Talk:Main page

Gracias

Welcome to Moodle Docs, the documentation for Moodle that accepts everyone's contributions.

Wonder if we could give a clue about the language in the next sentence by

"In this English (British/Austrailian) version, officially launched on 26 January 2006,.."

--Chris collman 07:22, 28 October 2008 (CDT)

I think I am changing my mind again about the format of this page. Admin and Developer documentation pages are very different than the teacher documentation page. I don't like the index idea below. I would like a complete overhaul of the teacher documentation page to match the other two formats. --Chris collman 23:06, 23 August 2006 (CDT)

Here is what I (--Chris collman) would suggest on this page, my version looks ugly but :)

Documentation

• About Moodle - not sure where ? Special:Categories ?
• Teacher document index
• | Administrator document index
• |Developer document index

Featured Pages for new and old

• Teachers - Teacher page, The Good Teacher and Groups FAQ link etc
• Administrators -Administrator page, Upgrading to Moodle 1.6 and LDAP authentication, link
• Student - | Student document index, Student_tutorials, link
• Developers: 1.6 theme upgrade and the XML database schema
• Everyone: Guidelines for contributors

Just my two cents worth to make it a little bit more friendly to new user. --Chris collman 00:34, 31 July 2006 (WST)

Feedback

You make it very difficult to get started with this thing! Now you would think the Main Page would be a good place to start. So on the main page I click "About Moodle", which takes me to a page, which in turn talks about PHP and MySQL, but still nothing really about how to get started. So I try clicking on "moodle with us". Now I see a list of which, "Using Moodle" seems like the most obvious choice. This whisks me off to another page where I click on "WELCOME! Are you new? Confused? Please start here!" Finally, I think, we're getting somewhere. Oops, no! Yet another page that tells me nothing. Instead of a detailed introduction, I am pointed to "documentation for Moodle", which I dutifuly click. Where am I now? Right back at the same Home Page I started from; only more frustrated and none the wiser.

Very interesting wiki site!... Thanx! --HarryRens 15 October 2005 23:42 (WST)

"that everyone may contribute to." is bad English. Better to write "to which everyone may contribute."--N Hansen 20:16, 17 April 2006 (WST)

I have to agree with the first writer who finds Moodle difficult to get started with; I followed much the same sequence of links as they did. It takes quite a bit of Moodling to find a simple description of what Moodle does and it philosophy. It's great to find the docs as a wiki though and to be able to comment like this. --Matthew Fairtlough 07:58, 16 October 2006 (CDT)

Discussions

There is very little discussion about MoodleDocs that I can find. I know there used to be a whole course at moodle.org dedicated to discussions about documentation, but that appears to have vanished. Is there a substitute for it? Where can I ask questions about this wiki? For example: How do I change my username from Delius to Gustav? --Gustav Delius 09:41, 26 January 2006 (WST)

Thanks for your comments. Please note that Martin Dougiamas will make an announcement about the documentation very soon. Re. changing your username, the easiest way to achieve this is to re-register with username Gustav then add a redirect #REDIRECT [[User:Gustav]] to your old user page. -- Helen Foster 17:59, 26 January 2006 (WST)

Thanks Helen. I have done that. My username looks more friendly now. --Gustav Delius 18:10, 26 January 2006 (WST)

Can we have a link to Student Tutorials under About Moodle? It seems that the main page only offers help for teachers and administrators, not students..

I wonder if someone were to delete the negative comments / weaknesses or Moodle (by intent or by accident) would that not be a disadvantage to allow these Edits? Forums would serve the purpose better no? [User:vkermani]

Its all muddled up. As the first user mentioned..I went round and round looking for how to install...(so many ways but no proper info) waste of a precious day. [User:vkermani]

Main page links

I'd strongly recommend adding the panel of links from About Moodle to the Main Page as well - they're incredibly important. I'm talking about the "Introduction | Background | Philosophy | License | Features | Release Notes | Future | Credits" links. --Dan

Hi Dan, thanks for your recommendation. The main page content definitely needs a re-think. -- Helen Foster 02:31, 27 January 2006 (WST)

I would like to see a reference to the Moodle Community and the collaborative aspects of learning about both Moodle as a product and as a process. I am not sure where would be the best place to anchor that page. --mburnet

Just a brief thought re: "featured pages" and "Teaching Don'ts" link--could we also add "Teaching Dos" so that the focus is balanced and a little more positive for newbies stumbling into this page for the first time? --Lesli Smith

Hi Lesli, as requested, Teaching Do's is now a featured page. Apologies for the delay. --Helen Foster 04:31, 1 April 2006 (WST)

Fantastic Stuff

Just wanted to pop in quickly and say a huge thankyou to Helen for this fantastic resource.

