Roles and permissions

Custom Role Permissions - Site Menu Navigation

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 03:27:07 GMT

by Ash Shenker.

Hi there,

I'm looking to create a new user role in which I can edit the permission to show only certain menu items, including custom items. Has anyone been able to achieve this or know how I could set this up?

Thanks,
Ash

Same HTML renders differently for students vs instructors and layout stripped for students

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:48:20 GMT

by Walid Alieldin.

Hi everyone,

I have a Page in a course where I paste custom HTML. The content uses:

<details> / <summary> for collapsible (show/hide) sections
Flexbox and Grid for layout
border-radius and other inline styles

What happens

Instructor/teacher view: The page renders as intended: collapsible sections work, two‑column layout is correct, styling is preserved.
Student view: Moodle appears to strip or alter the HTML so that:
- <details> and <summary> are removed – “About this Program”, “Start Here”, etc. no longer collapse; the summary text appears as plain text and the structure is broken.
- Flex/Grid is stripped – e.g. display: flex, flex: 1 1 260px, display: grid, grid-template-columns, gap, so side‑by‑side layouts break.
- border-radius (and possibly other properties) are removed from inline styles.

So students lose both the show/hide behaviour and the intended layout, even though the same HTML is stored for everyone.

What I’ve attached

I’ve attached two files that show exactly how the same source content is rendered in the browser for each role:

atp_instructor_html.txt– HTML as rendered for an instructor (full structure: <details>, <summary>, flex layout, etc.).
atp_student_html.txt– HTML as rendered for a student (<details>/<summary> was removed, no flex/grid on the relevant divs, the heading etc. appears as plain text).

Comparing these two files makes the difference very clear.

Conclusion

I must keep the show/hide (collapse/expand) behaviour for students. I’m looking for the recommended way to either:

Have this content rendered the same for students as for instructors (so <details>/<summary> and the layout are preserved), or
Configure Moodle (e.g. filters, HTML Purifier, trusted content / trusttext) so that this content is not stripped when viewed by students.

I’ve seen references to “Trust content” / trusttext and HTML Purifier possibly stripping certain tags and CSS. I haven’t found a clear path in our admin menus to allow this HTML for students. I have full admin access to the front-end.

Moodle version: Moodle 4.5+ (Build: 20241108)
Thanks in advance for any pointers or links to docs/tracker issues.

Here is how the instructor version behaves:

Here is how the students' version rendered:

How to allow students to see each others interests?

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 19:59:36 GMT

by Visvanath Ratnaweera.

This must be a FAQ. Appreciate all pointers.

We noticed that when a student look at other student's profile inside a course (mysite/user/view.php?id=USERID&course=COURSEID) he can't see that person's interests. Only the site profile (mysite/user/profile.php?id=USERID) shows the interests.

That is not what we want. We want the course profile too to show the interests. Looked for a switch, but didn't find. Found the following doc pages, they don't look inviting. I don't want to create a new role just for this. What have we overseen?

Moodle 4.5

Teachers can't see hidden courses despite correct permissions

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 08:36:20 GMT

by heli g.

We experienced a similar issue restoring a 4.1 course backup to a 4.5 site. The original 4.1 course had role overrides for Non-editing teachers one of which prohibited viewing hidden courses. On restore in the 4.5 course, Teachers could no longer view the course as the role overrides had moved from the Non-editing teacher role to the Teacher role.

Fortunately for us we do not have many courses with role overrides - but this is a concern and not something we have experienced before. For us the permissions issue was in the course context (Course > Participants > Permissions).

I did not do the restore so I don't know if any issues were encountered during the process. Another course with Non-editing teacher overrides does not have the same issue. Most odd.... I hope this helps if anyone else encounters this.

Broken permissions or I'm too stupid (or both)

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 15:20:37 GMT

by Sébastien Petit.

Hello there,

I find it very difficult to attribute some permissions to my main user on my Moodle site.

I get this error when trying to go the the messaging preferences:

Sorry, but you do not currently have permissions to do that (Edit own user messaging profile).

Yet, when checking my permission, everything seems fine to me (see attached screenshot): Authenticated User in the System context should have "moodle/user:editownmessageprofile" permission enabled (and also "editownprofile" I guess - but it's not the case...

What am I missing?? I can't for the life of me see what is wrong.

Any help appreciated.