MoodleDocs - User contributions [en]

Development:Places to search for lang strings

2008-12-14T20:17:16Z

Howardsmiller: /* Defining the search path(s) */

Moodle has a mechanism that allows a number of places to be searched (in order) to find language strings or help files. This enables language strings and help to be packaged with optional plugins and avoids the step of having to copy the language files over to the language directory when a plugin is installed. This page provides some information about this mechanism which might be useful to plugin developers or those wishing to add a completely new pluggable feature to moodle.

This page covers both how to set up (core) Moodle to support a new plugabble resource and how to incorporate language elements in a plugin. Plugin writers really only need to read the last bit.

== Basic concepts ==

When it is required to lookup a string or point to a help file, two basic items of information are required. The first is the name of the string (or the help filename) and the name of the module in which it can be found. For example, '''get_string('editingquiz','quiz')''' returns "Editing Quiz" in the current language; a call to '''help.php?module=label&file=mods.html''' displays the help for a label, again in the current language.

Plugin support extends this by defining a new format for the module name so that certain resources can both exist in core, the core distribution (and language packs) and be installed as options. The module name becomes ''type''_''plugin'', where ''type'' is a generic name common to the plugin type and ''plugin'' is the name of the individual item. To illustrate this, here is an example. Blocks are a pluggable resource - the ''type'' name is '''block_''' and the ''plugin'' name is the name of the individual block. Some examples of block module names are '''block_search''' (''type'' is '''block_''' and ''plugin'' is '''search''') and '''block_online_users''' (''type'' is '''block_''' and ''plugin'' is '''online_users''').

It is important to grasp that every block is now a discrete module type. This applies to all pluggable resources, so every, e.g., questiontype, authentication plugin, grade report is a separate module and will have its own language file and it's own directory for its help files. Not all plugin types define both language strings and help files but here is an example of what you might find for a pluggable resource that is included in core:

Description: questiontype plugin for multichoice
Module name: qtype_multichoice
Language strings (English): lang/en_utf8/qtype_multichoice.php
Help files directory (English): lang/help/qtype_multichoice/

All of the above must be in place for pluggable language and help strings to be a possibility for optional plugins.

NOTE: Module names cannot have numbers in them (only A-Z, a-z and underscore). This might be an issue to consider if you are moving from an existing architecture.

== Defining the search path(s) ==

The next step is to define the search locations for the plugin. This is only needed to define where the optional plugins will be installed, the standard help locations will be searched automatically. This is done by adding an entry to the array defined in the function '''places_to_search_for_lang_strings''' located in '''lib/moodlelib.php'''. This should be obvious from viewing the code but don't forget to include the underscore!

Viewing this function will also show you what Moodle elements currently support language string searching. This varies somewhat from version to version of Moodle as new locations are added.

== Adding language support to a plugin ==

If you are a plugin writer and you didn't read the first part of this you just need to be aware that your plugin name needs to start with the generic type for the plugin. For example all questiontype plugins '''must''' be prefixed '''qtype_''', all authentication plugins '''auth_'''. Moodle uses this prefix to identify the language search path.

All that remains is now to add the language support to the optional plugin(s). This is done by creating a '''lang''' subdirectory in the plugin directory. The structure of the '''lang''' directory is then the same as the "main" language directory with one exception - the help directory name should '''not''' have the ''type_'' part of the module name (this might be a bug really!). Example...

Description: Drag & Drop optional question type
Module type: qtype_
Module name: qtype_dragdrop
Language file location (English): contrib/plugins/question/type/dragdrop/lang/en_utf8/qtype_dragdrop.php
Help file directory (English): contrib/plugins/question/type/dragdrop/lang/en_utf8/help/dragdrop/

(Note: the help file directory is called '''dragdrop''' in the plugin. Compare this with the multichoice question type in core where the help folder is '''qtype_multichoice''')

[[Category:Developer]]
[[Category:Language]]

Moodle 1.9 release notes

2008-12-14T11:48:03Z

Howardsmiller: /* Headline features */

== Moodle 1.9 ==
Release date: 3rd March 2008

Here is [http://tracker.moodle.org/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=10011&styleName=Html&version=10190 the full list of fixed issues in 1.9].

===Headline features===

* [[Gradebook]] - Moodle.com (funded by Open University)
:: Completely rewritten from scratch for speed and flexibility. The new gradebook consists of plugins for reports, imports and exports. There are a number of standard reports which are useful for graders, students etc. The grader report allows you to treat the gradebook much more like a spreadsheet with manual editing, calculations, aggregations, weighting, locking, hiding, textual notes and so on.
* [[Outcomes]] - Moodle.com
:: You can also now develop a list of expected outcomes (competencies) and connect these to courses and activities. You can even grade against multiple outcomes at once (ie Rubrics).
* [[Development:Events|Events API]] - Moodle.com
::The new Events API provides a way for any code to "hook" into events in a clean, loosely coupled way. A lot of events in Moodle (such as adding a user or a course) now trigger events that developers can hook into.
* Scalability and performance improvements - Catalyst IT Ltd and Moodle.com
::A complete overhaul of the [[Roles]] implementation for correctness and scalability. Large sites with thousands of courses and users now load quickly and behave well under heavy traffic, thanks to reworked code for Roles. Additional boost for sites using PHP pre-compilers and significant improvements in the database access code for all databases. Many other parts of Moodle have been optimised to cope better with large numbers of courses and students. Overall performance is very noticeably increased.
* [[Mahoodle|Moodle Network - Mahara Interoperability]] - Catalyst IT Ltd
::Moodle 1.9 and [http://www.mahara.org/ Mahara E-porfolio v0.9] now do transparent Single Sign On - one to one, one to many, many to many. Students can maintain their personal [[E-portfolio|E-portfolios]] in Mahara.
* [[Tags]] - Luiz Cruz ([[Student_projects/Social_Networking_features|GSOC Social Networking project]]) and Mathieu Petit-Clair (Moodle.com)
:: Allows users to describe their own interests in terms of tags, which creates interest pages around those tags, bringing information together from a variety of sources (Blogs, Flickr, Youtube etc)
* [[Question_Engine_Changes_in_Moodle_1.9|Improved question bank]] - Jamie Pratt funded by [http://www.fun.ac.jp/en/ Future University Hakodate].
::Allows questions to be shared by the whole site, a course category, a single course, or be kept private to a single module. More control over who can do what to each question. Improved file management for files linked to by questions. WARNING: previously published question categories upgraded from prior releases will no longer be editable until a suitable role is created and users assigned. For further details see [[How to let teachers share questions between courses]]
* [[Notes]] - Andrei Bautu ([[Student projects/User Management Improvements|GSOC User Management Improvements project]])
:: Detailed notes can be kept about individual users (for example teachers might want to keep and share notes about students in their class).
* [[Bulk user actions]] - Andrei Bautu ([[Student projects/User Management Improvements|GSOC User Management Improvements project]]), Moodle.com
::Administrators can perform bulk user actions, such as the mass deletion of user accounts. Extended features in the bulk user upload script to allow generation of user fields based on templates.
* [[Custom corners theme]] - Urs Hunkler
:: Beautiful and curvy (in all browsers).
* KSES related XSS security vulnerability fixed

===Other major improvements===

* [[Groups]] and [[Groupings]] - UPLGC, Catalyst Ltd, Moodle.com
:: New support for groupings (groups of groups) which was added briefly and then removed from 1.8.x. Activities and resources may be assigned to particular groupings.
* [[NTLM authentication|Active Directory NTLM Single Sign On]] - Catalyst Ltd
:: Integrated a reworked version of the NTLM Single Sign On, originally by Dan Marsden.
* New theme settings
** Category themes - can now set the theme for a category which will apply to all sub-categories and courses
** Theme order - new setting ''$CFG->themeorder'' which sets the priority of the themes from highest to lowest.
* Ability to control block visibility with roles
** A new [[Capabilities/moodle/block:view|moodle/block:view]] capability has been added which allows control of who can view blocks from the roles system. This allows certain blocks to be hidden from the guest user, for example. See [[Block_permissions|Hiding blocks from certain users]].
* Oracle Support - Catalyst Ltd, USQ
:: Significant enhancements in Oracle support, scalability and performance
* Numerous admin settings fixes and improvements - Moodle.com
** Ability to [[Upload user pictures|mass import/upload user profile images]]. See MDL-11752 for details.
* More robust block and module uninstalling - Moodle.com
* cURL is used for component downloading, SOCKS5 proxies and user/password proxy authentication supported, fopen() not used anymore
* Completed course reset implementation - Shamim Rezaei, Moodle.com
* Rewritten IP lookup - for lookup used either NetGeo server or local GeoIP database, visualized with static world image or Google Maps - Moodle.com
* Terms used for each role can be redefined in each course (like before Moodle 1.7)
* Installer improvement - when upgrading Moodle, a page is displayed showing all modules installed on the site and highlighting any non-compatible contrib modules - Moodle.com
* Statistics performance improvements and bugfixing - Moodle.com
* [[Translation|Language translation tool]] improvements - ability to translate non-standard modules, GUI changes, capabilities support

===Module improvements===

* Quiz/Question improvements:
** Improved question bank, as above.
** Quizzes now listed on the MyMoodle page. (Implemented by Stephen Bourget and Tim Hunt.)
** A quiz can now [[Quiz submission email notification|send emails when an attempt is finished]] - a confirmation to the student, a notification to all teachers, or both. (Implemented by Graham Miller of [http://www.webenhanced.com.au/ Web Enhanced Solutions] and Tim Hunt.)
** Third party question types can now implement Moodle XML and other import and export format. (Implemented by Howard Miller.)
** Gift Import/Export format can now handle Essay and Description question types.
** Some slight improvements to quiz layout. See MDL-10374 for details. Theme designers please note.
** Multiple choice questions now show the feedback for all the options to students on the review page after the attempt is over.
* Forum improvements:
** Major performance improvements in cron and user interface - Moodle.com
** Ability to select aggregation type (i.e. sum, max, min, average, or count) for forum ratings. See MDL-3942 for details.

===New language packs===

Five new language packs (see [[Translation credits]] for additional details) and improvements in many other languages.
* Armenian - Andranik Markosyan
* Latin - Nicholas Sinnott-Armstrong (GHOP project)
* Macedonian - Dimitar Talevsk and his team
* Mongolian - B.Batpurev, I.Mendbayar, G.Khadbaatar, Munkhzul, O.Amartuvshin, Batbayar, B.Uugangerel
* Tamil Sri Lanka - M A Kaleelur Rahuma

===Upgrading issues===

If upgrading from 1.6 or later, you must have converted your site to Unicode. See [[Upgrading to Moodle 1.9]] for further information.

== Moodle 1.9.1 ==
{{:Moodle 1.9.1 release notes}}

== Moodle 1.9.2 ==
{{:Moodle 1.9.2 release notes}}

== Moodle 1.9.3 ==
{{:Moodle 1.9.3 release notes}}

[[Category:Release notes]]
[[Category:Moodle 1.9]]

Question categories

2008-11-25T06:34:01Z

Howardsmiller: /* Question Categories upgraded from versions prior to 1.9 */

{{Template:Questions}}
==What are question categories?==

Creating question categories and sub categories is a good practice. It is better than keeping all your questions in one big list in the quiz module. Each category must have a name and you can include a short description of the category. You can create a ''category hierarchy'' - you can specify a parent category for each category or 'Top' for parent if the category has no parent. This enables you to seperate categories into sub categories and sub categories into sub sub categories etc. indefinitely. Categories and sub categories etc are very powerful in combination with random questions which can select either from one category or can select questions randomly from a category or any of it's sub categories.

==Question Sharing==

===From Moodle 1.9===
{{Moodle 1.9}}

Question sharing changed from Moodle 1.9. From Moodle 1.9 you can share questions in several different contexts. Sharing categories in contexts 'Core System' or course contexts has a similar effect to publishing or not publishing a category. See the [[Question contexts]] page for more info.

By default a course teacher cannot see or use any Question context above the course level from Moodle 1.9. See [[Question Engine Changes in Moodle 1.9#Access_to_question_categories_shared_outside_a_course]] for more info and how you can allow selected course teachers to see and use question contexts above the course level.

==== Question Categories upgraded from versions prior to 1.9 ====

If you have question categories that have been upgraded from versions of Moodle from before 1.9, there are a few points to note:
* If the Question Category was ''not'' published, it will become a Course Question Category and will, effectively, function as before.
* If the Question Category was published, it will be changed to a Site Question Category, and will (by default) be inaccessible to teachers - including those that created it. See See [[Question Engine Changes in Moodle 1.9#Access_to_question_categories_shared_outside_a_course]] for info on making this accessible or, if the questions are not used in another course, the administrator can move it to the appropriate Course.
* Regardless of this, the actual quizzes will continue to work as before. However, questions in previously published Categories will cease to be editable (even by their creators). The exception to this is questions containing pictures - the links to the pictures will be broken as they remain in the Course Files (this was never supported).

===Before Moodle 1.9===

Each category can also be "published", which means that the category (and all questions in it) will be available to all courses in the Moodle site. Other courses and teachers can use your questions in their quizzes. (There is a potential problem however if other courses try to use a question with an image: students will not be able to see the image unless they are also enrolled in the course that owns the question category. Also if using a question from a published category you should be aware of the fact that the teacher in the course owning the category could change or delete the question without your knowledge. If you don't want this it might be better to create or import a local copy of the question in your own course.)

==Category Set Up and Management From Moodle 1.9==
{{Moodle 1.9}}

There have been some changes in the UI for category management from Moodle 1.9. If you are not using Moodle 1.9 or above see instructions below [[#Category_set-up_before_Moodle_1.9]]

* Open the question bank. Either :
** Click on the Questions link in the 'Administration' block click on the 'Questions' link.
** Or open the [[Editing a quiz]] page - when logged in as a teacher or someone with appropriate permissions open a quiz and then click on the 'Edit' tab.
* Click on the 'Categories' tab.
* Below the list of current categories you will see a form to add a new category.
* Choose the 'parent' category in which your new category will be placed. See image of 'Parent' selector image to right. [[image:QuestionParentCategorySelector.jpg|right]]
** Placing your category in another category makes it a sub-category of the parent.
** Choosing 'Top' means that your category is a top level category, not a sub category. When more than one sharing context is available you can place your category as a top level category in any of the contexts.
** Notice you can choose to make your category a 'top level' category in any context (see [[Question contexts]]) that is available to you. Or you can choose to add your category as a sub category of another category in the same context as the
* Type the name of your new question category in the text box.
* Add an optional meaningful description in the category info area.
* Click the 'Add Category' button. Your new question category will appear in the list of current categories.

===Deleting Categories===
{{Moodle 1.9}}
Categories can also be created or deleted at will. However, if you try to delete a category containing questions, then you will be asked to specify another category to move them to. You cannot delete or move the last category in any context, there must always be one category in a context.

===Using Arrow Icons for Moving Categories===
{{Moodle 1.9}}
You can also arrange the categories in a hierarchy so that they are easier to manage.

* The up/down arrow icons lets you change the order in which category 'peers' are displayed.
* The up / down icons are alsoused to move a '''top-level''' category between contexts. If you move a category to be the first or last category in a context and then press the arrow key again then it will be moved to the next context.
* The right arrow icon allows you to move a category to be a child category of the category listed immediately above it.
* The left arrow icon allows you to move a category up one category level (to be a peer of it's parent category).

''See the tool tip that appears when you place the mouse pointer above these icons if you're not sure what action an icon will perform.'' You cannot move the last category in any context, there must always be at least one category left in all contexts.

==Category set-up before Moodle 1.9==

#From the [[Editing a quiz]] page, click on the "Edit categories" button.
#Above the list of current categories you will see a space to add a new category.
#Choose which category your new category will be placed. If no other categories have been created, only 'Top' will be available.
#Type the name of your new question category in the text box.
#Add a meaningful description in the category info area.
#If you'd like to share your question with teachers of other courses on the server, select Yes in the Publish column.
#Click the Add button. Your new question category will appear in the list of current categories.
#When you are done adding categories, click on the Quiz tab to return to the [[Editing a quiz]] page.

Categories can also be created or deleted at will. However, if you try to delete a category containing questions, then you will be asked to specify another category to move them to.

You can also arrange the categories in a hierarchy so that they are easier to manage. The 'Move category to' field lets you move a category to another category.

By clicking on the arrows in the 'Order' field, you can change the order in which the categories are listed.

If you import questions from another site, where you had a different identity, you may find that you cannot influence those categories in the 'edit categories page'. You may have to log in as your other identity to see them there. (I haven't tried yet, but had the problem.)

==See also==
*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=47540 I can see other teacher's categories] forum discussion

[[fr:Catégories de questions]]
[[ru:Категории вопросов]]

Question categories

2008-11-24T20:50:51Z

Howardsmiller: /* Question Categories upgraded from versions prior to 1.9 */

{{Template:Questions}}
==What are question categories?==

Creating question categories and sub categories is a good practice. It is better than keeping all your questions in one big list in the quiz module. Each category must have a name and you can include a short description of the category. You can create a ''category hierarchy'' - you can specify a parent category for each category or 'Top' for parent if the category has no parent. This enables you to seperate categories into sub categories and sub categories into sub sub categories etc. indefinitely. Categories and sub categories etc are very powerful in combination with random questions which can select either from one category or can select questions randomly from a category or any of it's sub categories.

==Question Sharing==

===From Moodle 1.9===
{{Moodle 1.9}}

Question sharing changed from Moodle 1.9. From Moodle 1.9 you can share questions in several different contexts. Sharing categories in contexts 'Core System' or course contexts has a similar effect to publishing or not publishing a category. See the [[Question contexts]] page for more info.

By default a course teacher cannot see or use any Question context above the course level from Moodle 1.9. See [[Question Engine Changes in Moodle 1.9#Access_to_question_categories_shared_outside_a_course]] for more info and how you can allow selected course teachers to see and use question contexts above the course level.

==== Question Categories upgraded from versions prior to 1.9 ====

If you have question categories that have been upgraded from versions of Moodle from before 1.9, there are a few points to note:
* If the Question Category was ''not'' published, it will become a Course Question Category and will, effectively, function as before.
* If the Question Category was published, it will be changed to a Site Question Category, and will (by default) be inaccessible to teachers - including those that created. See See [[Question Engine Changes in Moodle 1.9#Access_to_question_categories_shared_outside_a_course]] for info on making this accessible or, if the questions are not used in another course, the administrator can move it to the appropriate Course.
* Regardless of this, the actual quizzes will continue to work as before, however questions in previously published Categories will cease to be editable (even by their creators). The exception to this is questions containing pictures - the links to the pictures will be broken as they remain in the Course Files (this was never supported).

===Before Moodle 1.9===

Each category can also be "published", which means that the category (and all questions in it) will be available to all courses in the Moodle site. Other courses and teachers can use your questions in their quizzes. (There is a potential problem however if other courses try to use a question with an image: students will not be able to see the image unless they are also enrolled in the course that owns the question category. Also if using a question from a published category you should be aware of the fact that the teacher in the course owning the category could change or delete the question without your knowledge. If you don't want this it might be better to create or import a local copy of the question in your own course.)

