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:
785 sites
353 downloads
300 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

Comments

  • Graeme Forrester
    Wed, 12 Feb 2014, 7:35 PM
    Nice Theme. How do you get a course list on the front page in the menu bar as a drop down for all visitors?
  • William Lu
    Thu, 13 Feb 2014, 2:31 AM
    I found out the CSS to change the Nav bar colour:
    .navbar-inverse .navbar-inner {
    background-color: #CC0033;
    background-image: linear-gradient(to bottom, #CC0033, #CC0033);
    background-repeat: repeat-x;
    border-color: #CC0033;
    }

    .navbar-inverse .brand {
    color: #FFFFFF;
    }
    .navbar-inverse .brand, .navbar-inverse .nav > li > a {
    color: #FFFFFF;
    text-shadow: 0 0px 0 rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25);
    }
    .navbar .brand {
    color: #FFFFFF;
    text-shadow: 0 01px 0 #FFFFFF;
    }


    .navbar-inverse .navbar-text {
    color: #FFFFFF;
    }
    .navbar-text {
    color: #FFFFFF;
    }

    .navbar-inverse .logininfo a {
    color: #FFFFFF;
    }
  • Victor Lamote de Grignon i Alifonso
    Fri, 14 Feb 2014, 12:28 AM
    Is it possible to assign an icon to a block (for exemple an HTML block)? Thank you.
  • Shaun Daubney
    Fri, 14 Feb 2014, 1:19 AM
    Stefan Oertel - I will implement this for the next release
  • Shaun Daubney
    Fri, 14 Feb 2014, 1:23 AM
    Victor Lamote de Grignon i Alifonso - You can do this in blockicons.css or add the code to the custom css in the settings.

    .block_html .header .title h2:before {
    background-color: #29A294;
    content:"\f0a1";
    }

    Only change the colour and content to what you want it to be.
  • Shaun Daubney
    Fri, 14 Feb 2014, 1:27 AM
    David Le Blanc - you can change the icons in the pix_core folder, but obviously you won't be able to update through the usual method.
  • Shaun Daubney
    Fri, 14 Feb 2014, 1:34 AM
    Sorry William Lu, I'll see about adding an option to choose between light and dark in the next release.
  • Shaun Daubney
    Fri, 14 Feb 2014, 6:18 PM
    Uploaded a new version and gone back to a white/light menu
  • Nathan Bruley
    Sat, 15 Feb 2014, 5:13 AM
    I tried upgrading the theme but unfortunately it doesn't appear to display well with our long outdated IE8 so... I think we will just auto-login guest.
  • Nathan Bruley
    Sat, 15 Feb 2014, 5:13 AM
    Is there any way to specify open in a new window for the custom menu?
  • Luciana Luciana
    Sat, 15 Feb 2014, 8:47 PM
    Hello!

    I need help.
    I want to change the icon in "COURSE CATEGORIES" but I can't find it.

    Thank you
  • Nathan Bruley
    Tue, 18 Feb 2014, 11:56 PM
    I guess we should be able to use the following script for open in a new window if jquery is enabled. Put it in the additional html before body close:
    $("#menuwrap div.yui3-menu.custom_menu_submenu .yui3-menu-content li a").not("a[href*='localhost']").attr("target","_blank");
    There's probably a better way in php but I think this will work for us and shouldn't get overwritten during an upgrade.
  • Nathan Bruley
    Wed, 19 Feb 2014, 12:01 AM
    (note that localhost needs to be changed to match your domain)
  • Jon Chui
    Fri, 21 Feb 2014, 12:09 PM
    Thanks for the great theme.

    I have a strange issue to report, on Moodle 2.6 with Aardvark 2014021400. When menubar items are populated, the positioning of the icon is variable across browsers:
    fL1Y1Vu.png
    The (undesirable) centering behaviour is independent on screen resolution. That is, whether it is with additional space or not, the icon remains centered on a different row.
  • Nathan Bruley
    Tue, 4 Mar 2014, 2:49 AM
    unfortunately the auto-login guest doesn't work for the front page since it doesn't require enrollment, so I'm back to square one on the menu issue...
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