aardvark has been an incredible project to work on, and I have learnt a huge amount about PHP and CSS along the way and I would like to thank everyone who has contacted me over the years with their kind comments. Special thanks to Mary L Evans, Patrick Malley and all of the other contributors and supporters who have been part of this journey.


Screenshots

Screenshot #0

Contributors

Shaun Daubney (Lead maintainer): Shaun is the main creator and maintainer of the Aardvark project and is an eLearning developer based at Newbury College.
It's only an avatar...
Mary Evans: Mary contributes a lot towards this theme and has been a great supporter of the project since its early days.
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Comments RSS

Show comments
  • Gaurav mehta
    Sat, 3 Feb 2018, 10:13 PM
    A debt of gratitude is in order for conveying this to my consideration John. I'm investigating it right now however I don't know why it's doing that. https://www.htet-result.in/
  • David Dinh
    Thu, 8 Feb 2018, 11:55 AM
    Hello,

    I just upgraded my development site to Moodle 3.4.1 and also upgraded theme Academi to version theme_academi_moodle34_2017110900 but ran into an issue where my testing site is no longer recognize aardvark theme. Is there a way to fix this issue? Here is what I'm seeing on Moodle version 3.4.1

    aardvark theme_aardvark 2017092700 Disabled Uninstall Additional Missing from disk!

    Thank you
  • Rohan Pieterse
    Mon, 26 Feb 2018, 1:46 AM
    Hallo,

    How do I get the dashboard to look like in the screenshot. I cant get a navbar for courses or anything. The only thing that changed when i activated the theme was the color scheme.

    Kind regards,
  • Peter Eliyahu Kornfeld
    Wed, 11 Apr 2018, 4:03 PM
    Hi,
    I like this theme very much - it is very 'live' and good for the eyes! Very good work...
    I'm possibly one of those few who check it with RTL language (Hebrew) and spotted some problems when using IE (11, maybe others)...
    Where can I fill a bug report?
  • joseph valdez
    Wed, 9 May 2018, 9:05 PM
    Amazing theme! Great design and no issues when upgrading to Moodle 3.4 big grin
  • Elena Robles Robles
    Fri, 31 Aug 2018, 6:54 PM
    How can I insert the instagram block? Many thanks
  • Shaun Daubney
    Fri, 31 Aug 2018, 9:39 PM
    Elena Robles Robles - the Instagram block is just an HTML block where you can embed a widget or manually add pictures saved from Instagram.
  • Eduardo Almeida Costa
    Wed, 5 Sep 2018, 1:11 AM
    Is there an estimate for the theme to work with moodle 3.5?
    Thanks.
  • Shaun Daubney
    Wed, 5 Sep 2018, 2:31 AM
    Unfortunately we're having massive problems upgrading our Moodle so development has been delayed.
  • Elena Robles Robles
    Thu, 27 Sep 2018, 7:40 PM
    How can I change the header so that it has an icon and a black background?
    From the instagram block you have on the web demo
  • Visvanath Ratnaweera
    Fri, 5 Oct 2018, 3:46 PM
    Hi, thanks for the great theme! I like the non-intrusive approach. One change I would like to do in the same direction. How do I unstick the top menu bar (where the Home button, Language menu, Logged in user, are)?
  • Iron Man
    Sat, 30 Mar 2019, 3:17 AM
    Hi,
    One of my school adopted this theme. We upgraded to 3.6 and all courses with Aardvark theme can not access messaging. Do you plan on releasing an update?
  • Dennis Nazarrea
    Sun, 2 Jun 2019, 10:01 PM
    Hi, I just upgraded to Moodle 3.7, after installation of the new version aardvark themes does not display properly.
  • Shaun Daubney
    Tue, 10 Sep 2019, 5:06 PM
    Unfortunately I have had to make the decision to cease development of Aardvark to focus on other commitments.

    The Aardvark project started in 2008 after a focus group with students led the development of our somewhat basic and neglected installation of Moodle into a (at the time) modern and engaging platform. The idea was to drive student use by creating a colourful, MySpace-inspired, student intranet as the front-end, with the functionality of a VLE behind it. Pressure from those students would then ultimately drive adoption by tutors.

    Over the years, Aardvark has been an exciting and arguably inspiring project, started at Newbury College, but benefiting from the contributions and expertise of many other developers. It was the first open-source Moodle theme to include a drop-down navigation menu, a concept that would eventually become a core element of Moodle theme engine, and at its peak was installed on over 5,000 Moodle installations around the world.

    Development of Aardvark slowed down a few years ago as many of its advantages were adopted as features in the core theme engine of Moodle and a lack of development time meant that I was no longer able to keep up with the changes required to make the theme compatible with the latest releases.

    Aardvark has been an incredible project to work on, and I have learnt a huge amount about PHP and CSS along the way and I would like to thank everyone who has contacted me over the years with their kind comments. Special thanks to Mary L Evans, Patrick Malley and all of the other contributors and supporters who have been part of this journey.
  • Shaun Daubney
    Mon, 10 Aug 2020, 8:40 PM
    Thank you Bob - it was a labour of love and I really miss working on it, but times change and default Moodle is so much more use friendly these days, so Aarvark had to retire. I like to think his legacy lives on and that he has in a small way inspired some of the official Moodle developments over the years.
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