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:
964 sites
387 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

Comments

  • Gustavo Cardoso Martins
    Wed, 7 Jan 2015, 11:10 PM
    Hi Shaun, any idea on when you will update this do 2.8?

    Thanks!
  • Shaun Daubney
    Thu, 8 Jan 2015, 12:47 AM
    Hi sorry we only updated to 2.8 at Christmas. I've updated it with a couple of fixes for image widths, are there any other things I should be aware of in 2.8?
  • Toriton Shigant
    Thu, 8 Jan 2015, 7:52 AM
    Thank you Shaun. I've installed and see but still Gravatars are not working..
  • Shaun Daubney
    Thu, 8 Jan 2015, 5:28 PM
    Sorry about that, I have no experience with Gravatars but if/when I get some time I'll look into it for you.
  • Ricardo Caiado
    Thu, 8 Jan 2015, 7:33 PM
    WRONG VERSION on "version.php" (https://moodle.org/plugins/download.php/7635/theme_aardvark_moodle28_2015010700.zip)

    "$plugin->version = 2014010700; // The current module version (Date: YYYYMMDDXX)"
  • Gustavo Cardoso Martins
    Thu, 8 Jan 2015, 7:56 PM
    Hi Shaun, same problem as mention by Ricardo Caiado, please take a look:



  • Shaun Daubney
    Thu, 8 Jan 2015, 9:49 PM
    Sorry about that, hopefully fixed it now. It's because I forgot it was 2015 now smile
  • Gustavo Cardoso Martins
    Thu, 8 Jan 2015, 10:20 PM
    Great Shaun, from my open points, now everything solved! Thanks!
  • sentient consultant
    Wed, 14 Jan 2015, 12:30 PM
    Hi Shaun,

    I am using Aardvark for my upcoming site. I have a very basic question for you. I want to use font awesome for majority of the icons instead of pngs. e.g. I would like to use font awesome fa-plus instead of the existing collapsed.png. Is there an easy way to achieve this? What all changes do I need to do.

    Really appreciate your help in this direction.

    Sentient
  • It's only an avatar...
    Thu, 15 Jan 2015, 9:26 PM
    I can answer that, although it is easy to accomplish it will not work for all the icons in Moodle only those that respond to the renderer you use. Father than ask this question here can you ask the same thing in the Moodle Themes Forum? Cheers Mary


  • It's only an avatar...
    Thu, 15 Jan 2015, 9:42 PM
    Further to my last comment the renderer you need to use is similar to this one ...
    https://github.com/lazydaisy/Moodle-Studio/blob/tiny/tiny/renderers.php#L379-L494 but it needs altering to enable fonts rather than the sprite icons that renderer was written for. But changing it and adding Font Awesome is pretty easy...well I think so...if you Google it I am sure you will find a forum post that either Gareth Barnard or myself have written which explains it all.
  • Bradley Bishop
    Fri, 30 Jan 2015, 10:59 PM
    Hi, does this theme have the option of embedding YouTube videos?
  • It's only an avatar...
    Fri, 30 Jan 2015, 11:55 PM
    Hi Bradley, things like embedding media files is not a Theme limited option, it is freely available in Moodle itself, you just need to make sure that it has Admin permissions to add embedded files, Check out the Moodle Docs about embedding files.
    Cheers
    Mary
  • محمد علی اکبری
    Sat, 31 Jan 2015, 3:00 PM
    Is this theme support RTL languages?
  • Ewald Dreesmann
    Wed, 4 Feb 2015, 12:46 AM
    Hi,

    I would like to have not only the Google-Play- and Itunes-Store but also the Windows-Store implemented in Aardvaark.

    Maybe that's no big thing?

    Thanks for this great theme ...
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