Your work here is looking fantastic. So much for adding your time and expertise to this community. I know what it is like to juggle many hats. If you ever need a hand you need only ask :)

Looking forward to seeing this integrated into 1.6.

Julian

I second that. Great job, Helen! :-) --Art Lader 01:56, 23 February 2006 (WST)

Thanks guys, though it's everyone's contributions that will make Moodle Docs into a great resource! --Helen Foster 03:57, 23 February 2006 (WST)

I'm a little late, but I also want to thank you so much for this wonderful resource.  :-D --Lesli Smith

_____________________

Add links to international versions (es,...)

Since https://docs.moodle.org is the main site for Moodle Documentation, there must be links to the different international versions, such as the Spanish one: https://docs.moodle.org/es . Maybe something similar to the Wikipedia home page: http://www.wikipedia.org . If not, just links to international versions in the main English page.

Hi David, you're very welcome to add inter-language links - please check the guidelines for contributors for more details. --Helen Foster 05:54, 18 February 2006 (WST)

As long as this page is locked I can not add link to Czech version. --David Mudrak 04:20, 10 July 2006 (WST)

Thanks David, I've just updated the list and added a link to the Czech documentation. --Helen Foster 15:35, 10 July 2006 (WST)

--Jose A. Heredia 08:05, 14 August 2006 (WST)

Hi, Helen, please add link to Slovak version. Thanks. Miroslav Fikar

Hi Miroslav, I've added the link, thanks. --Helen Foster 02:18, 12 September 2006 (CDT)

Several more international versions of this page exist:

ar:الصفحة الرئيسية be:Галоўная старонка el:Αρχική σελίδα eu:Azala is:Forsíða it:Pagina principale ko:대문 no:Hovedside

Erik Pedersen 05:30, 13 November 2007 (CST)

Headline text ??

Ver tambien la web donde podreis encontrar un Video tutorial en el cual se describe, se ve y se oye como instalar el PHP-NUKE, que aunque no es igual que el Moodle, si se instala y se configura de la misma manera, este video tutorial podeis encontrarlo en el siguiente vinculo [1]

Hi Jose, I don't think this belongs in the english page. --Chris collman 21:54, 23 August 2006 (CDT)

Upload Flash

Is it possible to upload Flash files? I tried to do so via the same interface we use for uploading images, but had no luck. --Art Lader 19:10, 22 February 2006 (WST)

Hi Art, sorry it's not possible to upload Flash files for security reasons. Please could you explain what you would like to do, and perhaps send me a sample file, then I'll investigate alternative options. --Helen Foster 03:53, 23 February 2006 (WST)

That is not a probelm, Helen. I have upgraded to SnagIt 8.0 and can add tooltips to screen captures. Just wanted to see if that improved the documentation. No big deal, though. --Art Lader 06:28, 23 February 2006 (WST)

Image on the front page

Can we have a nice image somewhere on the front page, something documenty like books maybe? Just to make the home page stand out a little from the subpages. Martin Dougiamas 22:26, 14 April 2006 (WST)

How about some free stock photography? I tend to use http://www.sxc.hu/ --Darren Smith 23:00, 14 April 2006 (WST)

Hi, let's leave the choice of images to style expert Urs Hunkler --Helen Foster 23:36, 17 April 2006 (WST)

Amazing!

You guys never cease to amaze me.

Disorienting

When I first came to this page, I had no idea that I was looking at a wiki! It would be great to go ahead and put the word 'wiki' somewhere on the page, and maybe on pages linking to this one, so that people know what they're getting into. I expected this page to be the source for official documentation, and so I was very disappointed to click 'Teacher Documentation' and get little more than a quick-start guide. Inside the 'Teacher Documentation' page, though, there is a link to a page which has PDF's of what I would personally call documentation. I could be projecting, but I think others also expect 'documents' rather than 'wikis' when looking for 'documentation'.

