OU blog

Activities ::: mod_oublog
Maintained by sam marshall, Jason Platts, Alan Thompson, Alan Carter
Part of set Open University.
Alternative blog. Can be used as a course activity.
Latest release:
786 sites
158 downloads
29 fans
Current versions available: 16

This is an alternative blog that you can install into standard Moodle.

It does not replace the standard blog, and operates alongside it. There are two modes of use:

1) As a course activity. In this case you can use it the same way as any other module. You can have course-wide blogs (everyone in the course posts to the same blog), group blogs, or individual blogs; the latter are useful for assessed activities (where the student is supposed to keep a journal which only they and their tutor can read).
   
2) As a replacement for standard Moodle personal blogs. In this case it would be a good idea to turn off the standard Moodle blog system, or it'll bevery confusing. You then need to MANUALLY provide students with a link to mod/oublog/view.php which will automatically take them to their personal blog.

When using for personal blogs, one feature of interest may be moderated public comments; when you allow comments from people who are not logged in, all such comments are moderated.

Please note: This plugin is no longer supported in Moodle Tracker. All support requests should be via the GitHub repository issue tracker (https://github.com/moodleou/moodle-mod_oublog).

Screenshots

Screenshot #0

Contributors

sam marshall (Lead maintainer)
Jason Platts: Current lead developer
Alan Thompson: Technical developer
Alan Carter: Technical developer
Please login to view contributors details and/or to contact them

Comments RSS

Comments

  • Jason Platts
    Thu, 15 Aug 2019, 7:43 PM
    There should have been a 3.6 release in June but it looks like we forgot to push it to the public...
    Basically it looks like there are no changes other than for some behat tests that broke in 3.6.

    We also have a follow on 3.6 release coming up next month - so at some point we will push these both to github and to the Plugins directory.
  • Gary Mellor
    Mon, 2 Sept 2019, 9:05 PM
    Will there be support for Moodle Mobile App in a future release? Currently states 'plugin is not yet supported'. Also it would be great to have pre-set tags that can be limited and selected from a drop-down box. Thanks.
  • sam marshall
    Mon, 2 Sept 2019, 10:28 PM
    (Jason is away at the moment, I'm answering on his behalf.)

    At the Open University we are using the app but we decided (so far) not to reimplement all our custom activities in the mobile app, since it basically means having to code and maintain everything twice. We do have very good mobile support from the web interface (especially with our in-house theme) so users can access everything on their phone even if we don't have app support... So at the moment there are no current plans to implement mobile app support for OU blog, sorry.

    Not sure about the tags, I thought there was a way to do this.
  • Joshua Hull
    Tue, 8 Oct 2019, 8:17 PM
    Hi, I have a group of learners who heavily use the OU Blog and they cannot view their blog posts. Interestingly enough they can create new posts but when view them they get an error message: 'Sorry: you do not have access to view this page.' It's currently showing 'There are no visible posts in this blog.' however I can see the participation for a particular student which is showing as yesterday (07/10/2019). Can someone advise me on what to do please?
  • Dave Foord
    Thu, 5 Dec 2019, 6:31 PM
    Quick question - is it possible to turn off the permalink option within the OU Blog? It has just been brought to my attention that students can simply change the number at the end of the URL to see other learners posts, even if they blog is set to 'Separate Individual Blogs'
  • sam marshall
    Thu, 5 Dec 2019, 6:42 PM
    Dave - I thought we fixed that rather serious security problem quite a while ago (it's our issue #256430, May 22 2018 commit date). I just checked on our live system and we don't appear to have that problem. Please check you are using the latest version from our github? I just verified and that commit seems to be included from our MOODLE_34_STABLE branch onwards (i.e. it's also in MOODLE_35_STABLE, MOODLE_36_STABLE, as well as master). There is no way to turn off the permalink display but even if there were, it wouldn't be a secure way to fix that problem.
  • Marina Ola
    Tue, 2 June 2020, 8:20 PM
    Is the github version also fpr moodle 3.8?
    I have a feature request from one of my students: Would it be possible to add an export, so that one could export his/her own posts or all posts as a pdf or html? Would be great, they want to save it after leaving the school, because they are really proud of their work.
  • sam marshall
    Wed, 3 June 2020, 11:59 PM
    Hi Marina,

    Regarding the feature request, oublog does already support exports - you need to have the 'portfolio API' enabled in Moodle settings. Then it will let you export to any configured portfolios which can include a download option, I think this gives you a zip file containing HTML. Not certain this will do what your student wants but it might do.

    Re the github version, I have just updated it to the latest from our internal repository. There is now a MOODLE_38_STABLE branch; both this and the master branch should work on Moodle 3.8.
  • Lezard Valleth
    Wed, 20 Jan 2021, 1:05 AM
    Good day, congratulations for great plugin. I want to know if exist a version for Moodle 3.9 or if i can put to work fine the last version of oublog (Moodle 3.8) on Moodle 3.9. ?? Thx
  • Josh Zárate Soriano
    Fri, 3 Sept 2021, 3:08 AM
    Can you send notifications when a post is made or if they comment on a post?
  • Erica Bithell
    Wed, 25 May 2022, 12:28 AM
    The 3.11 r1 version is available here for direct download, but I can't locate it in your GitHub repository. The HEAD of the MOODLE_311_STABLE branch currently asserts version 3.9 r1 (2020091401). Is that expected, and if not would you be able to push 3.11 r1 to GitHub? Maybe I am missing something! I'm happy to raise an issue in the repository if that would be a better workflow for you. Thanks, Erica
  • sam marshall
    Wed, 25 May 2022, 9:07 PM
    Erica - Sorry the version number is wrong in version.php i.e. it says 3.9 even in the latest version for 3.11. It's safe to ignore this.
  • Jorge Cruz
    Fri, 17 Feb 2023, 10:47 PM
    Hello! Are there any plans to update the plugin and certify its compatibility with Moodle 4.0 and 4.1? This is a very good plugin, with several pedagogical possibilities. However, at my institution, it is a rule not to use plugins with a long time without updates (14 months in this case).
  • Jorge Cruz
    Mon, 20 Feb 2023, 5:03 AM
    Thanks for the great work for the community with this plugin. I write again to find out if there are any plans to develop an "OR Blog embed" version, like the "Forum discussion embed" plugin? To make it possible to insert the activity "OU Blog" in any part of the course, using Moodle's filters.
  • Jason Platts
    Mon, 20 Feb 2023, 4:29 PM
    Since having issues with this method of distribution we are mainly expecting folks to update via the github repository and not here. (This is because the Moodle plugin database insists that each new version uploaded must have a new version in the code, and given we rarely make major changes to this plugin we don't tend to increment the code version so hit issues)
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