Roadmap

This roadmap collects the best information about upcoming features in Moodle. It is not 100% certain - features may change according to available funding and developers.

Version 2.0

Moodle 2.0, our biggest release ever, is coming together after two years of development. It contains a huge number of core changes to the platform, most of which are designed to give 3rd party developers more flexibility, scalability and safety.

The timetable is designed to deliver Moodle 2.0 in time for the new school year in the northern hemisphere and currently looks like this:

1. 1 March 2010: Moodle 2.0 Beta release
2. March, April, May, June: intensive beta testing and bug fixing (freeze on new features)
3. 1 July 2010: Moodle 2.0 production release

You can track our current progress in detail on the Moodle 2.0 Planning document. Please remember that this document is frequently updated and details can change a lot!

Draft release notes at Moodle 2.0 release notes. Please add notable items while they are fresh in your mind. The notes will be edited before the final release.

System requirements

Since Moodle 2.0 is such a major release, we are allowing ourselves some increases in the requirements. This allows developers to write cleaner code using the more recent features of PHP, and will also improve user experience.

• PHP 5.2.8 is now the minimum version supported. (We are aware that several important linux distros are still shipping earlier versions like 5.2.6, but we need at least version 5.2.x for the new File API, and there are bugs in 5.2.7 and earlier that we could not work around.)
• Databases should be one of the following:
  • MySQL 5.0.25 or later (InnoDB storage engine highly recommended)
  • PostgreSQL 8.3 or later
  • Oracle 10.2 or later
  • MS SQL 2005 or later
• When upgrading to Moodle 2.0, you must have Moodle 1.9 or later. if you are using an earlier version of Moodle (eg 1.8.x) then you need to upgrade to Moodle 1.9.x first.

New Community features

• Community hub interfaces - Moodle.com

Makes it easy for users to find and navigate other systems and external Moodle repositories, leveraging the Moodle Network in various ways.

Overall appearance

• New Blocks implementation - Moodle.com

Blocks and page layouts are now implemented consistently and predictably on every page in Moodle, and can even be docked like menus.

• Output renderers - Moodle.com

The engines that produce HTML and JS code have been completely re-written, so that Moodle's output is more consistent and efficient. Themers can now also modify any of the output if they choose to, without touching core code.

• Themes rewrite - Moodle.com

The structure and design of themes has been rewritten for efficiency and flexibility. Unfortunately this means all themes need to be re-written for Moodle 2.0. To help you get started, Moodle 2.0 will ship with 20 brand-new standard themes designed to make Moodle look much nicer than ever before.

• Navigation improvements - Moodle.com

Navigation is now implemented consistently in the navbar and in a Navigation block on every page. All settings are now always available in a settings block on every page. Themes can completely rewrite navigation if they require.

• HTML editor 2.0 - Moodle.com

Replaces our ageing HTMLarea with a new one that works on more browsers, enforces XHTML strict and better integrates with the new File API

• General usability review - Moodle.com and others

We've been attacking many of the most popular issues from the Moodle Tracker

File handling improvements

These three are separate but very complementary.

• File API - Moodle.com

maintains an internal repository of files and governs access to them.

• Repository API - Moodle.com

allows users to browse external repositories using a filepicker and select files to bring into Moodle (copy or link)

• Portfolio API - Moodle.com

allows Moodle content to be captured and pushed out to external repositories.

Course organisation

• Conditional activities - Open University (Sam Marshall)

Allowing dependencies and forced paths through activities. That is, "You can't do this activity until that activity is completed".

• Course completion - Catalyst

Let teachers to specify conditions that define when a student has completed a course. Keep a record of which users have completed each course.

• Progress tracking (also known as competency tracking) - Catalyst

Let users have learning plans listing which outcomes or courses should attempt next, based on which courses they have already completed.

Changes to activity modules

• Wiki 2.0 - DFWikiteam-UPC

To be cleaned up and included as a core module.

• Quiz module and question bank
  • Quiz report enhancements - Jamie Pratt, contracted by The Open University

    Major improvements to the quiz reports, especially regrading and item analysis.

  • Quiz navigation improvements for students - Tim Hunt, The Open University
  • Flagging questions during a quiz attempt - Tim Hunt, moodle.com.
  • Quiz editing interface improvements - Olli Savolainen, Finnish Summer Code project.
  • MDL-8648 Essay questions can now be randomised by random questions. Note that this change is not backwards compatible if you upgrade a Moodle 1.9 site with random questions that pick from categories containing a mixture of essay and non-essay questions. The behaviour of some quizzes will change. - Tim Hunt, moodle.com.
  • Question tagging and improved searching in the question bank - Tim Hunt, moodle.com.
  • Administration page for question types - Tim Hunt, moodle.com.
  • Regular Expression question type added to the official Moodle distribution - Joseph Rézeau.

• Workshop 2.0 - David Mudrak, moodle.com

• Lesson module
  • Converted to use Moodle forms for consistency
  • Refactored the code to make it maintainable

Administrative improvements

• Enrolments improvements including groups synchronisation - moodle.com (skodak)

Several major improvements related to guest access, course enrolments, metacourses and groups (aka global groups, site-wide groups etc)

• Roles administration interface improvements - Tim Hunt, moodle.com and others.

• Standard Web Services Layer - UPC and moodle.com

Standard set of core API functions made available via SOAP and XML-RPC

• Development:Site-wide groups - Moodle.com

Site wide groups are a number one request

• Admin report plugins can choose where in the admin tree they get added - Tim Hunt, moodle.com.

Other major components

• Backup 2.0 - Moodle.com

New backup that actually works on large courses etc and is faster. Old backup will be retained as a separate directory to import old backups.

• Development:Gradebook_improvements - Moodle.com

Implement a number of usability improvements for the Gradebook (and port back to 1.9 as well)

• Blog 2.0 - Moodle.com

Add commenting to blogs (MDL-8776), as well as support for external blogs

• Messaging 2.0 - Moodle.com

Refactor messaging to use plugins for input and output, controlled by users

• Commenting API - Moodle.com

Commenting all over Moodle has now been refactored into one central system. And yes, you can now comment on blogs.

• Secure RSS feeds - Moodle.com

Obscure RSS feed URLs using private keys, controlled by users.

• IMS Common Cartridge - UVCMS (Moodle Partner) and Moodle.com

IMS CC import

• More tagging

Tagging of courses, activities and other things (MDL-13404)

Database control

• DB layer 2.0 - Moodle.com

MDL-14679 Database access is to be refactored so that: we can use prepared statements everywhere for increased security and some performance, we put datalib functions in a class to allow better unit tests (mock db), and remove the need for slashes in userspace. This will cause breakage for 3rd party modules (but fixing them won't be too hard).

• Ancient (pre 1.7) DB install/upgrade system removed - Moodle.com

The deprecated system for installing or upgrading database entries used in Moodle < 1.7 will be completely removed, while supporting only the new XML based database scheme introduced in 1.7.

See also

• Release Notes