The above comment caused me to really look at the Teacher Documentation page, and edit it more than once. I would like to see the Teacher link on the left of this page go to a page that looked similar to the Administrator or Developer link pages. This would help new and old users find things in MoodleDocs quicker. I thank the above author for the quick start comment which encouraged me to make some changes in the Teacher Documentation page until we make a new task orientated page for teachers.

I disagree about the wiki comment. The point is not that it is a wiki, the point is that the document did not meet above author's expectations. I am in mild agreement on that point. With good humor I note: when I first looked at MoodleDocs, "wiki" would be an absolutely meaningless word to me and no help at all. Hey, I've been a new user since C/PM days. :)--Chris collman 22:58, 23 August 2006 (CDT)

need faq link

can we please have a link to the faq's from the main page? Makes no sense not to!

https://docs.moodle.org/en/FAQ

also would like to see a link for STUDENT as there is with teacher and admin and so on- after all what is all this about??D.I. von Briesen 14:51, 27 June 2007 (CDT)

i see

Wow this completely takes down what I wanted to develope... Maybe I'll do it anyway for fun.

--Yogesh Kulkarni 00:29, 17 May 2007 (CDT)

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Nice to see and find my name here.

Its gr8. --Yogesh Kulkarni 07:17, 21 June 2007 (CDT)

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ending a sentence in "to"

There is absolutely nothing wrong with ending a sentence with a preposition, like "to." The idea that that is wrong came from some misguided grammarians in the beginning of the twentieth century. They felt that Latin was a perfect language, and so they artificially tried to adopt some of its rules; like don't end a sentence with a preposition, or don't split an infinitive. However, English is a Germanic language, not a Romance language. It's perfectly natural in English to casually insert an adverb in the middle of an infinitive, or to end a sentence with a preposition.

Hi Eric, I appreciate your point. In matters of styles, I try not to say things are wrong. As you point out, it is a "casual" form. On the opening page that is read by many "non-native speakers" of an English dialect, I thought it would be better not to end the sentence in to. (attempt at akward humor there :)

Glad to find another person with strong opinions about those Romance logical perfectionists. My viewpoint on the use of "to" has not been accepted by the people who control the "Main page". --Chris collman 04:50, 14 November 2007 (CST)

Hooray 1.9

I think "including the documentation of new features in Moodle 1.9" that jumps to the category index page is a bit much. Perhaps a link to the Release_Notes#Moodle_1.9 section in the release notes. Or, placing a release notes section link at the top of the category index would be an alternative. A new page to chat up just 1.9 seems overkill. Just a thought--Chris collman 08:27, 6 March 2008 (CST)

Underlined links?

Maybe this was discussed previously, but: in my opinion the text would be easier to read if the links were not underlined, but only "hover-underlined" as in Wikipedia. --Samuli Karevaara 00:23, 9 September 2008 (CDT)

Either Eloy is really quick, or I am missing something? I am using Firefox 3. and looked at the link I put in the section above this one. It is in blue. Then when my mouse goes over it it underlines and presents a title (alternative text). Could be browser based, one of those CSS things. Best --Chris collman 17:21, 10 September 2008 (CDT)

Now it's hover-underlined for me in Firefox too. Chrome still shows it as "always-underlined". But it's not just the browser issue, as Finnish Moodle Docs works as hover-underlined in Chrome too, plus I think I did try with several browsers. Anyhoo, probably the hover-based thing is the target, and most likely that setting will take place any hour now :-) i was also wondering if it's a user profile setting somewhere. --Samuli Karevaara 21:55, 10 September 2008 (CDT)

Well, I must confess I have done nothing. Working "hover-underlined" here under FF and Safari since ages ago. No user preference about that AFAIK. Ciao :-) Eloy Lafuente (stronk7) 15:42, 14 September 2008 (CDT)

BTW, just noticed that it does change from hover to static underline when I log in. Not logged in = fine, logged in = the static underlining. Investigating... --Samuli Karevaara 04:42, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

Ah, just found one new setting ("Underline links") under User preferences->Misc ! It allows "never", "always" and "browser default". Perhaps is it? --Eloy Lafuente (stronk7) 05:02, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

Sweet! Thanks! That was it. I wonder how come I didn't stumble upon it on my adventures in the preferencesland, thanks again! --Samuli Karevaara 23:38, 20 September 2008 (CDT)

noinclude

It looks to me like noinclude is not working on this wiki, e.g., for the Template:About Moodle, there are some categories. These should not be shown on pages on which the template is substituted or transcluded. They are for categorising the template itself. But isn't working because the categories are being used on all pages which use the template (which then adds a lot of krud into the category listings). Beyond this, I'm not sure how to actually get working....ah, after a bit more reading ... it looks like this wiki is currently running v1.1 and noinclude is available for v1.6 onwards in the core code. Special:Version and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Noinclude#Noinclude.2C_includeonly.2C_and_onlyinclude James Neill 17:42, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

Looking at the Template:About Moodle more closely it seems that the original intention was to categorise pages using this template. Hmmmm... that's a separate issue. I would suggest not a great idea for category organisation (there are better ways IMHO). But the point here is a technical one - the template does currently use noinclude and it is not working probably because of the MW version being used. James Neill 17:49, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

Actually, I must have had crossed-eyes on several fronts here. noinclude is working OK and the version of MW running is very up to date. :). So, ignore this. James Neill 05:04, 18 September 2008 (CDT)

Timestamps

Something is not right with timestamping. I have adjusted in my preferences (Date and Time - Fill in from browser) and should have an adjustment being applied, but that doesn't seem to be happening. James Neill 17:44, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

Community Portal

Something like a community portal could possibly for beneficial for gathering together general discussion about MoodleDocs rather than using the main page talk which should really be about the main page itself IMHO. Admins? James Neill 18:15, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

Moodle has the advantage that, unlike Wikipedia, we don't just have a wiki to play with. We also have a full Moodle site, so for discussions, we can use a discussion forum: Moodle documentation forum.--Tim Hunt 21:01, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

Hi Tim, I didn't know about that forum (there so many on moodle.org !!!), but have added it now to my feed reader. The main problem I see with this as a solution, however, is that one has to login to see or participate e.g., most of my colleagues will not be creating accounts on moodle.org let alone subscribing to very busy forums. However, they may well be clicking on little help icons in their Moodle installation, and landing on this wiki. Some of them may want to offer general feedback or have questions, etc. about the documentation. What do you think? What do others think? James Neill 22:48, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

Ah, that's right... I'm having problems reading Moodle.org forum RSS feeds using Thunderbird - any ideas? James Neill 03:33, 18 September 2008 (CDT)

Revamping the front page

I'd really like to see this page split into a table with 4 cells, one each for About, Teacher, Administrator and Developer. Each cell would have a heading, perhaps an image, and a few "top" links under each one.

Above all that, a big Moodle Docs. --Martin Dougiamas 00:48, 8 January 2009 (CST)

For now see Main Page/draft1 although I think Helen or Martin or somebodyelse should lay this out :-) --Chris collman 06:57, 8 January 2009 (CST)

Martin and Chris, thanks for your suggestions. I've created a tracker issue for it - MDLSITE-665. --Helen Foster 03:30, 19 February 2009 (CST)

No Sandbox!

At first sight, a sandbox seems to be a good idea for encouraging new contributors, but after reading http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/Sandbox I can understand the reasoning why they consider it a Wiki Adoption Anti-Pattern: First they tell you it's "easy" and then you have to play in the sandbox before they let you touch the real stuff... Therefore I would suggest dropping the sandbox. --Frank Ralf 17:46, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. Where do we tell people they 'have to play in the sandbox'? Some people are nervous about this sort of thing, and like a safe place to experiment. That is the original rationale for sandboxes, and it still seems valid to me.--Tim Hunt 00:28, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, Tim. Perhaps we can have the cake and eat it? We could insert a statement like this: "Feel free to edit these pages if you can make the instructions more clear (or post your ideas on the discussion pages.) Changes are easily reverted on a wiki, so don't worry about getting something wrong. - If you would like to practice first, you can use our Sandbox." - Remember the Wikipedia motto "Be bold!" --Frank Ralf 07:39, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but that is massively longer than what we have already, which is elegantly brief, without being overly brusque.--Tim Hunt 08:37, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I did some quick empirical research. If you follow the "contribute" links in the Sandbox History you will see that nearly none of the people who used the sandbox contributed anywhere else (I only checked the first page's 50). IMO that proves two things:

1. People who use the sandbox contribute seldom to other pages
2. People who contribute don't need the sandbox

So the question remains, whether the sandbox prevents people from contributing to Moodle Docs? (I will move this discussion to the forum: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=120141) --Frank Ralf 09:20, 31 March 2009 (UTC)