==Category Set Up and Management From Moodle 1.9==
{{Moodle 1.9}}

There have been some changes in the UI for category management from Moodle 1.9. If you are not using Moodle 1.9 or above see instructions below [[#Category_set-up_before_Moodle_1.9]]

* Open the question bank. Either :
** Click on the Questions link in the 'Administration' block click on the 'Questions' link.
** Or open the [[Editing a quiz]] page - when logged in as a teacher or someone with appropriate permissions open a quiz and then click on the 'Edit' tab.
* Click on the 'Categories' tab.
* Below the list of current categories you will see a form to add a new category.
* Choose the 'parent' category in which your new category will be placed. See image of 'Parent' selector image to right. [[image:QuestionParentCategorySelector.jpg|right]]
** Placing your category in another category makes it a sub-category of the parent.
** Choosing 'Top' means that your category is a top level category, not a sub category. When more than one sharing context is available you can place your category as a top level category in any of the contexts.
** Notice you can choose to make your category a 'top level' category in any context (see [[Question contexts]]) that is available to you. Or you can choose to add your category as a sub category of another category in the same context as the
* Type the name of your new question category in the text box.
* Add an optional meaningful description in the category info area.
* Click the 'Add Category' button. Your new question category will appear in the list of current categories.

===Deleting Categories===
{{Moodle 1.9}}
Categories can also be created or deleted at will. However, if you try to delete a category containing questions, then you will be asked to specify another category to move them to. You cannot delete or move the last category in any context, there must always be one category in a context.

===Using Arrow Icons for Moving Categories===
{{Moodle 1.9}}
You can also arrange the categories in a hierarchy so that they are easier to manage.

* The up/down arrow icons lets you change the order in which category 'peers' are displayed.
* The up / down icons are alsoused to move a '''top-level''' category between contexts. If you move a category to be the first or last category in a context and then press the arrow key again then it will be moved to the next context.
* The right arrow icon allows you to move a category to be a child category of the category listed immediately above it.
* The left arrow icon allows you to move a category up one category level (to be a peer of it's parent category).

''See the tool tip that appears when you place the mouse pointer above these icons if you're not sure what action an icon will perform.'' You cannot move the last category in any context, there must always be at least one category left in all contexts.

==Category set-up before Moodle 1.9==

#From the [[Editing a quiz]] page, click on the "Edit categories" button.
#Above the list of current categories you will see a space to add a new category.
#Choose which category your new category will be placed. If no other categories have been created, only 'Top' will be available.
#Type the name of your new question category in the text box.
#Add a meaningful description in the category info area.
#If you'd like to share your question with teachers of other courses on the server, select Yes in the Publish column.
#Click the Add button. Your new question category will appear in the list of current categories.
#When you are done adding categories, click on the Quiz tab to return to the [[Editing a quiz]] page.

Categories can also be created or deleted at will. However, if you try to delete a category containing questions, then you will be asked to specify another category to move them to.

You can also arrange the categories in a hierarchy so that they are easier to manage. The 'Move category to' field lets you move a category to another category.

By clicking on the arrows in the 'Order' field, you can change the order in which the categories are listed.

If you import questions from another site, where you had a different identity, you may find that you cannot influence those categories in the 'edit categories page'. You may have to log in as your other identity to see them there. (I haven't tried yet, but had the problem.)

==See also==
*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=47540 I can see other teacher's categories] forum discussion

[[fr:Catégories de questions]]
[[ru:Категории вопросов]]

Question categories

2008-11-24T20:49:33Z

Howardsmiller: /* From Moodle 1.9 */

{{Template:Questions}}
==What are question categories?==

Creating question categories and sub categories is a good practice. It is better than keeping all your questions in one big list in the quiz module. Each category must have a name and you can include a short description of the category. You can create a ''category hierarchy'' - you can specify a parent category for each category or 'Top' for parent if the category has no parent. This enables you to seperate categories into sub categories and sub categories into sub sub categories etc. indefinitely. Categories and sub categories etc are very powerful in combination with random questions which can select either from one category or can select questions randomly from a category or any of it's sub categories.

==Question Sharing==

===From Moodle 1.9===
{{Moodle 1.9}}

Question sharing changed from Moodle 1.9. From Moodle 1.9 you can share questions in several different contexts. Sharing categories in contexts 'Core System' or course contexts has a similar effect to publishing or not publishing a category. See the [[Question contexts]] page for more info.

By default a course teacher cannot see or use any Question context above the course level from Moodle 1.9. See [[Question Engine Changes in Moodle 1.9#Access_to_question_categories_shared_outside_a_course]] for more info and how you can allow selected course teachers to see and use question contexts above the course level.

==== Question Categories upgraded from versions prior to 1.9 ====

If you have question categories that have been upgraded from versions of Moodle from before 1.9, there are a few points to note:
* If the Question Category was ''not'' published, it will become a Course Question Category and will, effectively, function as before.
* If the Question Category was published, it will be changed to a Site Question Category, and will (by default) be inaccessible to teachers - including those that created. See See [[Question Engine Changes in Moodle 1.9#Access_to_question_categories_shared_outside_a_course]] for info on making this accessible or, if the questions are not used in another course, the administrator can move it to the appropriate Course.
* Regardless of this, the actual quizzes will continue to work as before, however questions in previously published Categories will cease to be editable (even by their creators)

===Before Moodle 1.9===

Each category can also be "published", which means that the category (and all questions in it) will be available to all courses in the Moodle site. Other courses and teachers can use your questions in their quizzes. (There is a potential problem however if other courses try to use a question with an image: students will not be able to see the image unless they are also enrolled in the course that owns the question category. Also if using a question from a published category you should be aware of the fact that the teacher in the course owning the category could change or delete the question without your knowledge. If you don't want this it might be better to create or import a local copy of the question in your own course.)

==Category Set Up and Management From Moodle 1.9==
{{Moodle 1.9}}

There have been some changes in the UI for category management from Moodle 1.9. If you are not using Moodle 1.9 or above see instructions below [[#Category_set-up_before_Moodle_1.9]]

* Open the question bank. Either :
** Click on the Questions link in the 'Administration' block click on the 'Questions' link.
** Or open the [[Editing a quiz]] page - when logged in as a teacher or someone with appropriate permissions open a quiz and then click on the 'Edit' tab.
* Click on the 'Categories' tab.
* Below the list of current categories you will see a form to add a new category.
* Choose the 'parent' category in which your new category will be placed. See image of 'Parent' selector image to right. [[image:QuestionParentCategorySelector.jpg|right]]
** Placing your category in another category makes it a sub-category of the parent.
** Choosing 'Top' means that your category is a top level category, not a sub category. When more than one sharing context is available you can place your category as a top level category in any of the contexts.
** Notice you can choose to make your category a 'top level' category in any context (see [[Question contexts]]) that is available to you. Or you can choose to add your category as a sub category of another category in the same context as the
* Type the name of your new question category in the text box.
* Add an optional meaningful description in the category info area.
* Click the 'Add Category' button. Your new question category will appear in the list of current categories.

===Deleting Categories===
{{Moodle 1.9}}
Categories can also be created or deleted at will. However, if you try to delete a category containing questions, then you will be asked to specify another category to move them to. You cannot delete or move the last category in any context, there must always be one category in a context.

===Using Arrow Icons for Moving Categories===
{{Moodle 1.9}}
You can also arrange the categories in a hierarchy so that they are easier to manage.

* The up/down arrow icons lets you change the order in which category 'peers' are displayed.
* The up / down icons are alsoused to move a '''top-level''' category between contexts. If you move a category to be the first or last category in a context and then press the arrow key again then it will be moved to the next context.
* The right arrow icon allows you to move a category to be a child category of the category listed immediately above it.
* The left arrow icon allows you to move a category up one category level (to be a peer of it's parent category).

''See the tool tip that appears when you place the mouse pointer above these icons if you're not sure what action an icon will perform.'' You cannot move the last category in any context, there must always be at least one category left in all contexts.

==Category set-up before Moodle 1.9==

#From the [[Editing a quiz]] page, click on the "Edit categories" button.
#Above the list of current categories you will see a space to add a new category.
#Choose which category your new category will be placed. If no other categories have been created, only 'Top' will be available.
#Type the name of your new question category in the text box.
#Add a meaningful description in the category info area.
#If you'd like to share your question with teachers of other courses on the server, select Yes in the Publish column.
#Click the Add button. Your new question category will appear in the list of current categories.
#When you are done adding categories, click on the Quiz tab to return to the [[Editing a quiz]] page.

Categories can also be created or deleted at will. However, if you try to delete a category containing questions, then you will be asked to specify another category to move them to.

You can also arrange the categories in a hierarchy so that they are easier to manage. The 'Move category to' field lets you move a category to another category.

By clicking on the arrows in the 'Order' field, you can change the order in which the categories are listed.

If you import questions from another site, where you had a different identity, you may find that you cannot influence those categories in the 'edit categories page'. You may have to log in as your other identity to see them there. (I haven't tried yet, but had the problem.)

==See also==
*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=47540 I can see other teacher's categories] forum discussion

[[fr:Catégories de questions]]
[[ru:Категории вопросов]]

Enrolment FAQ

2008-11-05T15:33:42Z

Howardsmiller: /* How can the name of the person holding the enrolment key be changed? */

==How do I prevent students from enrolling themselves in a course?==

Student-initiated enrollment (also known as [[Internal enrolment]]) is one of the standard enrollment methods supported by Moodle. In fact, it is the only method that cannot be disabled sitewide by the administrator. Fortunately, there are a few methods you can use to effectively prevent students from enrolling themselves in your course.
*Set ''Course enrollable'' to ''No'' in the course settings. This disables internal enrollment for your course.
*Set an [[Enrolment key|enrolment key]] in the course settings. Students will only be able to enroll if they know the key. Naturally, you will keep the key secret.

Note that neither method prevents teachers from [[Enrolment#Manual enrolment|manually enrolling]] students (Course administration -> Assign roles).

== Why are users being unenrolled for no apparent reason? ==

Please check the following:
*The ''longtimenosee'' variable in ''Site Administration > Server > Cleanup'' (or Administration > Configuration > Variables in Moodle 1.6) which specifies the time limit for which, if students haven't logged in, they are unenrolled from courses.
*The ''Enrolment duration'' in the [[course/edit|Course settings]] which unenrols students after the specified time has elapsed.

(See [[Unenrolment]] for a full list of what controls unenrolment.)

==Why are all students enrolled in all courses?==

If the default role for all users in ''Site Administration > Users > Permissions > User policies'' is set to student rather than authenticated user (the default setting), this will result in all students being enrolled in all courses.

Another possibility is that users are assigned the system role of student. Check ''Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Assign system roles'' and unassign users as necessary, then reassign them the role of student in the course context.

==Why can't I select "External Database" from the enrolment plugins drop-down menu in the course settings?==

Only ''interactive'' enrolment methods may be chosen in the course settings. Non-interactive enrolment plugins are set for the entire site in ''Site Administration'' > ''Enrolment''. Please refer to the interactive enrolment section of [[Enrolment plugins]].

==How do I enable students to unenrol themselves from courses?==

#Access ''Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles''.
#Click the edit icon opposite the student role.
#Change the [[Capabilities/moodle/role:unassignself|moodle/role:unassignself]] capability from not set to allow.
#Click the "Save changes" button at the bottom of the page.

(See [[Unenrolment]] for instructions on how to enable students to unenrol themselves from a particular course.)

==How do I prevent teachers from unenrolling themselves from their course by mistake?==

#Access ''Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles''.
#Click the edit icon opposite the teacher role.
#Change the [[Capabilities/moodle/role:unassignself|moodle/role:unassignself]] capability from allow to not set.
#Click the "Save changes" button at the bottom of the page.

==How do I change the spelling of "enrol" to "enroll"?==

Simply install the American English language pack (en_us) then choose it as the default language for the site. Or [[Language editing|edit your language]] settings.

==How can the name of the person holding the enrolment key be changed?==

In Moodle 1.8.3 onwards, the keyholder role may be set in the [[Internal enrolment]] settings (via ''Administration > Course > [[Enrolment plugins|Enrolments]]''). Use the following steps:
* Create a completely empty role called Keyholder (or whatever you like)
* In Course > Enrolments > Internal set the keyholder role you just created in the dropdown
* In your courses, assign people to this role (as well as their "proper" role).

In versions of Moodle prior to 1.8.3, a [[Keyholder role]] may be created.

==Is there a way for teachers to be notified when students enrol in a course?==

No notifications will be sent when students are allowed to enrol by the [[Internal enrolment]] process. It can be done by changing the open source code, but not by through the interface. Other enrolment methods (for example [[Flat file]]) can allow emails when enrolment is complete but these are not student initiated.

==When a student self-enrols, they get a welcome email message. Can a teacher customise this at the course level?==

Entering text for the message is described [[Email_processing#Email_confirmation_or_registration_words.2C_and_how_to_edit_them| Documentation here]]. But at the course level, not possible without a hack.

==How can the course welcome message be disabled?==

{{Moodle 1.9}}In Moodle 1.9.3 onwards, the course welcome message may be disabled by setting "Send course welcome message" to No in ''Administration > Courses > [[Enrolment plugins|Enrolments]]''.

==Where in the database is the relationship between user and course?==

Prior to Moodle 1.7, enrollments were represented by two simple tables: mdl_user_students and mdl_user_teachers. Under the new Roles and Capabilities System introduced in Moodle 1.7, the concept of enrollment has been generalized. The word "Enroll" should literally be read as "Assign a role to." To accomodate this flexibility, the database model has changed. There is now a mdl_role_assignments table that holds the equivalent information. For more information, see [[Development:Roles|the roles development documentation]]

==Help! Now Admin login does not work==
Have you switched from internal to external enrolment and now nobody can log into your Moodle site? Site login has to do with [[Authentication|authentication]] but an error with enrolment can produce a fatal error. You will have to solve this by altering the [[MySQL|MySQL database]] (preferably with [[phpMyAdmin]]). [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=102431 Forum discussion here].

Look in the mdl_config table the name of the setting is "enrol_plugins_enabled". Edit the value list to remove the value database from the list of comma separated values, save, and you should be able to access your site again.

Alternatively the following MySQL command line should work, but is not recommended.
mysql -u username -p moodle_db_name
UPDATE `mdl_config` SET `value` = 'manual' WHERE `mdl_config`.`name` ='enrol_plugins_enabled' ;

See [https://docs.moodle.org/en/Administration_FAQ?#I_have_forgotten_the_admin_password if you have merely forgotten your password].

[[Category:Enrolment]]
[[Category:FAQ]]

Enrolment key

2008-11-05T15:31:21Z

Howardsmiller: /* Tips and Tricks */

A course enrolment (or enrollment) key is one method to restrict [[Internal enrolment]] (student self enrolments) to a smaller group. The default setting is not to set a key.

An enrolment key is often used as a simple method of having someone else beside the teacher determine if a particular student can self enrol in the course. The idea is that one or more people will supply the course key to authorized people. Sometimes this distrubution is private email, snail mail, on the phone or even verbally in a face to face meetings such as a class or counselor's office.

== Setting an enrolment key ==
The enrolment key is a Moodle setting that any teacher or admin user can set on a course by course basis.

To locate and use this setting:

# Login to Moodle as an admin or teacher
# Navigate to the desired course
# Locate the Course Administration block
# Click on Settings in that block
# Scroll down and locate the Enrolment key field
# Enter the key in the adjacent text field ("bratwurst" in the example)
# Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Save changes"

[[Image:Enrollmentkey.png|frame|center|The enrolment key area in course settings]]

==Tips and Tricks==

*If the enrolment key for a course "gets out" and unwanted people self enrol,
**Change the key. Currently enrolled students will not need the key again
**[[Unenrolment |Unenrol]] the unwanted users via [[Assign roles]] in the course administration block
*Changing or placing a key does not impact currently enrolled students, nor does it impact students who may also be enrolled by an [[Enrolment plugins|enrolment plugin]]
* Guests may (optionally) be required to supply the enrolment key (as specified on the Course Settings page). They will be required to supply the code '''every time''' they enter the course
* The "No" or "Date range" options in the "Course available" setting effectively disables the enrolment key feature, even if it is set
* You can control who is named as supplying the key. See [[Internal enrolment]].

==See also==

*[[Internal enrolment]] - to set the role of the people who hold the course enrolment key
*[[Create group]] - for information on setting group enrolment keys
*[[Keyholder role]] - for an administrator to set the person named as holding the course enrolment key

[[Category:Teacher]]
[[Category:Enrolment]]

[[fr:Clef d'inscription]]
[[pl:Klucz rekrutacyjny]]
[[ja:登録キー]]

Course settings

2008-11-05T15:30:25Z

Howardsmiller: /* Enrolment key */

{{Help files}}
{{Course admin}}

[[Image:Settings.gif]]'''Course settings''' control how the things appear to the participants in a course. It is the first page viewed after creating a course. It can be edited through the '''Settings''' link in the [[Course administration block]] menu. This page has links to other pages that may describe a setting in more detail. Different versions of Moodle may not have all the settings listed below.

==General==
[[Image:generalsettings1.gif|thumb|300px|General settings|center]]

portfolio

===Short name===
Many institutions have a shorthand way of referring to a course, such as BP102 or COMMS. Even if you do not already have such a name for your course, make one up here. It will be used in several places where the long name is not appropriate. The most common use is in the navigation bar that is at the top of most pages and this provides an active link to the course home page.

[[Image:Assignment nav trail.jpg|The underlined part is the course Short name.]]

The above example has the short course name, "Features". The short name also appears in the subject line of email messages that are part of the course.

:''TIP:'' If the short name field is not editable, the site administrator has disabled that user's ability by unassigning the moodle/course:changeshortname capability.

===ID number===
The ID number is an alphanumeric field. It has several potential uses. Generally, it is not displayed to students. However, it can be used to match this course against an external system's ID, as your course catalog ID or can be used in the certificate module as a printed field.

:''TIP:'' If the ID number field is not editable, the site administrator has disabled that user's ability by unassigning the moodle/course:changeidnumber capability.

English portfolio

===Format===
[[Image:generalsettings3.gif|thumb|Format section in course settings|center]]
A Moodle course may use one of the following formats:

====Weekly format====
[[Image:Course top weekly mu1.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Weekly format example]] The course is organized week by week, with a clear start date and a finish date. Moodle will create a section for each week of your course. You can add content, forums, quizzes, and so on in the section for each week.

:''TIP:'' If you want all your students to work on the same materials at the same time, this would be a good format to choose. <br><br><br>

====Social format====
[[Image:Course top social mu1.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Social format example]] This format is oriented around one main forum, the Social forum, which appears listed on the main page. It is useful for situations that are more free form. They may not even be courses. For example, it could be used as a departmental notice board.

''TIP:'' If you change the course format from Social format to Weekly or Topics format, delete the 'Social activities' block. This block should only be used in the Social format and is normally not available in other course formats.<br><br><br><br>

====LAMS course format====
[[LAMS|The Learning Activity Management System]] is an open source LMS which allows teachers to use a flash based authoring environment for developing learning sequences. LAMS has been integrated with Moodle to allow teachers to develop LAMS activities within a Moodle course. This course format makes LAMS central to the course, only displaying the LAMS interface.

:''TIP:'' If you are interested in using LAMS, check with your system administrator to see if they have installed and configured LAMS. Very few institutions use LAMS as it duplicates much of the Moodle functionality.

====SCORM format====
The [[SCORM/AICC module|Sharable Content Reference Model]] (SCORM) is a content packaging standard. SCORM packages are self-contained bundles of content and JavaScript activities, which can send data to Moodle about the students score and current location. Moodle can use SCORM packages as a content type (see [[SCORM/AICC module]]), or as a course format.

:''TIP:'' If you have a large SCORM object you want to use as an entire course, then you can select this course format and students will only be able to interact with the SCORM object, not the rest of the Moodle tools.

====Weekly format, CSS/no tables (Moodle 1.6 onwards)====
The CSS / No Tables variant of the Weekly format displays the Weekly course format without using tables for layout. This improves the accessibility of the format, but older browsers have trouble displaying it correctly.

====Page format (non-standard)====
This format is very similar to the Book resource format in a Moodle course. It consists of a theme, course format, and menu module which enables blocks and modules to be intermixed on a 3 column layout, provide tab based navigation through course content, inline display of resources and forums, etc.

===Number of weeks/topics===
This setting is only used by the 'weekly' and 'topics' course formats. In the 'weekly' format, it specifies the number of weeks that the course will run for, starting from the course starting date. In the 'topics' format, it specifies the number of topics in the course. Both of these translate to the number of "boxes" down the middle of the course page.

===Course start date===
This is where you specify the starting time of the course (in your own time zone). The first week will start on the date you set here when you use the "Weekly" course format.

This setting will not affect courses using the 'social' or 'topics' formats.

However, this setting will have an effect on the display of logs, which use this date as the earliest possible date you can display. It can also make your course not visible to students even if when the course is available to students (see below).

:''TIP:'' In general, if your course does not have a real starting date then set the date to yesterday and use the availability setting to reveal the course to students.

===Hidden sections===
This option allows you to decide how the hidden sections in your course are displayed to students. By default, a small area is shown (in collapsed form, usually gray) to indicate where the hidden section is, though they still cannot actually see the hidden activities and texts. This is particularly useful in the Weekly format, so that non-class weeks are clear, or if you have quizes you don't want your students to see.

:''TIP:'' If you choose, these non-available items can be completely hidden, so that students do not even know that sections or an activity in the course are hidden.

===Show grades===
Many of the activities allow [[Grades|grades]] to be set. By default, the results of all grades within the course can be seen in the Grades page, available from the main course page for students and teachers.

:''TIP:'' If a teacher is not interested in using grades in a course, or just wants to hide grades from students, then they can disable the display of grades with this option. This does not prevent the teacher using or setting grades for an individual activities, it just disables the results from being displayed to students.

===Show activity reports===
[[Activity_report#Individual_Activity_Report|Activity reports]] are available to each student. These reports or logs shows their activity and contributions in the current course. These reports include their detailed access log.

Student access to their own reports is controlled by the teacher via this course setting. For some courses, these reports can be a useful tool for a student to reflect on their involvement and appearance within the online environment, but for some courses, this may not be necessary.

Teachers always have access to these reports. Teachers can use the button or tab visible on each person’s profile page or use the [[Reports]] link in the course administration block.

Your site administrator may ask you to turn this feature off. Showing activity reports can place a load on the server, slowing it down at times. For large or long classes it may be more efficient to keep it off.

===Maximum upload size===
[[Image:Changeupload.jpg|thumb|Maximum upload size setting]]
This setting defines the largest size of file that can be uploaded by students in this course. The site administrator can determine [[Site_policies#Maximum_uploaded_file_sizefile |sizes available]] for the teacher to select. Teachers should be aware of a course's [[Files|file structure]].

It is possible to further restrict this size through settings within each activity module.

===Force===
If the site administrator has allowed the teacher to set a course [[Themes|theme]], this pull down menu will appear with a list of themes on the site.

===Is this a meta course?===
A [[Metacourses|metacourse]] automatically enrolls its participants from other courses. For example, for every course that is a "child" of the metacourse, all students in the child course are enrolled in the metacourse.

==Enrolments==
[[Image:generalsetting4.gif|thumb|Enrolment settings]]
===Enrolment plugins===
This setting allows you to choose an interactive [[Enrolment plugins|enrolment plugin]], such as [[Internal enrolment|internal enrolment]] or [[Paypal]]. If you use a non-interactive enrolment plugin, this setting has no effect.

===Default role===

From Moodle 1.7 onwards, a default course role, such as student, may be set.

===Course enrollable===
This setting only affects interactive enrolment plugins, such as [[Internal enrolment|internal enrolment]] and [[Paypal]]. It has no affect at all on non-interactive plugins (e.g. External Database, LDAP). Setting it to "no" or if it is outside the specified date range will result in the student being told the course is "Not enrollable" and being returned to the front page, if they are attempting to enroll using an interactive plugin.

:''TIP:'' If you are using Internal enrolment and you have not set an enrolment key, you should seriously consider setting this to ''No'' otherwise any user can enrol on your course.

===Enrolment duration===
This setting specifies the number of days a student can be enrolled in this course (starting from the moment they enroll). Set this value with care - setting it when not required is a common origin of the complaint, "my students keep disappearing after n days".

:''TIP:'' This is useful for rolling courses without a specific start or end time. Students are automatically unenrolled after the number of days has expired in this setting.

:''TIP:'' This setting can be used as an alternative to a manually unenrolling students or using a clean-up function to remove defunct students at some future time.
:''TIP:'' If this course is a metacourse, the enrolment period will not be used.

==Enrolment expiry notification==
[[Image:generalsettings5.gif|thumb|Enrolment expiry notification settings]]
These settings determine whether teachers and/or students are notified that their enrolment is about to expire and how much notice they should be given.

==Groups==
[[Image:generalsettings6.gif|thumb|Groups settings]]
===Group mode===
Here you can define the [[Groups|group mode]] at the course level by a pull down menu. "[[Groups#No_groups|No groups]]", "[[Groups#Separate_groups|Separate groups]]" and "[[Groups#Visible_groups|Visible groups]]" are the choices. The selected setting will be the default group mode for all activities defined within that course. The group setting can affect what users see in the [[Participants]] list.

:''TIP:'' You may leave it set to "No groups" and still have specific activities use groups. In this case the force setting below should be set to "no". For example, the teacher can use a group setting to completely separate cohorts of students such that each group is unaware of the other in the course.

===Force===
If the group mode is "forced" at a course-level, then this particular group mode will be applied to every activity in that course. This will override any activities that may have a special group setting.

The force setting is useful when the teacher wants to set up a course and not have to change each activities group settings.

===Default grouping===

{{Moodle 1.9}}If [[Groupings|groupings]] are enabled (in Moodle 1.9 onwards), a default grouping for course activities and resources may be set.

==Availability==

[[Image:generalsettings7.gif|thumb|Availability settings]]
This option allows you to "hide" your course completely. It will not appear on any course listings, except to teachers of the course and administrators. Even if students try to access the course URL directly, they will not be allowed to enter.

:''TIP:'' The [[Course_settings#Course_start_date|Start Date]] of the course can also effect course visibility.

===Enrolment key===
A course [[Enrolment key|enrolment key]] enables access to courses to be restricted to those who know the key. This feature is typically used on sites which encourage self enrolments or use an external database process to register students in a course. The idea is that Teachers or course administrators will supply the key to authorized people using another means like private email, snail mail, on the phone or even verbally in a face-to-face class.

When the key is left blank and [[Course_settings#Course_enrollable|self enrolment]] is allowed, then anyone who has a Moodle username on the site will be able to enrol in the course.

:''TIP:'' A student can be manually enroled in the course and will not have to supply the required key when they enter the course for the first time.

:''TIP:'' If this password "gets out" and you have unwanted people enrolling, you can unenrol them (see their user profile page or unassign them from the [[Assign roles|student role]] in the course) and change this key. Any legitimate students who have already enrolled will not be affected, but the unwanted people will not be able to get back in.

:''TIP:'' If you are using a non-interactive enrolment, system (e.g., External Database, LDAP) and you do not want students who fail the initial check to be asked for an enrolment key that they will not have, set ''Course Enrolable'' to ''No''.

:''TIP:'' You can control who is displayed as providing the Key when someone is requested to supply the key. See [[Internal enrolment]]

===Guest access===

Allows any authenticated user (i.e. logged in) to access the course (as a [[Guest role|guest]]), including those who have logged in "as guest". You can choose if they need an enrolment key or may enter without one.

People can log in as guests using the "Login as a guest" button on a login screen, where that feature is enabled for the site. When the user tries to enter a course, they will see the [[Log in|login screen]]. If you only need people authenticated via your normal authentication method to access courses (as Guest or not) it is probably wise to disable "Login as a guest" for a slight improvement in site security. See [[Manage authentication]].

Guests in a course ALWAYS have "read-only" access - meaning they cannot leave any posts or otherwise mess up the course for real students. No use information is stored for a guest.

:''TIP:'' This can be handy when you want to let a colleague in to look around at your work, or to let students see a course before they have decided to enroll.
:''TIP:'' You have a choice between two types of guest access: with the enrolment key or without. If you choose to allow guests who have the key, then the guest will need to provide the current enrolment key EVERY TIME they log in (unlike students who only need to do it once). This lets you restrict your guests. If you choose to allow guests without a key, then anyone can get straight into your course.

For more information see [[Guest role]].

===Cost===

If [[Paypal]] or [[Authorize.net Payment Gateway]] is set as the [[Enrolment plugins|enrolment plugin]], then the course cost can be set in the cost field.

==Language==
[[Image:generalsettings8.gif|thumb|Language settings]]

If you force a language in a course, the interface of Moodle in this course will be in this particular language, even if a student has selected a different preferred language in his/her personal profile.

==Role renaming==
[[Image:rolesimages.gif|thumb|Role renaming settings]]
{{Moodle 1.9}}In Moodle 1.9 onwards, you can rename the [[Roles|roles]] used in your course. For example, you may wish to rename the [[Teacher role]] as "Facilitator", "Tutor" or "Guide". These new role names will appear within the course. For example on the [[Participants|participants]] and the override permissions pages.

Please note that the site administrator or a [[Course managers|course manager]] may have changed the names or added new roles. These names will appear and the teacher may rename them.

[[Roles FAQ]] contains information on changing the name for teacher in Moodle 1.7 and 1.8. Prior to Moodle 1.7, the words for teacher and student may be changed in the course settings.

:''Tip'': Do not worry about changing every role name. Only change the site roles which are used in your course. For example, you may want to ignore renaming roles such as the [[Administrator role]] or the [[Authenticated user role]].

:''Tip'': To include new role names in a course backup, users should be included in the backup.

==See also==

*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWOp1oq-TvI Video showing how to create a course in Moodle]

[[Category:Teacher]]

[[fr:Paramètres]]
[[ja:コース設定]]
[[de:Kurseinstellungen]]

Course settings

2008-11-05T15:29:50Z

Howardsmiller: /* Enrolment key */

{{Help files}}
{{Course admin}}

[[Image:Settings.gif]]'''Course settings''' control how the things appear to the participants in a course. It is the first page viewed after creating a course. It can be edited through the '''Settings''' link in the [[Course administration block]] menu. This page has links to other pages that may describe a setting in more detail. Different versions of Moodle may not have all the settings listed below.

==General==
[[Image:generalsettings1.gif|thumb|300px|General settings|center]]

portfolio

===Short name===
Many institutions have a shorthand way of referring to a course, such as BP102 or COMMS. Even if you do not already have such a name for your course, make one up here. It will be used in several places where the long name is not appropriate. The most common use is in the navigation bar that is at the top of most pages and this provides an active link to the course home page.

[[Image:Assignment nav trail.jpg|The underlined part is the course Short name.]]

The above example has the short course name, "Features". The short name also appears in the subject line of email messages that are part of the course.

:''TIP:'' If the short name field is not editable, the site administrator has disabled that user's ability by unassigning the moodle/course:changeshortname capability.

===ID number===
The ID number is an alphanumeric field. It has several potential uses. Generally, it is not displayed to students. However, it can be used to match this course against an external system's ID, as your course catalog ID or can be used in the certificate module as a printed field.

:''TIP:'' If the ID number field is not editable, the site administrator has disabled that user's ability by unassigning the moodle/course:changeidnumber capability.

English portfolio

===Format===
[[Image:generalsettings3.gif|thumb|Format section in course settings|center]]
A Moodle course may use one of the following formats:

====Weekly format====
[[Image:Course top weekly mu1.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Weekly format example]] The course is organized week by week, with a clear start date and a finish date. Moodle will create a section for each week of your course. You can add content, forums, quizzes, and so on in the section for each week.

:''TIP:'' If you want all your students to work on the same materials at the same time, this would be a good format to choose. <br><br><br>

====Social format====
[[Image:Course top social mu1.jpg|thumb|left|100px|Social format example]] This format is oriented around one main forum, the Social forum, which appears listed on the main page. It is useful for situations that are more free form. They may not even be courses. For example, it could be used as a departmental notice board.

''TIP:'' If you change the course format from Social format to Weekly or Topics format, delete the 'Social activities' block. This block should only be used in the Social format and is normally not available in other course formats.<br><br><br><br>

====LAMS course format====
[[LAMS|The Learning Activity Management System]] is an open source LMS which allows teachers to use a flash based authoring environment for developing learning sequences. LAMS has been integrated with Moodle to allow teachers to develop LAMS activities within a Moodle course. This course format makes LAMS central to the course, only displaying the LAMS interface.

:''TIP:'' If you are interested in using LAMS, check with your system administrator to see if they have installed and configured LAMS. Very few institutions use LAMS as it duplicates much of the Moodle functionality.

====SCORM format====
The [[SCORM/AICC module|Sharable Content Reference Model]] (SCORM) is a content packaging standard. SCORM packages are self-contained bundles of content and JavaScript activities, which can send data to Moodle about the students score and current location. Moodle can use SCORM packages as a content type (see [[SCORM/AICC module]]), or as a course format.

:''TIP:'' If you have a large SCORM object you want to use as an entire course, then you can select this course format and students will only be able to interact with the SCORM object, not the rest of the Moodle tools.

====Weekly format, CSS/no tables (Moodle 1.6 onwards)====
The CSS / No Tables variant of the Weekly format displays the Weekly course format without using tables for layout. This improves the accessibility of the format, but older browsers have trouble displaying it correctly.

====Page format (non-standard)====
This format is very similar to the Book resource format in a Moodle course. It consists of a theme, course format, and menu module which enables blocks and modules to be intermixed on a 3 column layout, provide tab based navigation through course content, inline display of resources and forums, etc.

===Number of weeks/topics===
This setting is only used by the 'weekly' and 'topics' course formats. In the 'weekly' format, it specifies the number of weeks that the course will run for, starting from the course starting date. In the 'topics' format, it specifies the number of topics in the course. Both of these translate to the number of "boxes" down the middle of the course page.

===Course start date===
This is where you specify the starting time of the course (in your own time zone). The first week will start on the date you set here when you use the "Weekly" course format.

This setting will not affect courses using the 'social' or 'topics' formats.

However, this setting will have an effect on the display of logs, which use this date as the earliest possible date you can display. It can also make your course not visible to students even if when the course is available to students (see below).

:''TIP:'' In general, if your course does not have a real starting date then set the date to yesterday and use the availability setting to reveal the course to students.

===Hidden sections===
This option allows you to decide how the hidden sections in your course are displayed to students. By default, a small area is shown (in collapsed form, usually gray) to indicate where the hidden section is, though they still cannot actually see the hidden activities and texts. This is particularly useful in the Weekly format, so that non-class weeks are clear, or if you have quizes you don't want your students to see.

:''TIP:'' If you choose, these non-available items can be completely hidden, so that students do not even know that sections or an activity in the course are hidden.

===Show grades===
Many of the activities allow [[Grades|grades]] to be set. By default, the results of all grades within the course can be seen in the Grades page, available from the main course page for students and teachers.

:''TIP:'' If a teacher is not interested in using grades in a course, or just wants to hide grades from students, then they can disable the display of grades with this option. This does not prevent the teacher using or setting grades for an individual activities, it just disables the results from being displayed to students.

===Show activity reports===
[[Activity_report#Individual_Activity_Report|Activity reports]] are available to each student. These reports or logs shows their activity and contributions in the current course. These reports include their detailed access log.

Student access to their own reports is controlled by the teacher via this course setting. For some courses, these reports can be a useful tool for a student to reflect on their involvement and appearance within the online environment, but for some courses, this may not be necessary.

Teachers always have access to these reports. Teachers can use the button or tab visible on each person’s profile page or use the [[Reports]] link in the course administration block.

Your site administrator may ask you to turn this feature off. Showing activity reports can place a load on the server, slowing it down at times. For large or long classes it may be more efficient to keep it off.

===Maximum upload size===
[[Image:Changeupload.jpg|thumb|Maximum upload size setting]]
This setting defines the largest size of file that can be uploaded by students in this course. The site administrator can determine [[Site_policies#Maximum_uploaded_file_sizefile |sizes available]] for the teacher to select. Teachers should be aware of a course's [[Files|file structure]].

It is possible to further restrict this size through settings within each activity module.

===Force===
If the site administrator has allowed the teacher to set a course [[Themes|theme]], this pull down menu will appear with a list of themes on the site.

===Is this a meta course?===
A [[Metacourses|metacourse]] automatically enrolls its participants from other courses. For example, for every course that is a "child" of the metacourse, all students in the child course are enrolled in the metacourse.

==Enrolments==
[[Image:generalsetting4.gif|thumb|Enrolment settings]]
===Enrolment plugins===
This setting allows you to choose an interactive [[Enrolment plugins|enrolment plugin]], such as [[Internal enrolment|internal enrolment]] or [[Paypal]]. If you use a non-interactive enrolment plugin, this setting has no effect.

===Default role===

From Moodle 1.7 onwards, a default course role, such as student, may be set.

===Course enrollable===
This setting only affects interactive enrolment plugins, such as [[Internal enrolment|internal enrolment]] and [[Paypal]]. It has no affect at all on non-interactive plugins (e.g. External Database, LDAP). Setting it to "no" or if it is outside the specified date range will result in the student being told the course is "Not enrollable" and being returned to the front page, if they are attempting to enroll using an interactive plugin.

:''TIP:'' If you are using Internal enrolment and you have not set an enrolment key, you should seriously consider setting this to ''No'' otherwise any user can enrol on your course.

===Enrolment duration===
This setting specifies the number of days a student can be enrolled in this course (starting from the moment they enroll). Set this value with care - setting it when not required is a common origin of the complaint, "my students keep disappearing after n days".

:''TIP:'' This is useful for rolling courses without a specific start or end time. Students are automatically unenrolled after the number of days has expired in this setting.

:''TIP:'' This setting can be used as an alternative to a manually unenrolling students or using a clean-up function to remove defunct students at some future time.
:''TIP:'' If this course is a metacourse, the enrolment period will not be used.

==Enrolment expiry notification==
[[Image:generalsettings5.gif|thumb|Enrolment expiry notification settings]]
These settings determine whether teachers and/or students are notified that their enrolment is about to expire and how much notice they should be given.

==Groups==
[[Image:generalsettings6.gif|thumb|Groups settings]]
===Group mode===
Here you can define the [[Groups|group mode]] at the course level by a pull down menu. "[[Groups#No_groups|No groups]]", "[[Groups#Separate_groups|Separate groups]]" and "[[Groups#Visible_groups|Visible groups]]" are the choices. The selected setting will be the default group mode for all activities defined within that course. The group setting can affect what users see in the [[Participants]] list.

:''TIP:'' You may leave it set to "No groups" and still have specific activities use groups. In this case the force setting below should be set to "no". For example, the teacher can use a group setting to completely separate cohorts of students such that each group is unaware of the other in the course.

===Force===
If the group mode is "forced" at a course-level, then this particular group mode will be applied to every activity in that course. This will override any activities that may have a special group setting.

The force setting is useful when the teacher wants to set up a course and not have to change each activities group settings.

===Default grouping===

{{Moodle 1.9}}If [[Groupings|groupings]] are enabled (in Moodle 1.9 onwards), a default grouping for course activities and resources may be set.

==Availability==

[[Image:generalsettings7.gif|thumb|Availability settings]]
This option allows you to "hide" your course completely. It will not appear on any course listings, except to teachers of the course and administrators. Even if students try to access the course URL directly, they will not be allowed to enter.

:''TIP:'' The [[Course_settings#Course_start_date|Start Date]] of the course can also effect course visibility.

===Enrolment key===
A course [[Enrolment key|enrolment key]] enables access to courses to be restricted to those who know the key. This feature is typically used on sites which encourage self enrolments or use an external database process to register students in a course. The idea is that Teachers or course administrators will supply the key to authorized people using another means like private email, snail mail, on the phone or even verbally in a face-to-face class.

When the key is left blank and [[Course_settings#Course_enrollable|self enrolment]] is allowed, then anyone who has a Moodle username on the site will be able to enrol in the course.

:''TIP:'' A student can be manually enroled in the course and will not have to supply the required key when they enter the course for the first time.

:''TIP:'' If this password "gets out" and you have unwanted people enrolling, you can unenrol them (see their user profile page or unassign them from the [[Assign roles|student role]] in the course) and change this key. Any legitimate students who have already enrolled will not be affected, but the unwanted people will not be able to get back in.

:''TIP:'' If you are using a non-interactive enrolment, system (e.g., External Database, LDAP) and you do not want students who fail the initial check to be asked for an enrolment key that they will not have, set ''Course Enrolable'' to ''No''.

:''TIP:'' You can control who is displayed as providing the Key when someone is requested to supply the key. See [[Internal Enrolment]]

===Guest access===

Allows any authenticated user (i.e. logged in) to access the course (as a [[Guest role|guest]]), including those who have logged in "as guest". You can choose if they need an enrolment key or may enter without one.

People can log in as guests using the "Login as a guest" button on a login screen, where that feature is enabled for the site. When the user tries to enter a course, they will see the [[Log in|login screen]]. If you only need people authenticated via your normal authentication method to access courses (as Guest or not) it is probably wise to disable "Login as a guest" for a slight improvement in site security. See [[Manage authentication]].

Guests in a course ALWAYS have "read-only" access - meaning they cannot leave any posts or otherwise mess up the course for real students. No use information is stored for a guest.

:''TIP:'' This can be handy when you want to let a colleague in to look around at your work, or to let students see a course before they have decided to enroll.
:''TIP:'' You have a choice between two types of guest access: with the enrolment key or without. If you choose to allow guests who have the key, then the guest will need to provide the current enrolment key EVERY TIME they log in (unlike students who only need to do it once). This lets you restrict your guests. If you choose to allow guests without a key, then anyone can get straight into your course.

For more information see [[Guest role]].

===Cost===

If [[Paypal]] or [[Authorize.net Payment Gateway]] is set as the [[Enrolment plugins|enrolment plugin]], then the course cost can be set in the cost field.

==Language==
[[Image:generalsettings8.gif|thumb|Language settings]]

If you force a language in a course, the interface of Moodle in this course will be in this particular language, even if a student has selected a different preferred language in his/her personal profile.

==Role renaming==
[[Image:rolesimages.gif|thumb|Role renaming settings]]
{{Moodle 1.9}}In Moodle 1.9 onwards, you can rename the [[Roles|roles]] used in your course. For example, you may wish to rename the [[Teacher role]] as "Facilitator", "Tutor" or "Guide". These new role names will appear within the course. For example on the [[Participants|participants]] and the override permissions pages.

Please note that the site administrator or a [[Course managers|course manager]] may have changed the names or added new roles. These names will appear and the teacher may rename them.

[[Roles FAQ]] contains information on changing the name for teacher in Moodle 1.7 and 1.8. Prior to Moodle 1.7, the words for teacher and student may be changed in the course settings.

:''Tip'': Do not worry about changing every role name. Only change the site roles which are used in your course. For example, you may want to ignore renaming roles such as the [[Administrator role]] or the [[Authenticated user role]].

:''Tip'': To include new role names in a course backup, users should be included in the backup.

==See also==

*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWOp1oq-TvI Video showing how to create a course in Moodle]

[[Category:Teacher]]

[[fr:Paramètres]]
[[ja:コース設定]]
[[de:Kurseinstellungen]]

Resources FAQ

2008-11-05T15:17:09Z

Howardsmiller:

{{stub}}{{Resources}}==How can I enable students using IE7 to view PDF files?==

Check the force download box on the update page. (This work-around is necessary because of the way IE7 handles PDF files.)

==How can I stop uploaded files from being cached when I update them?==

By default, Moodle adds a "cache-control" header to all files that is sends. The default period is 24 hours. You can reduce this or eliminate it entirely (set to zero) by adding the following line to your config.php (default value shown).

$CFG->filelifetime = 86400;

==See also==

* Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=122 Resource module forum]

Using Moodle forum discussions:
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=102618 Problem Deploying IMS Content]
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=102716 DOCX downloads as DOC?]

[[Category:FAQ]]

Talk:Security

2008-11-03T15:13:35Z

Howardsmiller:

==set default for courses enrollable to 0==
This might also go in the "miscellanceous section". In cases where all students are enrolled by the administrator, would it not be effective to set the default for courses being enrollable to 0? I assume that instructors or admins could continue to enroll students manually or through an automated process, but students would no longer be able to enroll themselves through searching the course list.

If I am interpreting this correctly, I would add something like this to the section:

open the files moodle/course/edit_form.php

go to line 164 which starts with:
$mform->addElement('header','enrolhdr', get_string('enrolments'));

and write just above it the sentence

if (iseditingteacher()) {

goto line 238 and write the following just below

$mform->setDefault('enrolperiod', 0);

} // close ifiseditingteacher

This code might not be quite right--I copied it from this discussion http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=55702 but, at least in our case, we would want to retain teacher rights to adjust student enrollment manually.

If this is totally incorrect, please advise.

[[User: A. Wyatt| awyatt]]

==Enrollment key hint==
In my mind, the enrollment key hint is a security problem (because this is under the control of instructors who, in my experience, do not use hard-to-guess keys). The hint is not robust enough to really help a student if a "good" key has been set (and we wouldn't want it to be!). I think editing the enrolmentkeyhint string in moodle.php is a good short term solution until more robust key management is introduced into core (I noticed several items in the tracker, so I expect this will be looked at in future releases):

$string['enrolmentkeyhint'] = 'That enrolment key was incorrect, please try again.
Contact your instructor if you need assistance.';

I will not take credit for this idea; that belongs to Steve Hyndman. I think it is a simple change and admins should be encouraged to make it.

[[User: A. Wyatt| awyatt]]

:Thanks atw, the security page now includes information on removing the enrolment key hint. --[[User:Helen Foster|Helen Foster]] 04:05, 28 August 2008 (CDT)

A quick way to change file / directory permissions & owner / group:
find -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;
find -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
chown -R root:apache *
[[User:Mark Laffoon|Mark Laffoon]]

Little spelling error in opening paragraph."involving some '''conbination''' of input" should be '''combination''', not '''conbination'''.

:Thanks, it's fixed. --[[User:Helen Foster|Helen Foster]] 05:46, 15 March 2007 (CDT)

Should this page deal with valid users as well? I'm talking about input sanitization, etc. For example, in my school's version of Moodle, I can craft some code that logs the user out as soon as they see my forum post. I suggest taking a look at MediaWiki's approach to code sanitizing. -- [[User:Phyzome|Phyzome]] is [[User talk:Phyzome|Tim McCormack]] 12:45, 11 February 2006 (WST)

:Tim, I believe what you are mentioning is actually related to the future development of Moodle code, or possibly an existing security bug? There is actually a lead Security Officer, Petr Škoda (skodak), who is charged with reviewing the security code. He would probably like to see an example of what you mentioned. [[User:Moorejon|Moorejon]] Jonathan Moore 8:46, 12 February 2006 (CST)

::I have reported it in full detail at the security.moodle.org site. -- [[User:Phyzome|Phyzome]] is [[User talk:Phyzome|Tim McCormack]] 09:29, 16 February 2006 (WST)

Please, take a look at the "Before all" topic I have just added, based on Petr's opinion on this: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=39404#182024 - [[User:Davidds|David Delgado]] 02:11, 13 February 2006 (WST)

I have updated the file permissions, with what I hope are more correct values. [[User:Moorejon|Moorejon]] Jonathan Moore 10:52, 14 February 2006 (CST)

== Security for Security page ==

Maybe we should take a look at the security in this "Security" page. :-/ Should it be a protected page maintained directly by http://security.moodle.org? Please, give us your opinion on this in the "page comments" label in this page.

:I do think it SHOULD be protected and maintained directly by http://security.moodle.org , since it is the best place to introduce security hazards. Just add "Do not forget to send your admin password to safe@cracker.com", for example. Think also of more sophisticated cracking methods. By the way... moodledata directory owned by root with 700 permissions, [[User:Moorejon|Moorejon]]? :-/ - [[User:Davidds|David Delgado]] 16:44, 13 February 2006 (WST)

:::I think you make a good point. At a minimum this page needs to be monitored by someone. I think more subtle problems than the send password to x variety could be introduced too. Such as changing the permission numbers or some such.

:::Since I am not a member of security.moodle.org, I can't speak for them. I don't know what all of their duties entail and whether there is a complete match up with what they cover for Moodle and what is covered in the guide.

::::Page protected, as requested. Please use this page for suggesting changes to [[Security]]. --[[User:Helen|Helen]] 19:06, 16 February 2006 (WST)

==Running Moodle with PHP safe_mode=on==

Does any security guru dare to document that? I think it is possible to do that (both to run Moodle with safe_mode=on and to write the document). ;-)

==What About System Validation Audit Trails?==
I am a physician in a medical laboratory doing both commercial and clinical trials (FDA regulated) diagnostic studies on a global basis. We are redesigning our entire validation, documentation and training systems and I am in the process of using MOODLE to manage the training process. I have a very computer savvy employee who used to be the administrator for the ANGEL LMS from Indiana Universiy (that is now a commercial product).

Now here is the delimma, everything even remotely associated with Clinical trials and even routine medicine is getting extremely regulated and we virtually are inspected 12+ times a year (1-4 day audits). With Part11 regulations ALL software (developed or off the shelf) has to have a full system validation. The FDA has moved this to a risk-based processes, so intense validation is in basically critical data where users have access to alter data. We develop our own LIS (Laboratory Information System) because you cannot get OTS software with functionality to work in clinical trials. Thus we have a small team of (pharmaceutical business experienced) validation personnel. So we will do something in this area. However it would be extremely helpful if others had done some of this work to share some use case examples and any outcomes or known areas of system weakness. The FDA is also very strongly into electronic audit trails, is that possible in MOODLE?

Since I am new to this software, I am just starting to explore it, but would welcome any experience in this area. We will sure share our experience with others becuase this type of software has a much broader application that just in educational institutions. (I was also the medical director of a fully ACCME accredited non-profit post-graduate medical education company that had over 5,000 medical technologist and physician subscribers. That company was sold to the largest CME provider for laboratory professionals in the world, ASCP).

Mick Glant, MD
Indianapolis, IN

:Hi Mick, assuming you've not done so already, please post in one of the forums in [http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=5 Using Moodle]. --[[User:Helen Foster|Helen Foster]] 04:05, 28 August 2008 (CDT)

== Add documentation for enforcement of password complexity ==

Helen - MDL-8031 (an improvement in Moodle 1.9) implemented the ability for an administrator to enforce passwords to meet certain criteria. Under the comment about using "good passwords" it would be nice to add a 1.9 tag with an explanation of how this works. It will be in the Site Administration block under Security/Site policies. There will be a check box to determine if password complexity should be enforced or not, the ability to set the minimum length of the password, the minimum number of digits, the minimum number of lowercase characters, the minimum number of uppercase characters and the minimum number of non alphanumeric characters. If a user enters a password that does not meet those requirements, they are given an error message indicating the nature of the problem with the entered password. Enforcing password complexity along with requiring users to change their initial password go a long way in helping to ensure that user's choose and are in fact using "good passwords". Let me know if you have any questions. Peace - Anthony

:Thanks Anthony, I've added a password policy section to the security page, as suggested. --[[User:Helen Foster|Helen Foster]] 15:55, 7 August 2007 (CDT)

== Link to french version ==

Could someone link this to the french version of the page, here : [https://docs.moodle.org/fr/Sécurité]

Thanks in advance

--[[User:Nicolas Martignoni|Nicolas Martignoni]] 12:09, 14 August 2007 (CDT)

:Thanks Nicolas, fr link added as requested. --[[User:Helen Foster|Helen Foster]] 13:12, 14 August 2007 (CDT)

== Rework the most secure/paranoid file permissions section ==

The permissions detailed in that section are only applicable to those running their own servers, but they are not suitable for people running moodle in shared hosting enviroments. In many of those hosted environments the web server is running under a 'client' user account, and not www-data/httpd/apache/etc. Changing the permissions to those specified in that section actually prevents moodle from working (see [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=102115] for an example).

It's difficult to give suitable permissions for hosted environment moodle users, as different hosting providers offer quite different web service configurations.

[[User:Iñaki Arenaza|Iñaki Arenaza]] 17:33, 27 July 2008 (CDT)

(I agree [[User:Petr Škoda (škoďák)|Petr Škoda (škoďák)]]skodak)
: Added a new section for people running Moodle on share hosting environments, with some hints to determine the most secure set of permissions [[User:Iñaki Arenaza|Iñaki Arenaza]] 06:15, 2 August 2008 (CDT)

== Introduction section inaccurate? ==

The introduction seems to suggest bugs should be reported to security.moodle.org and NOT on the tracker - but going to security.moodle.org takes you to a forum post that says you SHOULD post on the tracker. The page is protected so I can't update it myself, perhaps someone else would care to? [[User:Nigel McNie|Nigel McNie]] 23:02, 2 November 2008 (CST)

I fixed this [[User:Martin Dougiamas|Martin Dougiamas]] 00:28, 3 November 2008 (CST)

== Managing expectations ==

Thinking about some recent rants and raves, should something be said about managing expectations in Moodle. My line has been "Moodle isn't a banking application". In particular, don't put anything sensitive in a course files area as it isn't secure, deleting users doesn't delete them and it *may* be possible to continue to link to the data, switch off email based authentication, don't use guest access, set up some sort of access control on newly created courses etc.
--[[User:Howard Miller|Howard Miller]] 09:11, 3 November 2008 (CST)

Talk:Security

2008-11-03T15:11:57Z

Howardsmiller: /* Introduction section inaccurate? */

==set default for courses enrollable to 0==
This might also go in the "miscellanceous section". In cases where all students are enrolled by the administrator, would it not be effective to set the default for courses being enrollable to 0? I assume that instructors or admins could continue to enroll students manually or through an automated process, but students would no longer be able to enroll themselves through searching the course list.

If I am interpreting this correctly, I would add something like this to the section:

open the files moodle/course/edit_form.php

go to line 164 which starts with:
$mform->addElement('header','enrolhdr', get_string('enrolments'));

and write just above it the sentence

if (iseditingteacher()) {

goto line 238 and write the following just below

$mform->setDefault('enrolperiod', 0);

} // close ifiseditingteacher

This code might not be quite right--I copied it from this discussion http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=55702 but, at least in our case, we would want to retain teacher rights to adjust student enrollment manually.

If this is totally incorrect, please advise.

[[User: A. Wyatt| awyatt]]

==Enrollment key hint==
In my mind, the enrollment key hint is a security problem (because this is under the control of instructors who, in my experience, do not use hard-to-guess keys). The hint is not robust enough to really help a student if a "good" key has been set (and we wouldn't want it to be!). I think editing the enrolmentkeyhint string in moodle.php is a good short term solution until more robust key management is introduced into core (I noticed several items in the tracker, so I expect this will be looked at in future releases):

$string['enrolmentkeyhint'] = 'That enrolment key was incorrect, please try again.
Contact your instructor if you need assistance.';

I will not take credit for this idea; that belongs to Steve Hyndman. I think it is a simple change and admins should be encouraged to make it.

[[User: A. Wyatt| awyatt]]

:Thanks atw, the security page now includes information on removing the enrolment key hint. --[[User:Helen Foster|Helen Foster]] 04:05, 28 August 2008 (CDT)

A quick way to change file / directory permissions & owner / group:
find -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;
find -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
chown -R root:apache *
[[User:Mark Laffoon|Mark Laffoon]]

Little spelling error in opening paragraph."involving some '''conbination''' of input" should be '''combination''', not '''conbination'''.

:Thanks, it's fixed. --[[User:Helen Foster|Helen Foster]] 05:46, 15 March 2007 (CDT)

Should this page deal with valid users as well? I'm talking about input sanitization, etc. For example, in my school's version of Moodle, I can craft some code that logs the user out as soon as they see my forum post. I suggest taking a look at MediaWiki's approach to code sanitizing. -- [[User:Phyzome|Phyzome]] is [[User talk:Phyzome|Tim McCormack]] 12:45, 11 February 2006 (WST)

:Tim, I believe what you are mentioning is actually related to the future development of Moodle code, or possibly an existing security bug? There is actually a lead Security Officer, Petr Škoda (skodak), who is charged with reviewing the security code. He would probably like to see an example of what you mentioned. [[User:Moorejon|Moorejon]] Jonathan Moore 8:46, 12 February 2006 (CST)

::I have reported it in full detail at the security.moodle.org site. -- [[User:Phyzome|Phyzome]] is [[User talk:Phyzome|Tim McCormack]] 09:29, 16 February 2006 (WST)

Please, take a look at the "Before all" topic I have just added, based on Petr's opinion on this: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=39404#182024 - [[User:Davidds|David Delgado]] 02:11, 13 February 2006 (WST)

I have updated the file permissions, with what I hope are more correct values. [[User:Moorejon|Moorejon]] Jonathan Moore 10:52, 14 February 2006 (CST)

== Security for Security page ==

Maybe we should take a look at the security in this "Security" page. :-/ Should it be a protected page maintained directly by http://security.moodle.org? Please, give us your opinion on this in the "page comments" label in this page.

:I do think it SHOULD be protected and maintained directly by http://security.moodle.org , since it is the best place to introduce security hazards. Just add "Do not forget to send your admin password to safe@cracker.com", for example. Think also of more sophisticated cracking methods. By the way... moodledata directory owned by root with 700 permissions, [[User:Moorejon|Moorejon]]? :-/ - [[User:Davidds|David Delgado]] 16:44, 13 February 2006 (WST)

:::I think you make a good point. At a minimum this page needs to be monitored by someone. I think more subtle problems than the send password to x variety could be introduced too. Such as changing the permission numbers or some such.

:::Since I am not a member of security.moodle.org, I can't speak for them. I don't know what all of their duties entail and whether there is a complete match up with what they cover for Moodle and what is covered in the guide.

::::Page protected, as requested. Please use this page for suggesting changes to [[Security]]. --[[User:Helen|Helen]] 19:06, 16 February 2006 (WST)

==Running Moodle with PHP safe_mode=on==

Does any security guru dare to document that? I think it is possible to do that (both to run Moodle with safe_mode=on and to write the document). ;-)

==What About System Validation Audit Trails?==
I am a physician in a medical laboratory doing both commercial and clinical trials (FDA regulated) diagnostic studies on a global basis. We are redesigning our entire validation, documentation and training systems and I am in the process of using MOODLE to manage the training process. I have a very computer savvy employee who used to be the administrator for the ANGEL LMS from Indiana Universiy (that is now a commercial product).

Now here is the delimma, everything even remotely associated with Clinical trials and even routine medicine is getting extremely regulated and we virtually are inspected 12+ times a year (1-4 day audits). With Part11 regulations ALL software (developed or off the shelf) has to have a full system validation. The FDA has moved this to a risk-based processes, so intense validation is in basically critical data where users have access to alter data. We develop our own LIS (Laboratory Information System) because you cannot get OTS software with functionality to work in clinical trials. Thus we have a small team of (pharmaceutical business experienced) validation personnel. So we will do something in this area. However it would be extremely helpful if others had done some of this work to share some use case examples and any outcomes or known areas of system weakness. The FDA is also very strongly into electronic audit trails, is that possible in MOODLE?

Since I am new to this software, I am just starting to explore it, but would welcome any experience in this area. We will sure share our experience with others becuase this type of software has a much broader application that just in educational institutions. (I was also the medical director of a fully ACCME accredited non-profit post-graduate medical education company that had over 5,000 medical technologist and physician subscribers. That company was sold to the largest CME provider for laboratory professionals in the world, ASCP).

Mick Glant, MD
Indianapolis, IN

:Hi Mick, assuming you've not done so already, please post in one of the forums in [http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=5 Using Moodle]. --[[User:Helen Foster|Helen Foster]] 04:05, 28 August 2008 (CDT)

== Add documentation for enforcement of password complexity ==

Helen - MDL-8031 (an improvement in Moodle 1.9) implemented the ability for an administrator to enforce passwords to meet certain criteria. Under the comment about using "good passwords" it would be nice to add a 1.9 tag with an explanation of how this works. It will be in the Site Administration block under Security/Site policies. There will be a check box to determine if password complexity should be enforced or not, the ability to set the minimum length of the password, the minimum number of digits, the minimum number of lowercase characters, the minimum number of uppercase characters and the minimum number of non alphanumeric characters. If a user enters a password that does not meet those requirements, they are given an error message indicating the nature of the problem with the entered password. Enforcing password complexity along with requiring users to change their initial password go a long way in helping to ensure that user's choose and are in fact using "good passwords". Let me know if you have any questions. Peace - Anthony

:Thanks Anthony, I've added a password policy section to the security page, as suggested. --[[User:Helen Foster|Helen Foster]] 15:55, 7 August 2007 (CDT)

== Link to french version ==

Could someone link this to the french version of the page, here : [https://docs.moodle.org/fr/Sécurité]

Thanks in advance

--[[User:Nicolas Martignoni|Nicolas Martignoni]] 12:09, 14 August 2007 (CDT)

:Thanks Nicolas, fr link added as requested. --[[User:Helen Foster|Helen Foster]] 13:12, 14 August 2007 (CDT)

== Rework the most secure/paranoid file permissions section ==

The permissions detailed in that section are only applicable to those running their own servers, but they are not suitable for people running moodle in shared hosting enviroments. In many of those hosted environments the web server is running under a 'client' user account, and not www-data/httpd/apache/etc. Changing the permissions to those specified in that section actually prevents moodle from working (see [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=102115] for an example).

It's difficult to give suitable permissions for hosted environment moodle users, as different hosting providers offer quite different web service configurations.

[[User:Iñaki Arenaza|Iñaki Arenaza]] 17:33, 27 July 2008 (CDT)

(I agree [[User:Petr Škoda (škoďák)|Petr Škoda (škoďák)]]skodak)
: Added a new section for people running Moodle on share hosting environments, with some hints to determine the most secure set of permissions [[User:Iñaki Arenaza|Iñaki Arenaza]] 06:15, 2 August 2008 (CDT)

== Introduction section inaccurate? ==

The introduction seems to suggest bugs should be reported to security.moodle.org and NOT on the tracker - but going to security.moodle.org takes you to a forum post that says you SHOULD post on the tracker. The page is protected so I can't update it myself, perhaps someone else would care to? [[User:Nigel McNie|Nigel McNie]] 23:02, 2 November 2008 (CST)

I fixed this [[User:Martin Dougiamas|Martin Dougiamas]] 00:28, 3 November 2008 (CST)

== Managing expectations ==

Thinking about some recent rants and raves, should something be said about managing expectations in Moodle. My line has been "Moodle isn't a banking application". In particular, don't put anything sensitive in a course files area as it isn't secure. Deleting users doesn't delete them and it *may* be possible to continue to link to the data.
--[[User:Howard Miller|Howard Miller]] 09:11, 3 November 2008 (CST)

Capabilities/moodle/site:accessallgroups

2008-10-03T10:51:55Z

Howardsmiller: Removed confusing/incorrect remark

*This allows a user to access all [[Groups|groups]] in the given context (system, front page, course category or course context), irrespective of what group the user is in. For example, a user with this capability set to allow can browse forum postings of users in other groups when the forum is set to separate groups.
*The default teacher and non-editing teacher roles have this capability set to allow.

Note: Users with a role in which [[Capabilities/moodle/course:managegroups|moodle/course:managegroups]] is allowed and moodle/site:accessallgroups is not set are able to add/delete/update groups (and groupings, if enabled) in a course.

[[Category:Capabilities|Site]]
[[Category:Groups]]

[[zh:能力/moodle/site:accessallgroups]]

Roles FAQ

2008-09-25T09:46:28Z

Howardsmiller: /* What is the difference between the capabilities moodle/role:override and moodle/role:safeoverride? */

{{Roles}}
==What is the definition of a...==

;Capability
:A configurable aspect of behavior. As of version 1.9 Moodle has over 200 capabilities. Each capability has a computer friendly name like [[Capabilities/mod/forum:rate|mod/forum:rate]] and a human-friendly name like "Rate posts."
;Permission
:A capability and its value considered as a pair. There are four possible values: ''Not set'' (known as ''Inherit'' in 1.7), ''Allow'', ''Prevent'', and ''Prohibit''
;Role
:A named set of permissions, for example Teacher, Student and Forum moderator
;Context
:A functional area of Moodle, such as a course, module or block

==Why isn't my role change taking effect?==

In Moodle 1.7.x and 1.8.x, role assignments and overrides do not take effect immediately. They are delayed until the next time the user logs in. Starting with Moodle 1.9, manual role assignments and overrides take effect immediately. However automatic role assignments that result from changes to certain user policies (for example, Default front page role) may be delayed until the next login.

If you are testing a new role, [[Manage_roles#Testing_a_new_role | here are some suggestions]].

Also, please check the context in which the role is assigned. Certain capabilities e.g. [[Capabilities/moodle/user:update|moodle/user:update]] may only be applied in the System context, so giving such permissions in the course context will have no effect.

==Why are all my teacher accounts automatically added as "Teachers" in all my courses?==

If a user is assigned a role in the System context (Site administration -> Users -> Permissions -> Assign system roles) or in a Course category context, then the user will have this role in ALL courses within the context. For example, a user who is assigned the Teacher role in the System context will appear as a Teacher in all courses on the site, including the Front page course.

Except in very special cases, teachers and students should be assigned their respective roles in a Course context. When these roles are assigned in a System context, it is almost always an error on the part of the administrator.

If you have accidentally assigned a System role, go to ''Administration > Users > Permissions > Assign system roles'' unassign users using the right-facing arrow button. Then re-assign the roles in the appropriate Course context.

==Why are all students enrolled in all courses?==

Either
*Users are assigned the role of student in the site/system context rather than the course context (see FAQ above)
Or
*The default role for all users in ''Administration > Users > Permissions > User policies'' is set to Student rather than Authenticated user (Moodle 1.8 onwards).

==Why are there differences in the users listed as course participants and users assigned roles in a course?==

Users assigned roles in a higher context, for example users assigned the role of teacher in a course category context, may appear as course participants. The discussion [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=59900 Discrepancies between Assign Roles lists and Participants list] contains a longer explanation.

==How can I prevent administrators being listed as course participants?==

Ensure that administrators are not assigned another role in addition to their admin role.

==Why are hidden assignments still visible?==

Hidden assignments are not hidden from admins or teachers i.e. users with the [[Capabilities/moodle/role:viewhiddenassigns|viewhiddenassigns capability]].

==What is the difference between Prevent and Not set?==

If a role has capability ''X = Not set'', then the role is saying "I don't care about X." If a role has ''X = Prevent,'' then the role is saying "I don't want you be able to do X." Now you typically have multiple roles in a given context, and those roles may have different opinions about ''X''. If ALL of your roles have ''X = Not set'' then you will be effectively prevented from doing ''X'' because you need positive permission to do something. It's just like an election. If you are a candidate but no one votes, you don't win the election. If all of your roles except for one has ''X = Not set'' and the remaining role has ''X = Allow'', then you will be allowed to do X. Again, it's like an election where only one person votes, and they vote for you! For more complicated cases (e.g., roles assigned and overridden in different contexts) you need to understand [[How permissions are calculated]], but the principle is the same: By not voting, a role can allow other roles to determine the outcome of the election. Roles with lots of permissions Not set tend to mix well with other roles.

==What is my role here?==

This is a frequently asked question, but an improper one. The correct question is "What are my ''permissions'' here?" In any given context, you often have two or more roles. In addition, one or more role overrides may be in effect. Your permissions in a given context are a result of "adding" the individual permissions from these roles and overrides according to certain rules. As Tim Hunt writes in [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=90140 this discussion], the rules "normally do what you expect." However when permissions conflict, the results can be surprising, and it pays to understand [[How permissions are calculated]].

==How do I debug a roles-related problem?==

If you're having a problem that you suspect is related to roles, consider using [[The rolesdebug.php roles debugging script | the rolesdebug.php roles debugging script]]. You can download it from the [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1204 Modules and plugins database]. The script gives you a spatial view of your role assignments and overrides in a given context, and analyzes your permissions there. To interpret the output requires a basic understanding of roles and capabilities. If you are a complete roles novice, run the script and post the output to the [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=6826 Roles and Capabilities Forum].

==How can I prevent a user from changing their own password?==

To prevent a user from changing their own password, you must make sure they do not have moodle/user:changeownpassword ("Change own password") = Allow in the System context. The Authenticated user role (which is assigned to users in the System context) has moodle/user:changeownpassword = Allow by default, so you have two choices:
# edit Authenticated user, setting moodle/user:changeownpassword = Not set
# create a new role CannotChangeOwnPassword with moodle/user:changeownpassword = Prevent and all other permissions Not set and assign the role to selected users in the System context (Site administration -> Users -> Permissions -> Assign system roles).

Choice (1) will prevent ''all'' users from changing their passwords (except for the administrator, who can do anything). To selectively allow selected users (say teachers) to change their passwords, you could create a new role CanChangeOwnPassword with moodle/user:changeownpassword = Allow and all other permissions not set and assign the role to selected users in the System context (Site administration -> Users -> Permissions -> Assign system roles).

Choice (2) allows you to be selective, but if you have a lot of users that you want to prevent (say, all students), you will have to make a lot of role assignments in the System context. There is currently no convenient way to do this, so you might consider choice (1).

Note that you MUST deal with this permission in the System context.

==How can I prevent a user from editing their own profile?==

See [[Roles_FAQ#How can I prevent a user from changing their own password? | How can I prevent a user from changing their own password?]] The answer to this question is the same if you substitute ''edit their own profile'' for ''change their own password'' and ''moodle/user:editownprofile'' for ''moodle/user:changeownpassword.''

==Do roles have an inheritance relationship?==

No. Roles are completely independent.

* When you create a new role by copying an existing role, it is just like copying a file: the original and the copy are identical at the outset, but the copy has no ongoing relationship with the original. Changes to the original do not affect the copy and ''vice versa''.
* When you create a new role and select a value such as LEGACY:Student from the Legacy role type dropdown, you are not "inheriting" from the Student role. You are simply indicating that you want your role to have the same defaults as Student.
* Course creator does not "inherit" from Teacher (a common misconception). As with all roles, the two roles are completely independent. Course creator is actually a very simple role that can basically only create courses and not much else. However a user who creates a course is automatically assigned the role of Teacher in the newly-created course. This is how a course creator gets her teaching abilities within a course.

==Are there any differences in Roles in Moodle 1.7 and 1.8?==

In addition to many Roles fixes and refinements (see the list of [http://tracker.moodle.org/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=10221 Roles improvements] in the Tracker), in Moodle 1.8 the ''system'' context is separated from the ''front page'' context. Roles may be assigned in the front page context via ''Administration > Front Page > Front Page roles''.

A "Duplicate role" button has been added in Moodle 1.8, which makes creating new roles based on predefined roles much quicker.

==How do I change the name for "teacher" in the course description?==

Either
* Edit the role of Teacher via ''Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles'' and rename it. The new name will apply site-wide.
Or
* Create a duplicate teacher role with an alternative name and assign users the duplicate teacher role as appropriate in the course context. In ''Administration > Appearance > Course manager'' select the alternative name for teacher that you wish to be displayed in the course description.
Or
* One more way to do it in 1.8 is to create new "dummy" roles (no capabilities) with those names and assign them to teachers along with the real roles. In the course manager settings you can choose which roles display on the front page under each course. (The feature request [http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-9182 Ability to assign or display custom title for role of person in course] contains this further method.)

{{Moodle 1.9}}From Moodle 1.9 onwards, names for different roles in a course may be changed in the [[Course settings|course settings]].

==How do I enable teachers to set role overrides?==

#Access ''Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles''.
#Edit the teacher role and change the capability [[Capabilities/moodle/role:override|moodle/role:override]] (or [[Capabilities/moodle/role:safeoverride|moodle/role:safeoverride]] in Moodle 1.9.3 onwards) to allow.
#Click the button "Save changes".
#Click the tab "Allow role overrides" (in ''Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles'').
#Check the appropriate box(s) in the teacher row to set which role(s) teachers can override. Most likely it will just be the student role (you don't want teachers to be able to override admins!), so check the box where the teacher row intersects with the student column.
#Click the button "Save changes".

==How do I enable teachers to assign other teachers in a course?==

This is disabled by default but it can be switched on by modifying the teacher's role. In ''Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles'' select the "Allow role assignments" tab and tick the checkbox where Teacher and Teacher intersect.

==Why doesn't "Switch role to.." within a course seem to work properly for a course creator?==

This feature is intended for teachers so that they can see how their course appears for students. It doesn't work reliably outside the course.

Further information about this feature can be found in [[Switch roles]] and the paragraph on testing a new role in [[Manage roles]].

==Are there any example roles?==

Yes, as follows:

*[[Inspector role|Inspector]] - for providing external inspectors with permission to view all courses (without being required to enrol)
*[[Parent role|Parent]] - for providing parents/mentors/tutors with permission to view certain information about their children/mentees/tutees
*[[Demo teacher role|Demo teacher]] - for providing a demonstration teacher account with a password which can't be changed
*[[Forum moderator role|Forum moderator]] - for providing a user with permission in a particular forum to edit or delete forum posts, split discussions and move discussions to other forums
*[[Calendar editor role|Calendar editor]] - for providing a user with permission to add site events to the calendar
*[[Blogger role|Blogger]] - for limiting blogging to specific users only
*[[Quiz user with unlimited time role|Quiz user with unlimited time]] - for allowing a user unlimited time to attempt a quiz which has a time limit set
*[[Question creator role|Question creator]] - for enabling students to create questions for use in quizzes

==Logged-in users can't read the site news. What can I do?==

Either:
#Access ''Site Administration > Front Page > Front Page roles''
#Follow the "Override permissions" link
#Click on "Authenticated User"
#Scroll down to '''Forum'''
#Change the capability [[Capabilities/mod/forum:viewdiscussion|mod/forum:viewdiscussion]] to ''allow''
#Click the "Save changes" button at the bottom of the page

Or, in Moodle 1.9 onwards:
#Access ''Site Administration > Front Page > Front Page settings''
#Set the default front page role to student.

==How do I enable logged-in users to participate in front page activities?==

Either:
#Access ''Site Administration > Front Page > Front Page roles''
#Follow the "Override roles" link
#Click on "Authenticated User"
#Change capabilities to ''allow'' for all required activities e.g. record a choice, reply to posts
#Click the "Save changes" button at the bottom of the page

Note that for this to work, you need to make the default role for all users "authenticated user". This is the default for new versions of Moodle. In older versions, the default setting is guest, so if you have recently upgraded, you may have to change this setting. You can change the setting via ''Site Administration > Permissions > User Policies''.

Or:
#Access ''Site Administration > Front Page > Front Page roles''
#Click on Student
#Select all users in the potential users list, and use the left-facing arrow button to add them to the existing users list

{{Moodle 1.9}}Or, in Moodle 1.9 onwards:
#Access ''Site Administration > Front Page > Front Page settings''
#Set the default front page role to student.

==How do I copy a custom role from one Moodle site to another==

There is no import and export facility for roles, but it can be achieved nearly as easily using backup and restore.

# Create an empty course with all the default settings
# Assign anybody to your custom role (or roles) within the course
# Backup the course (all defaults are fine)
# Download the backup file
# Upload the backup file to the site files of the target Moodle
# Restore the course (all defaults are fine)
# Delete the course.

You will find that the custom roles have been recreated in the target site.

==What is the difference between the capabilities moodle/role:override and moodle/role:safeoverride?==

{{Moodle 1.9}}The capability [[Capabilities/moodle/role:safeoverride|moodle/role:safeoverride]] was added to Moodle 1.9.3 onwards, as a way of enabling teachers to [[Override permissions|override permissions]] safely. The capability moodle/role:override allows a user to override all permissions, whereas moodle/role:safeoverride only allows a user to override capabilities that do not have major risks attached to them.

==I locked myself out of the Administrator role. What do I do?==
If all else fails download the [http://cvs.moodle.org/contrib/tools/adminfix/ adminfix.php] script. The instructions are in the comments at the top of the file. Note, that this is a big hammer and should only be used if you are truly stuck.

==See also==

*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=6826 Roles and Capabilities forum]

Using Moodle forum discussions:
*[http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=103109 Deny File Download to Guests?]

[[Category:FAQ]]

[[de:Rollen FAQ]]
[[es:FAQ_roles]]
[[fr:FAQ des rôles]]
[[ja:ロールFAQ]]
[[ru:FAQ по ролям]]

Talk:Embedded Answers (Cloze) question type

2008-09-17T10:50:53Z

Howardsmiller: New page: The example doesn't work. The question about Paris does not parse! --~~~~

The example doesn't work.
The question about Paris does not parse! --[[User:Howard Miller|Howard Miller]] 05:50, 17 September 2008 (CDT)

Make your own theme

2008-09-03T07:01:01Z

Howardsmiller: /* Creating the new CSS file */ spelling

{{Themes}}

There are a number of ways of creating new themes for Moodle. This page describes a simple way of making a new theme based mostly on changing the colours, fonts and headings. Hopefully it gives you a start to do more adventurous things.

== Getting started ==

I need to make a few assumptions. There are many different ways to set up Moodle and I can't cover all of them. I am therefore assuming that you can handle the following...
* Copying files and directories in your Moodle installation.
* Editing a file in you Moodle installation.
* You have at least a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.
* If you need custom graphics you have a basic understanding of web graphics and can work graphics creation/editing software.

If there is a "trick" to this it is the ability to analyse the existing CSS for the Moodle page. There are a number of tools, but the best I have found is [http://www.getfirebug.com/ Firebug]. This is an extension for the [http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ Firefox] web browser, so you'll need that first. Basically, Firebug allows you to right click on any element on an HTML page, select "Inspect Element" and it will show you loads of information about that element including the CSS rules that affect it.

== Some basic information you should know ==

The cornerstone of Moodle themes is the 'Standard' theme. Every other theme (should) simply describe the '''differences''' from the Standard theme. This makes theme development relatively simple as you only have to identify the elements of the Standard theme that you wish to change. Often there are very few.

== First steps ==

The first thing to do is to make a new "empty" theme on your site. The easiest thing is to start with a theme that is very similar to the Standard theme and delete some stuff.

I will use the "Standard White" theme. Find the ''theme'' directory in the top level of your Moodle directory and find the ''standardwhite'' theme within. Copy the ''standardwhite'' directory and all its contents (important!) to a new directory still within the ''theme'' directory. You can call it whatever you like.

From now on we will be working entirely inside this new directory.

You can now (in the new directory - I won't say this again) delete two files - ''gradient.png'' and ''gradients.css''. These are specific to this theme and we won't need them. You can now login to your Moodle site as Administrator and select your "new" theme from the list. If you can't see it, check your new folders permissions and ownership are the same as all the other theme directories. All being well, this will now be identical to the Standard theme.

== Dealing with the config.php file ==

This is the one in every theme directory, not that other one! Open the file for editing and find the line (near the top)...

$THEME->sheets = array('gradients');

This line sets the CSS files that will be loaded by your theme. You can have more than one and the one there now refers to the file we just deleted. You should change the name '''gradient''' to, again, whatever you like (we'll create the file in a moment). I'm going to use '''user_styles''':

$THEME->sheets = array('user_styles');

There are lots of other options in this file which I won't consider. They are all well commented however. One interesting one is right at the end:

$THEME->custompix = false;

...see next section...

== Changing your icons ==

I don't really like the standard icons, the "chamelion" theme has a nicer set. If you want to use them simply copy the entire ''pix'' folder from within the chamelion theme directory to your new theme directory (take care with permissions). And change the setting in config.php...

$THEME->custompix = true;

== Creating the new CSS file ==

It's now (finally) time to create the file to contain all your custom CSS definitions. I set this in ''config.php'' to be '''user_styles''' so, in my case, I'm going to create an empty file called ''user_styles.css'' - don't forget the '''.css''' extension and watch the permissions!

Basically "all" we have to do now is to add CSS definitions to this file that "override" the CSS in the Standard theme that we want to change. For the most part you need to copy the definition exactly for the element you want to change. This can be heavy going but Firebug can make it "relatively" easy. There are loads of things you can change, here are a few worked through examples. My new theme is going to be broadly blues, greys and blacks. Not a million miles from the Standard theme (luckily).

=== Background color ===

This doesn't really need any poking about with Firebug. I want a light grey background to my site, so I'll add the following line to ''user_styles.css''':

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

Refresh the page. Your white background is now grey.

=== Default fonts ===

By using Firebug's Inspect Element and checking out the CSS on my example site I have established that the font family needs to be ''Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Moodle's is slightly different ''Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Not the end of the world, but we might as well have it right. You may have a completely different list.

Right click on a text element in the Site Administration and select "Inspect Element". The Firebug panel will appear with the HTML source selected (you can change the selected source in this panel if required, especially if you "missed" the element you intended to inspect). Make sure that "Style" is selected in the tabs on the right. There is quite a list of CSS affecting this text and some override others (styles that are overriden are handily struck-through). Run down the list until you see the font-family defined (not struck through). For me this was a definition for "body, table, td, th, li". You can add the new definition to you ''user_styles.css'' file:

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

=== Block headers ===

The next thing I want to do is to make the side-block headers have a blue background. Using Firebug I select the text of one of the blocks. However, I need to back up a bit to the ''div class="header"'' to get the bit I want. Notice that as you mouse over bits of the HTML the affected region is highlighted on the original. Clever! The elemenst seem to be '''.sideblock .header''' and no background colour is defined either here or further down the list. So, let's try:

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

Cool! It does what I needed. If it didn't, I would have had to play around a bit but there's no way around that.

=== Course Content ===

It's all a bit grey at the moment. I want the course content to be white. Again I use Firebug to find examine the bit I want. A bit of poking around finds that this is done with a table cell with class '''content'''. The CSS element is '''td.content''', again with no background colour defined. Ok, so in our user_styles.css let's add:

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

Well it worked but I'm not happy yet. The Topic Outline isn't white yet and the column to the left of the content is also white and can't be seen. This is what I did:

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

Note in the second case that even though I just wanted to change the background colour, I can't use '''background-color''' as that is different to ''background'' and won't override it. I have to reproduce the whole line and just change the bit I want. I also changed the background colour for the '''.generalbox''' class to white.

It's not the nicest theme ever but in a few minutes and with just a few lines of simple CSS we have made a big difference to the look of the Moodle site.

== Change the header ==

Probably the thing most people want is a custom header. This is all done by editing an HTML file (although there's a bit of PHP in it too) in the theme directory called '''header.html'''. The file checks if you are on the front page or any other page. The header is (or can be) different for each state.

Nearly everything that matters is in a small area of the code, so find this...

<pre>
if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } ?>
</pre>

What I am going to do is to remove the generated heading and simply replace it with an image. The slight trick is that you need to locate the URL of the theme directory. I copied my image straight into the theme directory first (you could put it in the pix sub-directory, but I didn't bother). The magic PHP code is this

<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>

this gets replaced with the URL of your theme directory (no matter what you name it).

So this is what I came up with...

<pre>
// if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
if (true) { // force home page style for everything
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<div style="text-align: center">
<img src="<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>/logo.png" alt="logo" />
</div>

<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading
</pre>

Note that I have commented out lines that I don't need anymore rather than deleting them (in case I want to change it back). The first if has now been "forced" true so that the same style will always be displayed. The $heading text has been commented out and replaced with an image (although you leave out the comment and have both). I've cheated slightly and add a snippet of CSS in the div to centre the image.

== Final CSS ==

This is the full CSS I ended up with. It's very simple and there's a lot more you can do. It's often all you need though.

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

.generalbox {
background-color: #fff;
}

.headermenu {
float: none;
background-color: #666b6e;
padding: 4px;
}

== Tips ==

* It's very common to have to make Moodle look like some other existing site. Use Firebug on that site to "steal" the CSS of the various elements to make sure it matches exactly.
* Moodle loads the CSS files using a PHP script the result of which is the CSS file name and line number indicated by Firebug is meaningless.

Make your own theme

2008-09-03T06:59:35Z

Howardsmiller: /* First steps */ spelling

{{Themes}}

There are a number of ways of creating new themes for Moodle. This page describes a simple way of making a new theme based mostly on changing the colours, fonts and headings. Hopefully it gives you a start to do more adventurous things.

== Getting started ==

I need to make a few assumptions. There are many different ways to set up Moodle and I can't cover all of them. I am therefore assuming that you can handle the following...
* Copying files and directories in your Moodle installation.
* Editing a file in you Moodle installation.
* You have at least a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.
* If you need custom graphics you have a basic understanding of web graphics and can work graphics creation/editing software.

If there is a "trick" to this it is the ability to analyse the existing CSS for the Moodle page. There are a number of tools, but the best I have found is [http://www.getfirebug.com/ Firebug]. This is an extension for the [http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ Firefox] web browser, so you'll need that first. Basically, Firebug allows you to right click on any element on an HTML page, select "Inspect Element" and it will show you loads of information about that element including the CSS rules that affect it.

== Some basic information you should know ==

The cornerstone of Moodle themes is the 'Standard' theme. Every other theme (should) simply describe the '''differences''' from the Standard theme. This makes theme development relatively simple as you only have to identify the elements of the Standard theme that you wish to change. Often there are very few.

== First steps ==

The first thing to do is to make a new "empty" theme on your site. The easiest thing is to start with a theme that is very similar to the Standard theme and delete some stuff.

I will use the "Standard White" theme. Find the ''theme'' directory in the top level of your Moodle directory and find the ''standardwhite'' theme within. Copy the ''standardwhite'' directory and all its contents (important!) to a new directory still within the ''theme'' directory. You can call it whatever you like.

From now on we will be working entirely inside this new directory.

You can now (in the new directory - I won't say this again) delete two files - ''gradient.png'' and ''gradients.css''. These are specific to this theme and we won't need them. You can now login to your Moodle site as Administrator and select your "new" theme from the list. If you can't see it, check your new folders permissions and ownership are the same as all the other theme directories. All being well, this will now be identical to the Standard theme.

== Dealing with the config.php file ==

This is the one in every theme directory, not that other one! Open the file for editing and find the line (near the top)...

$THEME->sheets = array('gradients');

This line sets the CSS files that will be loaded by your theme. You can have more than one and the one there now refers to the file we just deleted. You should change the name '''gradient''' to, again, whatever you like (we'll create the file in a moment). I'm going to use '''user_styles''':

$THEME->sheets = array('user_styles');

There are lots of other options in this file which I won't consider. They are all well commented however. One interesting one is right at the end:

$THEME->custompix = false;

...see next section...

== Changing your icons ==

I don't really like the standard icons, the "chamelion" theme has a nicer set. If you want to use them simply copy the entire ''pix'' folder from within the chamelion theme directory to your new theme directory (take care with permissions). And change the setting in config.php...

$THEME->custompix = true;

== Creating the new CSS file ==

It's now (finally) time to create the file to contain all your custom CSS definitions. I set this in ''config.php'' to be '''user_styles''' so, in my case, I'm going to create an empty file called ''user_styles.css'' - don't forget the '''.css''' extension and watch the permissions!

Basically "all" we have to do now is to add CSS definitions to this file that "override" the CSS in the Standard theme that we want to change. For the most part you need to copy the definition exactly for the element you want to change. This can be heavy going but Firebug can make it "relatively" easy. There are loads of thins you can change, here are a few worked through examples. My new theme is going to be broadly blues, greys and blacks. Not a million miles from the Standard theme (luckily).

=== Background color ===

This doesn't really need any poking about with Firebug. I want a light grey background to my site, so I'll add the following line to ''user_styles.css''':

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

Refresh the page. Your white background is now grey.

=== Default fonts ===

By using Firebug's Inspect Element and checking out the CSS on my example site I have established that the font family needs to be ''Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Moodle's is slightly different ''Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Not the end of the world, but we might as well have it right. You may have a completely different list.

Right click on a text element in the Site Administration and select "Inspect Element". The Firebug panel will appear with the HTML source selected (you can change the selected source in this panel if required, especially if you "missed" the element you intended to inspect). Make sure that "Style" is selected in the tabs on the right. There is quite a list of CSS affecting this text and some override others (styles that are overriden are handily struck-through). Run down the list until you see the font-family defined (not struck through). For me this was a definition for "body, table, td, th, li". You can add the new definition to you ''user_styles.css'' file:

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

=== Block headers ===

The next thing I want to do is to make the side-block headers have a blue background. Using Firebug I select the text of one of the blocks. However, I need to back up a bit to the ''div class="header"'' to get the bit I want. Notice that as you mouse over bits of the HTML the affected region is highlighted on the original. Clever! The elemenst seem to be '''.sideblock .header''' and no background colour is defined either here or further down the list. So, let's try:

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

Cool! It does what I needed. If it didn't, I would have had to play around a bit but there's no way around that.

=== Course Content ===

It's all a bit grey at the moment. I want the course content to be white. Again I use Firebug to find examine the bit I want. A bit of poking around finds that this is done with a table cell with class '''content'''. The CSS element is '''td.content''', again with no background colour defined. Ok, so in our user_styles.css let's add:

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

Well it worked but I'm not happy yet. The Topic Outline isn't white yet and the column to the left of the content is also white and can't be seen. This is what I did:

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

Note in the second case that even though I just wanted to change the background colour, I can't use '''background-color''' as that is different to ''background'' and won't override it. I have to reproduce the whole line and just change the bit I want. I also changed the background colour for the '''.generalbox''' class to white.

It's not the nicest theme ever but in a few minutes and with just a few lines of simple CSS we have made a big difference to the look of the Moodle site.

== Change the header ==

Probably the thing most people want is a custom header. This is all done by editing an HTML file (although there's a bit of PHP in it too) in the theme directory called '''header.html'''. The file checks if you are on the front page or any other page. The header is (or can be) different for each state.

Nearly everything that matters is in a small area of the code, so find this...

<pre>
if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } ?>
</pre>

What I am going to do is to remove the generated heading and simply replace it with an image. The slight trick is that you need to locate the URL of the theme directory. I copied my image straight into the theme directory first (you could put it in the pix sub-directory, but I didn't bother). The magic PHP code is this

<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>

this gets replaced with the URL of your theme directory (no matter what you name it).

So this is what I came up with...

<pre>
// if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
if (true) { // force home page style for everything
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<div style="text-align: center">
<img src="<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>/logo.png" alt="logo" />
</div>

<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading
</pre>

Note that I have commented out lines that I don't need anymore rather than deleting them (in case I want to change it back). The first if has now been "forced" true so that the same style will always be displayed. The $heading text has been commented out and replaced with an image (although you leave out the comment and have both). I've cheated slightly and add a snippet of CSS in the div to centre the image.

== Final CSS ==

This is the full CSS I ended up with. It's very simple and there's a lot more you can do. It's often all you need though.

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

.generalbox {
background-color: #fff;
}

.headermenu {
float: none;
background-color: #666b6e;
padding: 4px;
}

== Tips ==

* It's very common to have to make Moodle look like some other existing site. Use Firebug on that site to "steal" the CSS of the various elements to make sure it matches exactly.
* Moodle loads the CSS files using a PHP script the result of which is the CSS file name and line number indicated by Firebug is meaningless.

SCORM FAQ

2008-08-29T18:32:54Z

Howardsmiller:

{{Scorm}}==How can I create SCORM content?==

See [[Tools for creating SCORM content]] for a list of options.

==What version of SCORM is supported?==

Moodle Stable 1.9, and 1.8 both are passing the ADL Conformance test
suite 1.2..7 for SCORM 1.2. This is not the same as being certified SCORM 1.2 compliant, but it is the
level that you must attain before Moodle can apply for certification.

==See also==

* Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=1951 SCORM forum]

{{stub}}

Themes FAQ

2008-08-28T11:49:38Z

Howardsmiller:

{{stub}}{{Themes}}==How do I install a new theme?==

# Unzip the .zip file to an empty local directory.
# Upload folder to your web server to the /moodle/theme/[Theme Name]. (Replace [Theme Name] with the name of the theme you have downloaded.) Ensure the new theme folder and its contents are readable by the webserver. Change Read and Write permissions (CHMOD) for the files and folder to 755 - Owner read/write/execute, Group read/execute, Everyone read/execute. Incorrect permissions may prevent display of the newly installed theme.
# Choose your new theme from within Moodle via ''Administration > Appearance > Themes > Theme selector'' (or ''Administration > Configuration > Themes'' in versions of Moodle prior to 1.7).

==How do I create a custom theme?==

See [[Creating a custom theme]] and/or [[Make your own theme]].

==See also==

* Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=29 Themes forum]

[[Category:FAQ]]

TeX notation filter

2008-08-28T08:59:43Z

Howardsmiller: /* Installing the binaries */

The [[TeX Filter]] converts TeX code into GIF images. It uses a binary program(s) on the server to render the images (either the full LaTeX implementation, in Moodle 1.6 or later, or the [[MimeTeX]] binary that ships with Moodle for various platforms). Versions of MimeTex for Linux (glib2.3), Windows, Mac OS X and FreeBSD are included in the Moodle distribution.

No additional software or plugins are required on the client computers to display the images.

=== Usage ===

To use the filter the resource should include a TeX expression delimited by double-dollar signs. Example:

$$ sqrt( x + y ) $$

=== Using MimeTeX ===

MimeTeX is a number of pre-built binaries that are included in the Moodle standard distribution and are located in the filters/tex directory. There are a number of different versions for different operating systems. The TeX filter picks the appropriate binary for the detected host operating system (you will need to hack the script if your operating system is not included). Note that your web server needs to be set up with appropriate permissions for running binaries in that location. This appears to be particularly problematic on the Windows platform. See the [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=752 Mathematical Tools Forum] for more information.

If you are using the '''windows installer package''', type something like this into the box called 'path of ''latex'' binary'
"C:\Moodle_webserver\moodle\filter\tex\mimetex.exe"
Where you replace 'Moodle_webserver' with the real path to your moodle install. Note that on windows, the red x to the right of the input box will never go away, even when the details are correct.

If you use TeX in a GIFT question import file you must escape { } and = (even # and ~) with a \ before each symbol.

=== Improvements in 1.6 ===

{{Moodle 1.6}}

Moodle 1.6 adds the ability to use the full TeX formatting facilities (MimeTex only provides a subset). Three external binaries are used to render the images which may need setting up for your system. The filter will first check for a LaTeX renderer (Ghostscript is also required for this method, ImageMagick in the case of Linux) and failing that will use the simpler [[MimeTeX]] binary included in the Moodle distribution. LaTex permits the whole range of syntax, whereas [[MimeTeX]] only supports a mathematical subset.

=== Settings Page ===

The TeX filter settings page are primarily intended to adjust the operation of the LaTeX renderer. The defaults for the three path settings are selected according to the detection of the operating system on which Moodle is running. These are simply suggested common values - Moodle does not check that the binaries actually exist at these locations. Later versions of Moodle show a green tick or a red cross next to the path setting - this shows that the binary exists at that location (only). The settings have no effect on the operation of the MimeTex binary (used if any of these binaries are not found).

==== Installing the binaries ====

This depends on your platform, but for a typical Linux install you are going to need a latex implementation (e.g. tetex) and the convert binary (e.g, from ImageMagick). A typical command - in this case for Ubuntu - that installs everything you need would look something like:

apt-get install tetex-base tetex-bin tetex-extra imagemagick

You may need to experiment a bit (for example, ImageMagick doesn't seem to work properly on Solaris gut Ghostscript does). If you find the combination that works for your system kindly add the info to this page!

==== LaTeX preamble ====

Enables the LaTeX preamble to be specified. The default should work for most users, but you may need to change it to support non-latin character sets etc. Please see the LaTeX documentation for further details.

==== Transparent colour ====

This should be set to your normal text background colour. The default setting is #FFFFFF (i.e., white).

==== Density ====

This setting effects the size of the resulting image.

==== Path of ''latex'' binary ====

Path to standard latex binary.

On a MacOS X, the path is "/usr/texbin/".

==== Path of ''dvips'' binary ====

Path to standard dvips binary - generally distributed as part of a LaTeX system.

On a MacOS X, the path is "/usr/texbin/".

==== Path of ''convert'' binary ====

Path to standard convert binary. This is distributed as part of the Ghostscript system, or ImageMagick in Linux.

A simple check is made to establish if the binaries exist at the given paths. A tick or a cross is displayed alongside each as a result. Note that this does not check that the application actually works, just that it is there.

On a MacOS X, the path is "/usr/local/bin/".

=== Debugging TeX filter ===

The TeX filter has a debugging script included that should help if you are having problems. The URL will be as follows...

http://your.moodle.path/filter/tex/texdebug.php

You can either enter this path explicitly or with appropriate role permissions the TeX images (or more likely incorrectly rendered text, if you need debugging) will link to this. There are a number of options and suggestions to facilitate debugging the filter. Note that options for the latex/ghostscript versions are only provided from Moodle version 1.8.3.

=== Debian based systems ===

For some reason, the mimetex file that comes with Moodle doesn't work on Debian based systems (like Debian, Ubuntu, ...).
What works is installing Mimetex and Ghostscript on your server as Debian package (needs to be executed as root):

apt-get install tetex-extra mimetex gs

Move your old mimetex file away

mv /var/www/moodle/filter/tex/mimetex.linux /var/www/moodle/filter/tex/mimetex.linux.old

Make a symbolic link to the mimetex file, installed by the debian installer

ln -s /usr/bin/mimetex /var/www/moodle/filter/tex/mimetex.linux

== See also ==

* [[Filters]]
* [http://moodle.org/mod/glossary/view.php?id=2739&mode=letter&hook=M&sortkey=CREATION&sortorder=asc TeX Filter Glossary] - a [[Glossary|glossary]] you can add to your course which details usage of the supported [[TeX notation]].
* [http://www.latex-project.org/ LaTeX] - the LaTeX document preparation system.
* [http://www.ghostscript.com/ ghostscript] - required to render the image
* [http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html mimetex] - generates mathematical expressions
* [http://www.miktex.org/ MikTeX] - LaTeX for Windows systems

[[Category:Filter]]
[[Category:Mathematics]]

TeX notation filter

2008-08-28T08:59:11Z

Howardsmiller: /* Installing the binaries */

The [[TeX Filter]] converts TeX code into GIF images. It uses a binary program(s) on the server to render the images (either the full LaTeX implementation, in Moodle 1.6 or later, or the [[MimeTeX]] binary that ships with Moodle for various platforms). Versions of MimeTex for Linux (glib2.3), Windows, Mac OS X and FreeBSD are included in the Moodle distribution.

No additional software or plugins are required on the client computers to display the images.

=== Usage ===

To use the filter the resource should include a TeX expression delimited by double-dollar signs. Example:

$$ sqrt( x + y ) $$

=== Using MimeTeX ===

MimeTeX is a number of pre-built binaries that are included in the Moodle standard distribution and are located in the filters/tex directory. There are a number of different versions for different operating systems. The TeX filter picks the appropriate binary for the detected host operating system (you will need to hack the script if your operating system is not included). Note that your web server needs to be set up with appropriate permissions for running binaries in that location. This appears to be particularly problematic on the Windows platform. See the [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=752 Mathematical Tools Forum] for more information.

If you are using the '''windows installer package''', type something like this into the box called 'path of ''latex'' binary'
"C:\Moodle_webserver\moodle\filter\tex\mimetex.exe"
Where you replace 'Moodle_webserver' with the real path to your moodle install. Note that on windows, the red x to the right of the input box will never go away, even when the details are correct.

If you use TeX in a GIFT question import file you must escape { } and = (even # and ~) with a \ before each symbol.

=== Improvements in 1.6 ===

{{Moodle 1.6}}

Moodle 1.6 adds the ability to use the full TeX formatting facilities (MimeTex only provides a subset). Three external binaries are used to render the images which may need setting up for your system. The filter will first check for a LaTeX renderer (Ghostscript is also required for this method, ImageMagick in the case of Linux) and failing that will use the simpler [[MimeTeX]] binary included in the Moodle distribution. LaTex permits the whole range of syntax, whereas [[MimeTeX]] only supports a mathematical subset.

=== Settings Page ===

The TeX filter settings page are primarily intended to adjust the operation of the LaTeX renderer. The defaults for the three path settings are selected according to the detection of the operating system on which Moodle is running. These are simply suggested common values - Moodle does not check that the binaries actually exist at these locations. Later versions of Moodle show a green tick or a red cross next to the path setting - this shows that the binary exists at that location (only). The settings have no effect on the operation of the MimeTex binary (used if any of these binaries are not found).

==== Installing the binaries ====

This depends on your platform, but for a typical Linux install you are going to need a latex implementation (e.g. tetex) and the convert binary (e.g, from ImageMagick). A typical command - in this case for Ubuntu - that installs everything you need would look something like:

apt-get install tetex-base tetex-bin tetex-extra imagemagick

You may need to experiment a bit (for example, ImageMagick doesn't seem to work properly on Solaris). If you find the combination that works for your system kindly add the info to this page!

==== LaTeX preamble ====

Enables the LaTeX preamble to be specified. The default should work for most users, but you may need to change it to support non-latin character sets etc. Please see the LaTeX documentation for further details.

==== Transparent colour ====

This should be set to your normal text background colour. The default setting is #FFFFFF (i.e., white).

==== Density ====

This setting effects the size of the resulting image.

==== Path of ''latex'' binary ====

Path to standard latex binary.

On a MacOS X, the path is "/usr/texbin/".

==== Path of ''dvips'' binary ====

Path to standard dvips binary - generally distributed as part of a LaTeX system.

On a MacOS X, the path is "/usr/texbin/".

==== Path of ''convert'' binary ====

Path to standard convert binary. This is distributed as part of the Ghostscript system, or ImageMagick in Linux.

A simple check is made to establish if the binaries exist at the given paths. A tick or a cross is displayed alongside each as a result. Note that this does not check that the application actually works, just that it is there.

On a MacOS X, the path is "/usr/local/bin/".

=== Debugging TeX filter ===

The TeX filter has a debugging script included that should help if you are having problems. The URL will be as follows...

http://your.moodle.path/filter/tex/texdebug.php

You can either enter this path explicitly or with appropriate role permissions the TeX images (or more likely incorrectly rendered text, if you need debugging) will link to this. There are a number of options and suggestions to facilitate debugging the filter. Note that options for the latex/ghostscript versions are only provided from Moodle version 1.8.3.

=== Debian based systems ===

For some reason, the mimetex file that comes with Moodle doesn't work on Debian based systems (like Debian, Ubuntu, ...).
What works is installing Mimetex and Ghostscript on your server as Debian package (needs to be executed as root):

apt-get install tetex-extra mimetex gs

Move your old mimetex file away

mv /var/www/moodle/filter/tex/mimetex.linux /var/www/moodle/filter/tex/mimetex.linux.old

Make a symbolic link to the mimetex file, installed by the debian installer

ln -s /usr/bin/mimetex /var/www/moodle/filter/tex/mimetex.linux

== See also ==

* [[Filters]]
* [http://moodle.org/mod/glossary/view.php?id=2739&mode=letter&hook=M&sortkey=CREATION&sortorder=asc TeX Filter Glossary] - a [[Glossary|glossary]] you can add to your course which details usage of the supported [[TeX notation]].
* [http://www.latex-project.org/ LaTeX] - the LaTeX document preparation system.
* [http://www.ghostscript.com/ ghostscript] - required to render the image
* [http://www.forkosh.com/mimetex.html mimetex] - generates mathematical expressions
* [http://www.miktex.org/ MikTeX] - LaTeX for Windows systems

[[Category:Filter]]
[[Category:Mathematics]]

Moodle Network FAQ

2008-08-26T14:10:39Z

Howardsmiller:

{{stub}}==What is MNET?==

MNET is the mechanism in Moodle for connecting to other Moodle (or Mahara) sites. It's short for "Moodle Network". See [[Moodle Network]] for more information.

==It doesn't work. What do I do now?==

Always make sure you have the latest version possible of Moodle. There have been a lot of fixes. Then make sure that you have debugging turned on (Site Administration > Server > Debugging). This will greatly increase the chance of the underlying problem being reported.

==See also==

* Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=6976 Moodle Network forum]

[[Category:MNET]]
[[Category:FAQ]]

Mahara

2008-08-26T12:01:13Z

Howardsmiller: New page: From the [http://www.mahara.org/ Mahara web site]: "Mahara is an open source e-portfolio, weblog, resume builder and social networking system, connecting users and creating online learner...

From the [http://www.mahara.org/ Mahara web site]:

"Mahara is an open source e-portfolio, weblog, resume builder and social networking system, connecting users and creating online learner communities. Mahara is designed to provide users with the tools to demonstrate their life-long learning, skills and development over time to selected audiences."

It has close links with Moodle. There is a built in single sign on facility called [[Mahoodle]]. Future versions of Moodle will have even closer ties as the [[Development:Mahara Portfolio Plugin|Mahara Portfolio Plugin]] development progresses.

User's roles report

2008-08-25T18:29:21Z

Howardsmiller: /* Links */

{{stub}}
This contributed code lists all the roles a user may have on a site and is an administrative report. Requires a small hack plus a download.

==Links==
*This contributed code's [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1005 Modules and plugins database page] for downloads and more information.
*Discussions: please leave on [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1005 this contributed code's home page]
*Tracker report MDL-14937 - ''Please add Tim Hunt's "User's Roles" report into core''

[[Category: Administrator]]
[[Category:Contributed code]]

User's roles report

2008-08-25T18:28:43Z

Howardsmiller: /* Links */

{{stub}}
This contributed code lists all the roles a user may have on a site and is an administrative report. Requires a small hack plus a download.

==Links==
*This contributed code's [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1005 Modules and plugins database page] for downloads and more information.
*Discussions: please leave on [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1005 this contributed code's home page]
*Tracker report MDL-14937

[[Category: Administrator]]
[[Category:Contributed code]]

User's roles report

2008-08-25T18:27:49Z

Howardsmiller:

{{stub}}
This contributed code lists all the roles a user may have on a site and is an administrative report. Requires a small hack plus a download.

==Links==
*This contributed code's [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1005 Modules and plugins database page] for downloads and more information.
*Discussions: please leave on [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=13&rid=1005 this contributed code's home page]
*Tracker report [http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-14937 MDL-14937]

[[Category: Administrator]]
[[Category:Contributed code]]

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T14:58:46Z

Howardsmiller: /* Tips */

{{Themes}}

There are a number of ways of creating new themes for Moodle. This page describes a simple way of making a new theme based mostly on changing the colours, fonts and headings. Hopefully it gives you a start to do more adventurous things.

== Getting started ==

I need to make a few assumptions. There are many different ways to set up Moodle and I can't cover all of them. I am therefore assuming that you can handle the following...
* Copying files and directories in your Moodle installation.
* Editing a file in you Moodle installation.
* You have at least a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.
* If you need custom graphics you have a basic understanding of web graphics and can work graphics creation/editing software.

If there is a "trick" to this it is the ability to analyse the existing CSS for the Moodle page. There are a number of tools, but the best I have found is [http://www.getfirebug.com/ Firebug]. This is an extension for the [http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ Firefox] web browser, so you'll need that first. Basically, Firebug allows you to right click on any element on an HTML page, select "Inspect Element" and it will show you loads of information about that element including the CSS rules that affect it.

== Some basic information you should know ==

The cornerstone of Moodle themes is the 'Standard' theme. Every other theme (should) simply describe the '''differences''' from the Standard theme. This makes theme development relatively simple as you only have to identify the elements of the Standard theme that you wish to change. Often there are very few.

== First steps ==

The first thing to do is to make a new "empty" theme on you site. The easiest thing is to start with a theme that is very similar to the Standard theme and delete some stuff.

I will use the "Standard White" theme. Find the ''theme'' directory in the top level of your Moodle directory and find the ''standardwhite'' theme within. Copy the ''standardwhite'' directory and all its contents (important!) to a new directory still within the ''theme'' directory. You can call it whatever you like.

From now on we will be working entirely inside this new directory.

You can now (in the new directory - I won't say this again) delete two files - ''gradient.png'' and ''gradients.css''. These are specific to this theme and we won't need them. You can now login to your Moodle site as Administrator and select your "new" theme from the list. If you can't see it, check your new folders permissions and ownership are the same as all the other theme directories. All being well, this will now be identical to the Standard theme.

== Dealing with the config.php file ==

This is the one in every theme directory, not that other one! Open the file for editing and find the line (near the top)...

$THEME->sheets = array('gradients');

This line sets the CSS files that will be loaded by your theme. You can have more than one and the one there now refers to the file we just deleted. You should change the name '''gradient''' to, again, whatever you like (we'll create the file in a moment). I'm going to use '''user_styles''':

$THEME->sheets = array('user_styles');

There are lots of other options in this file which I won't consider. They are all well commented however. One interesting one is right at the end:

$THEME->custompix = false;

...see next section...

== Changing your icons ==

I don't really like the standard icons, the "chamelion" theme has a nicer set. If you want to use them simply copy the entire ''pix'' folder from within the chamelion theme directory to your new theme directory (take care with permissions). And change the setting in config.php...

$THEME->custompix = true;

== Creating the new CSS file ==

It's now (finally) time to create the file to contain all your custom CSS definitions. I set this in ''config.php'' to be '''user_styles''' so, in my case, I'm going to create an empty file called ''user_styles.css'' - don't forget the '''.css''' extension and watch the permissions!

Basically "all" we have to do now is to add CSS definitions to this file that "override" the CSS in the Standard theme that we want to change. For the most part you need to copy the definition exactly for the element you want to change. This can be heavy going but Firebug can make it "relatively" easy. There are loads of thins you can change, here are a few worked through examples. My new theme is going to be broadly blues, greys and blacks. Not a million miles from the Standard theme (luckily).

=== Background color ===

This doesn't really need any poking about with Firebug. I want a light grey background to my site, so I'll add the following line to ''user_styles.css''':

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

Refresh the page. Your white background is now grey.

=== Default fonts ===

By using Firebug's Inspect Element and checking out the CSS on my example site I have established that the font family needs to be ''Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Moodle's is slightly different ''Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Not the end of the world, but we might as well have it right. You may have a completely different list.

Right click on a text element in the Site Administration and select "Inspect Element". The Firebug panel will appear with the HTML source selected (you can change the selected source in this panel if required, especially if you "missed" the element you intended to inspect). Make sure that "Style" is selected in the tabs on the right. There is quite a list of CSS affecting this text and some override others (styles that are overriden are handily struck-through). Run down the list until you see the font-family defined (not struck through). For me this was a definition for "body, table, td, th, li". You can add the new definition to you ''user_styles.css'' file:

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

=== Block headers ===

The next thing I want to do is to make the side-block headers have a blue background. Using Firebug I select the text of one of the blocks. However, I need to back up a bit to the ''div class="header"'' to get the bit I want. Notice that as you mouse over bits of the HTML the affected region is highlighted on the original. Clever! The elemenst seem to be '''.sideblock .header''' and no background colour is defined either here or further down the list. So, let's try:

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

Cool! It does what I needed. If it didn't, I would have had to play around a bit but there's no way around that.

=== Course Content ===

It's all a bit grey at the moment. I want the course content to be white. Again I use Firebug to find examine the bit I want. A bit of poking around finds that this is done with a table cell with class '''content'''. The CSS element is '''td.content''', again with no background colour defined. Ok, so in our user_styles.css let's add:

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

Well it worked but I'm not happy yet. The Topic Outline isn't white yet and the column to the left of the content is also white and can't be seen. This is what I did:

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

Note in the second case that even though I just wanted to change the background colour, I can't use '''background-color''' as that is different to ''background'' and won't override it. I have to reproduce the whole line and just change the bit I want. I also changed the background colour for the '''.generalbox''' class to white.

It's not the nicest theme ever but in a few minutes and with just a few lines of simple CSS we have made a big difference to the look of the Moodle site.

== Change the header ==

Probably the thing most people want is a custom header. This is all done by editing an HTML file (although there's a bit of PHP in it too) in the theme directory called '''header.html'''. The file checks if you are on the front page or any other page. The header is (or can be) different for each state.

Nearly everything that matters is in a small area of the code, so find this...

<pre>
if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } ?>
</pre>

What I am going to do is to remove the generated heading and simply replace it with an image. The slight trick is that you need to locate the URL of the theme directory. I copied my image straight into the theme directory first (you could put it in the pix sub-directory, but I didn't bother). The magic PHP code is this

<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>

this gets replaced with the URL of your theme directory (no matter what you name it).

So this is what I came up with...

<pre>
// if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
if (true) { // force home page style for everything
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<div style="text-align: center">
<img src="<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>/logo.png" alt="logo" />
</div>

<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading
</pre>

Note that I have commented out lines that I don't need anymore rather than deleting them (in case I want to change it back). The first if has now been "forced" true so that the same style will always be displayed. The $heading text has been commented out and replaced with an image (although you leave out the comment and have both). I've cheated slightly and add a snippet of CSS in the div to centre the image.

== Final CSS ==

This is the full CSS I ended up with. It's very simple and there's a lot more you can do. It's often all you need though.

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

.generalbox {
background-color: #fff;
}

.headermenu {
float: none;
background-color: #666b6e;
padding: 4px;
}

== Tips ==

* It's very common to have to make Moodle look like some other existing site. Use Firebug on that site to "steal" the CSS of the various elements to make sure it matches exactly.
* Moodle loads the CSS files using a PHP script the result of which is the CSS file name and line number indicated by Firebug is meaningless.

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T14:40:48Z

Howardsmiller: /* Change the header */

{{Themes}}

There are a number of ways of creating new themes for Moodle. This page describes a simple way of making a new theme based mostly on changing the colours, fonts and headings. Hopefully it gives you a start to do more adventurous things.

== Getting started ==

I need to make a few assumptions. There are many different ways to set up Moodle and I can't cover all of them. I am therefore assuming that you can handle the following...
* Copying files and directories in your Moodle installation.
* Editing a file in you Moodle installation.
* You have at least a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.
* If you need custom graphics you have a basic understanding of web graphics and can work graphics creation/editing software.

If there is a "trick" to this it is the ability to analyse the existing CSS for the Moodle page. There are a number of tools, but the best I have found is [http://www.getfirebug.com/ Firebug]. This is an extension for the [http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ Firefox] web browser, so you'll need that first. Basically, Firebug allows you to right click on any element on an HTML page, select "Inspect Element" and it will show you loads of information about that element including the CSS rules that affect it.

== Some basic information you should know ==

The cornerstone of Moodle themes is the 'Standard' theme. Every other theme (should) simply describe the '''differences''' from the Standard theme. This makes theme development relatively simple as you only have to identify the elements of the Standard theme that you wish to change. Often there are very few.

== First steps ==

The first thing to do is to make a new "empty" theme on you site. The easiest thing is to start with a theme that is very similar to the Standard theme and delete some stuff.

I will use the "Standard White" theme. Find the ''theme'' directory in the top level of your Moodle directory and find the ''standardwhite'' theme within. Copy the ''standardwhite'' directory and all its contents (important!) to a new directory still within the ''theme'' directory. You can call it whatever you like.

From now on we will be working entirely inside this new directory.

You can now (in the new directory - I won't say this again) delete two files - ''gradient.png'' and ''gradients.css''. These are specific to this theme and we won't need them. You can now login to your Moodle site as Administrator and select your "new" theme from the list. If you can't see it, check your new folders permissions and ownership are the same as all the other theme directories. All being well, this will now be identical to the Standard theme.

== Dealing with the config.php file ==

This is the one in every theme directory, not that other one! Open the file for editing and find the line (near the top)...

$THEME->sheets = array('gradients');

This line sets the CSS files that will be loaded by your theme. You can have more than one and the one there now refers to the file we just deleted. You should change the name '''gradient''' to, again, whatever you like (we'll create the file in a moment). I'm going to use '''user_styles''':

$THEME->sheets = array('user_styles');

There are lots of other options in this file which I won't consider. They are all well commented however. One interesting one is right at the end:

$THEME->custompix = false;

...see next section...

== Changing your icons ==

I don't really like the standard icons, the "chamelion" theme has a nicer set. If you want to use them simply copy the entire ''pix'' folder from within the chamelion theme directory to your new theme directory (take care with permissions). And change the setting in config.php...

$THEME->custompix = true;

== Creating the new CSS file ==

It's now (finally) time to create the file to contain all your custom CSS definitions. I set this in ''config.php'' to be '''user_styles''' so, in my case, I'm going to create an empty file called ''user_styles.css'' - don't forget the '''.css''' extension and watch the permissions!

Basically "all" we have to do now is to add CSS definitions to this file that "override" the CSS in the Standard theme that we want to change. For the most part you need to copy the definition exactly for the element you want to change. This can be heavy going but Firebug can make it "relatively" easy. There are loads of thins you can change, here are a few worked through examples. My new theme is going to be broadly blues, greys and blacks. Not a million miles from the Standard theme (luckily).

=== Background color ===

This doesn't really need any poking about with Firebug. I want a light grey background to my site, so I'll add the following line to ''user_styles.css''':

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

Refresh the page. Your white background is now grey.

=== Default fonts ===

By using Firebug's Inspect Element and checking out the CSS on my example site I have established that the font family needs to be ''Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Moodle's is slightly different ''Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Not the end of the world, but we might as well have it right. You may have a completely different list.

Right click on a text element in the Site Administration and select "Inspect Element". The Firebug panel will appear with the HTML source selected (you can change the selected source in this panel if required, especially if you "missed" the element you intended to inspect). Make sure that "Style" is selected in the tabs on the right. There is quite a list of CSS affecting this text and some override others (styles that are overriden are handily struck-through). Run down the list until you see the font-family defined (not struck through). For me this was a definition for "body, table, td, th, li". You can add the new definition to you ''user_styles.css'' file:

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

=== Block headers ===

The next thing I want to do is to make the side-block headers have a blue background. Using Firebug I select the text of one of the blocks. However, I need to back up a bit to the ''div class="header"'' to get the bit I want. Notice that as you mouse over bits of the HTML the affected region is highlighted on the original. Clever! The elemenst seem to be '''.sideblock .header''' and no background colour is defined either here or further down the list. So, let's try:

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

Cool! It does what I needed. If it didn't, I would have had to play around a bit but there's no way around that.

=== Course Content ===

It's all a bit grey at the moment. I want the course content to be white. Again I use Firebug to find examine the bit I want. A bit of poking around finds that this is done with a table cell with class '''content'''. The CSS element is '''td.content''', again with no background colour defined. Ok, so in our user_styles.css let's add:

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

Well it worked but I'm not happy yet. The Topic Outline isn't white yet and the column to the left of the content is also white and can't be seen. This is what I did:

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

Note in the second case that even though I just wanted to change the background colour, I can't use '''background-color''' as that is different to ''background'' and won't override it. I have to reproduce the whole line and just change the bit I want. I also changed the background colour for the '''.generalbox''' class to white.

It's not the nicest theme ever but in a few minutes and with just a few lines of simple CSS we have made a big difference to the look of the Moodle site.

== Change the header ==

Probably the thing most people want is a custom header. This is all done by editing an HTML file (although there's a bit of PHP in it too) in the theme directory called '''header.html'''. The file checks if you are on the front page or any other page. The header is (or can be) different for each state.

Nearly everything that matters is in a small area of the code, so find this...

<pre>
if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } ?>
</pre>

What I am going to do is to remove the generated heading and simply replace it with an image. The slight trick is that you need to locate the URL of the theme directory. I copied my image straight into the theme directory first (you could put it in the pix sub-directory, but I didn't bother). The magic PHP code is this

<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>

this gets replaced with the URL of your theme directory (no matter what you name it).

So this is what I came up with...

<pre>
// if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
if (true) { // force home page style for everything
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<div style="text-align: center">
<img src="<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>/logo.png" alt="logo" />
</div>

<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading
</pre>

Note that I have commented out lines that I don't need anymore rather than deleting them (in case I want to change it back). The first if has now been "forced" true so that the same style will always be displayed. The $heading text has been commented out and replaced with an image (although you leave out the comment and have both). I've cheated slightly and add a snippet of CSS in the div to centre the image.

== Final CSS ==

This is the full CSS I ended up with. It's very simple and there's a lot more you can do. It's often all you need though.

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

.generalbox {
background-color: #fff;
}

.headermenu {
float: none;
background-color: #666b6e;
padding: 4px;
}

== Tips ==

* It's very common to have to make Moodle look like some other existing site. Use Firebug on that site to "steal" the CSS of the various elements to make sure it matches exactly.

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T14:40:01Z

Howardsmiller: /* Change the header */

{{Themes}}

There are a number of ways of creating new themes for Moodle. This page describes a simple way of making a new theme based mostly on changing the colours, fonts and headings. Hopefully it gives you a start to do more adventurous things.

== Getting started ==

I need to make a few assumptions. There are many different ways to set up Moodle and I can't cover all of them. I am therefore assuming that you can handle the following...
* Copying files and directories in your Moodle installation.
* Editing a file in you Moodle installation.
* You have at least a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.
* If you need custom graphics you have a basic understanding of web graphics and can work graphics creation/editing software.

If there is a "trick" to this it is the ability to analyse the existing CSS for the Moodle page. There are a number of tools, but the best I have found is [http://www.getfirebug.com/ Firebug]. This is an extension for the [http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ Firefox] web browser, so you'll need that first. Basically, Firebug allows you to right click on any element on an HTML page, select "Inspect Element" and it will show you loads of information about that element including the CSS rules that affect it.

== Some basic information you should know ==

The cornerstone of Moodle themes is the 'Standard' theme. Every other theme (should) simply describe the '''differences''' from the Standard theme. This makes theme development relatively simple as you only have to identify the elements of the Standard theme that you wish to change. Often there are very few.

== First steps ==

The first thing to do is to make a new "empty" theme on you site. The easiest thing is to start with a theme that is very similar to the Standard theme and delete some stuff.

I will use the "Standard White" theme. Find the ''theme'' directory in the top level of your Moodle directory and find the ''standardwhite'' theme within. Copy the ''standardwhite'' directory and all its contents (important!) to a new directory still within the ''theme'' directory. You can call it whatever you like.

From now on we will be working entirely inside this new directory.

You can now (in the new directory - I won't say this again) delete two files - ''gradient.png'' and ''gradients.css''. These are specific to this theme and we won't need them. You can now login to your Moodle site as Administrator and select your "new" theme from the list. If you can't see it, check your new folders permissions and ownership are the same as all the other theme directories. All being well, this will now be identical to the Standard theme.

== Dealing with the config.php file ==

This is the one in every theme directory, not that other one! Open the file for editing and find the line (near the top)...

$THEME->sheets = array('gradients');

This line sets the CSS files that will be loaded by your theme. You can have more than one and the one there now refers to the file we just deleted. You should change the name '''gradient''' to, again, whatever you like (we'll create the file in a moment). I'm going to use '''user_styles''':

$THEME->sheets = array('user_styles');

There are lots of other options in this file which I won't consider. They are all well commented however. One interesting one is right at the end:

$THEME->custompix = false;

...see next section...

== Changing your icons ==

I don't really like the standard icons, the "chamelion" theme has a nicer set. If you want to use them simply copy the entire ''pix'' folder from within the chamelion theme directory to your new theme directory (take care with permissions). And change the setting in config.php...

$THEME->custompix = true;

== Creating the new CSS file ==

It's now (finally) time to create the file to contain all your custom CSS definitions. I set this in ''config.php'' to be '''user_styles''' so, in my case, I'm going to create an empty file called ''user_styles.css'' - don't forget the '''.css''' extension and watch the permissions!

Basically "all" we have to do now is to add CSS definitions to this file that "override" the CSS in the Standard theme that we want to change. For the most part you need to copy the definition exactly for the element you want to change. This can be heavy going but Firebug can make it "relatively" easy. There are loads of thins you can change, here are a few worked through examples. My new theme is going to be broadly blues, greys and blacks. Not a million miles from the Standard theme (luckily).

=== Background color ===

This doesn't really need any poking about with Firebug. I want a light grey background to my site, so I'll add the following line to ''user_styles.css''':

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

Refresh the page. Your white background is now grey.

=== Default fonts ===

By using Firebug's Inspect Element and checking out the CSS on my example site I have established that the font family needs to be ''Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Moodle's is slightly different ''Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Not the end of the world, but we might as well have it right. You may have a completely different list.

Right click on a text element in the Site Administration and select "Inspect Element". The Firebug panel will appear with the HTML source selected (you can change the selected source in this panel if required, especially if you "missed" the element you intended to inspect). Make sure that "Style" is selected in the tabs on the right. There is quite a list of CSS affecting this text and some override others (styles that are overriden are handily struck-through). Run down the list until you see the font-family defined (not struck through). For me this was a definition for "body, table, td, th, li". You can add the new definition to you ''user_styles.css'' file:

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

=== Block headers ===

The next thing I want to do is to make the side-block headers have a blue background. Using Firebug I select the text of one of the blocks. However, I need to back up a bit to the ''div class="header"'' to get the bit I want. Notice that as you mouse over bits of the HTML the affected region is highlighted on the original. Clever! The elemenst seem to be '''.sideblock .header''' and no background colour is defined either here or further down the list. So, let's try:

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

Cool! It does what I needed. If it didn't, I would have had to play around a bit but there's no way around that.

=== Course Content ===

It's all a bit grey at the moment. I want the course content to be white. Again I use Firebug to find examine the bit I want. A bit of poking around finds that this is done with a table cell with class '''content'''. The CSS element is '''td.content''', again with no background colour defined. Ok, so in our user_styles.css let's add:

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

Well it worked but I'm not happy yet. The Topic Outline isn't white yet and the column to the left of the content is also white and can't be seen. This is what I did:

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

Note in the second case that even though I just wanted to change the background colour, I can't use '''background-color''' as that is different to ''background'' and won't override it. I have to reproduce the whole line and just change the bit I want. I also changed the background colour for the '''.generalbox''' class to white.

It's not the nicest theme ever but in a few minutes and with just a few lines of simple CSS we have made a big difference to the look of the Moodle site.

== Change the header ==

Probably the thing most people want is a custom header. This is all done by editing an HTML file (although there's a bit of PHP in it too) in the theme directory called '''header.html'''. The file checks if you are on the front page or any other page. The header is (or can be) different for each state.

Nearly everything that matters is in a small area of the code, so find this...

<pre>
if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } ?>
</pre>

What I am going to do is to remove the generated heading and simply replace it with an image. The slight trick is that you need to locate the URL of the theme directory. I copied my image straight into the theme directory first (you could put it in the pix sub-directory, but I didn't bother). The magic PHP code is this

<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>

this gets replaced with the URL of your theme directory (no matter what you name it).

So this is what I came up with...

// if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
if (true) { // force home page style for everything
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<div style="text-align: center">
<img src="<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>/logo.png" alt="logo" />
</div>

<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading

Note that I have commented out lines that I don't need anymore rather than deleting them (in case I want to change it back). The first if has now been "forced" true so that the same style will always be displayed. The $heading text has been commented out and replaced with an image (although you leave out the comment and have both). I've cheated slightly and add a snippet of CSS in the div to centre the image.

== Final CSS ==

This is the full CSS I ended up with. It's very simple and there's a lot more you can do. It's often all you need though.

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

.generalbox {
background-color: #fff;
}

.headermenu {
float: none;
background-color: #666b6e;
padding: 4px;
}

== Tips ==

* It's very common to have to make Moodle look like some other existing site. Use Firebug on that site to "steal" the CSS of the various elements to make sure it matches exactly.

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T14:38:56Z

Howardsmiller:

{{Themes}}

There are a number of ways of creating new themes for Moodle. This page describes a simple way of making a new theme based mostly on changing the colours, fonts and headings. Hopefully it gives you a start to do more adventurous things.

== Getting started ==

I need to make a few assumptions. There are many different ways to set up Moodle and I can't cover all of them. I am therefore assuming that you can handle the following...
* Copying files and directories in your Moodle installation.
* Editing a file in you Moodle installation.
* You have at least a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.
* If you need custom graphics you have a basic understanding of web graphics and can work graphics creation/editing software.

If there is a "trick" to this it is the ability to analyse the existing CSS for the Moodle page. There are a number of tools, but the best I have found is [http://www.getfirebug.com/ Firebug]. This is an extension for the [http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ Firefox] web browser, so you'll need that first. Basically, Firebug allows you to right click on any element on an HTML page, select "Inspect Element" and it will show you loads of information about that element including the CSS rules that affect it.

== Some basic information you should know ==

The cornerstone of Moodle themes is the 'Standard' theme. Every other theme (should) simply describe the '''differences''' from the Standard theme. This makes theme development relatively simple as you only have to identify the elements of the Standard theme that you wish to change. Often there are very few.

== First steps ==

The first thing to do is to make a new "empty" theme on you site. The easiest thing is to start with a theme that is very similar to the Standard theme and delete some stuff.

I will use the "Standard White" theme. Find the ''theme'' directory in the top level of your Moodle directory and find the ''standardwhite'' theme within. Copy the ''standardwhite'' directory and all its contents (important!) to a new directory still within the ''theme'' directory. You can call it whatever you like.

From now on we will be working entirely inside this new directory.

You can now (in the new directory - I won't say this again) delete two files - ''gradient.png'' and ''gradients.css''. These are specific to this theme and we won't need them. You can now login to your Moodle site as Administrator and select your "new" theme from the list. If you can't see it, check your new folders permissions and ownership are the same as all the other theme directories. All being well, this will now be identical to the Standard theme.

== Dealing with the config.php file ==

This is the one in every theme directory, not that other one! Open the file for editing and find the line (near the top)...

$THEME->sheets = array('gradients');

This line sets the CSS files that will be loaded by your theme. You can have more than one and the one there now refers to the file we just deleted. You should change the name '''gradient''' to, again, whatever you like (we'll create the file in a moment). I'm going to use '''user_styles''':

$THEME->sheets = array('user_styles');

There are lots of other options in this file which I won't consider. They are all well commented however. One interesting one is right at the end:

$THEME->custompix = false;

...see next section...

== Changing your icons ==

I don't really like the standard icons, the "chamelion" theme has a nicer set. If you want to use them simply copy the entire ''pix'' folder from within the chamelion theme directory to your new theme directory (take care with permissions). And change the setting in config.php...

$THEME->custompix = true;

== Creating the new CSS file ==

It's now (finally) time to create the file to contain all your custom CSS definitions. I set this in ''config.php'' to be '''user_styles''' so, in my case, I'm going to create an empty file called ''user_styles.css'' - don't forget the '''.css''' extension and watch the permissions!

Basically "all" we have to do now is to add CSS definitions to this file that "override" the CSS in the Standard theme that we want to change. For the most part you need to copy the definition exactly for the element you want to change. This can be heavy going but Firebug can make it "relatively" easy. There are loads of thins you can change, here are a few worked through examples. My new theme is going to be broadly blues, greys and blacks. Not a million miles from the Standard theme (luckily).

=== Background color ===

This doesn't really need any poking about with Firebug. I want a light grey background to my site, so I'll add the following line to ''user_styles.css''':

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

Refresh the page. Your white background is now grey.

=== Default fonts ===

By using Firebug's Inspect Element and checking out the CSS on my example site I have established that the font family needs to be ''Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Moodle's is slightly different ''Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Not the end of the world, but we might as well have it right. You may have a completely different list.

Right click on a text element in the Site Administration and select "Inspect Element". The Firebug panel will appear with the HTML source selected (you can change the selected source in this panel if required, especially if you "missed" the element you intended to inspect). Make sure that "Style" is selected in the tabs on the right. There is quite a list of CSS affecting this text and some override others (styles that are overriden are handily struck-through). Run down the list until you see the font-family defined (not struck through). For me this was a definition for "body, table, td, th, li". You can add the new definition to you ''user_styles.css'' file:

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

=== Block headers ===

The next thing I want to do is to make the side-block headers have a blue background. Using Firebug I select the text of one of the blocks. However, I need to back up a bit to the ''div class="header"'' to get the bit I want. Notice that as you mouse over bits of the HTML the affected region is highlighted on the original. Clever! The elemenst seem to be '''.sideblock .header''' and no background colour is defined either here or further down the list. So, let's try:

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

Cool! It does what I needed. If it didn't, I would have had to play around a bit but there's no way around that.

=== Course Content ===

It's all a bit grey at the moment. I want the course content to be white. Again I use Firebug to find examine the bit I want. A bit of poking around finds that this is done with a table cell with class '''content'''. The CSS element is '''td.content''', again with no background colour defined. Ok, so in our user_styles.css let's add:

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

Well it worked but I'm not happy yet. The Topic Outline isn't white yet and the column to the left of the content is also white and can't be seen. This is what I did:

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

Note in the second case that even though I just wanted to change the background colour, I can't use '''background-color''' as that is different to ''background'' and won't override it. I have to reproduce the whole line and just change the bit I want. I also changed the background colour for the '''.generalbox''' class to white.

It's not the nicest theme ever but in a few minutes and with just a few lines of simple CSS we have made a big difference to the look of the Moodle site.

== Change the header ==

Probably the thing most people want is a custom header. This is all done by editing an HTML file (although there's a bit of PHP in it too) in the theme directory called '''header.html'''. The file checks if you are on the front page or any other page. The header is (or can be) different for each state.

Nearly everything that matters is in a small area of the code, so find this...

<nowiki>
if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } ?>
</nowiki>

What I am going to do is to remove the generated heading and simply replace it with an image. The slight trick is that you need to locate the URL of the theme directory. I copied my image straight into the theme directory first (you could put it in the pix sub-directory, but I didn't bother). The magic PHP code is this

<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>

this gets replaced with the URL of your theme directory (no matter what you name it).

So this is what I came up with...

// if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
if (true) { // force home page style for everything
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<div style="text-align: center">
<img src="<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>/logo.png" alt="logo" />
</div>

<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading

Note that I have commented out lines that I don't need anymore rather than deleting them (in case I want to change it back). The first if has now been "forced" true so that the same style will always be displayed. The $heading text has been commented out and replaced with an image (although you leave out the comment and have both). I've cheated slightly and add a snippet of CSS in the div to centre the image.

== Final CSS ==

This is the full CSS I ended up with. It's very simple and there's a lot more you can do. It's often all you need though.

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

.generalbox {
background-color: #fff;
}

.headermenu {
float: none;
background-color: #666b6e;
padding: 4px;
}

== Tips ==

* It's very common to have to make Moodle look like some other existing site. Use Firebug on that site to "steal" the CSS of the various elements to make sure it matches exactly.

Integrations

2008-08-25T14:35:30Z

Howardsmiller: /* Mahara */

<p class="note">'''Note:''' This article requires updating. Please add/remove systems as necessary.</p>

Moodle has been integrated with a variety of other systems. This page lists the most commonly-used ones.

==SME Server==

* For Moodle 1.83
* Moodle is maintained as 2 RPM packages, moodle and smeserver-moodle which means that if you run the SME Server operating system, you can install Moodle very easily.
* Maintainer: http://www.dungog.net/wiki
* SME Server Moodle Documentation: http://wiki.contribs.org/Moodle

==Debian==

* For Moodle 1.6+
* Moodle is maintained as a Debian package, which means that if you run the Debian operating system, you can install Moodle very easily.
* Maintainer: Isaac Clerencian
* Debian Bug report logs: http://bugs.debian.org/moodle
* Debian download: http://packages.debian.org/moodle

==FreeBSD==

* For Moodle 1.5+
* Moodle is available as two packages for FreeBSD, one for MySQL and one for PostgreSQL.
* Maintainer: Kevin Lo
* FreeBSD download: ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/3.8/packages/

==Fantastico==

* For Moodle 1.8.4
* The Fantastico system for Cpanel provides one-click installation for a [http://netenberg.com/fantastico_scripts.php number of open-source software packages]. Moodle has been part of Fantastico for years now as the standard package for Education within the suite. The majority of cheap web hosts on the Internet use Fantastico allowing you to install Moodle with a single click.
* Discussion: http://www.netenberg.com/forum/
* Maintainer: Netenberg
* Fantastico De Luxe: http://netenberg.com/fantastico.php

Here is a sample of what Moodlers have reported about their experiences with Fantastico over the last few months in the [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=15 Installation Problems forum], in chronological order, starting with the oldest:
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=63765#287608
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=64372#290265
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=67127#p301944
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=67397#p303165
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=77219
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=80337#p356281
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=80672#p362259
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=80672#p365671

==4PSA Integrator==

* For Moodle 1.4.4+
* This product is just like Fantastico, but for the less-common Plesk control panel. And yes, Moodle is in there too.
* Maintainer: 4PSA
* 4PSA Integrator: http://www.4psa.com/products/4psaintegrator.php

==Joomla==

* A Joomla component (1.3 and 1.5) that, when added as a Joomla menu link, will log Joomla users into Moodle.
* Can use either Joomla authentication (with Moodle using the external database authentication plugin) or Moodle authentication (with Joomla using the available Moodle authentication plugin).
* For more information see:
**http://promoodle.com

==Mahara==

* Affectionately known as [[Mahoodle]]
* It's all built in to Moodle (1.9) and Mahara. At the moment it really just means single sign on and automatic account creation.
* There have been a few bugs sorted recently, so make sure you are running up to date versions of both
* Setting it all up has quite a few steps that need to be followed carefully - it's documented here (PDF) - [https://eduforge.org/docman/view.php/176/3200/Mahoodle.pdf https://eduforge.org/docman/view.php/176/3200/Mahoodle.pdf]

==Mambo-Moodle 1.0==

* For Moodle 1.4
* This is a module for Mambo that allows it to merge very nicely with a Moodle installation.
* