Active Forums block

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Features

• Active Forums Block allows users to view forum activity in a tag cloud style.
• The most active discussions will be displayed bold and large while less active discussions are less prominent.
• Help users to differentiate and track the discussion activity over a certain period of time.
• Show all discussion forums activity but News forums are excluded by default

Links

• Forum Discussion for this block
• Link to Forum Module
• Link to Contributed modules and plugins Forum
• Block Code Download
• Moodle Modules Posting (Please add comments here)
• Bug Tracker Page for Active Forums(Please report bug here, Thanks)
• CVS Repository

Installing

This Active Forums block is installed like other blocks (See: How to install a block)

Once the Active Forums Block installed, by using it in the course as the following:

1. Turn editing on
2. Create any forum discussion posts as normal
3. Add the Active Forums Block to the course page to add a block)
4. Move the Active Forums Block into any position you like it to have, e.g top-left (click the arrows below the block title)
5. Click the Configuration Icon on the block below the title
6. Give your Active Forums Block a title you could want (By default is "Active Forums")
7. Select how many days for the block to check the forum post (default is "7" days)
8. Select forum discussion post name length before truncation (default is "20")
9. Select Maximum forum discussion want to show in this block (default is "10" posts)
10. At last, choose to show the "News Forums" or not in this block (default is "No")
11. Save Changes

The Active Forums Block should show the result in tag cloud according how active the forum discussion posts as you set in the configuration. If there no any active forum discussion in the selected range, the message "No active forums" will be shown in the block.

Configuration

It is possible to achieve the following configurations:

• Block instance title: There can be multiple instances of the Active Forums block. You may want to show a different time period for active forum discussions in same course.
• Period checked (days): This option lets a teacher set different time frames for forum activity in a course.
• Maximum name length before truncation: This option constrains the discussion title to a maximum length, before it is truncated and displayed in the block. With this, a teacher can allow discussion titles to be shown at full length or they can shorten the titles to reduce space occupied by the tag cloud.
• Maximum discussions in tag cloud: In periods of high activity, there may be many active forums. A teacher can restrict the number of discussions displayed to reduce the space occupied by the discussion tag cloud.
• Include News forums: News forums are used to make announcements, so students will not be able to be active in them. By default, therefore, these are not shown among active forums.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to:

• Nadav Kavalerchik for contributing a Hebrew translation
• Joachim Vogelgesang for contributing a German translation
• Michael de Raadt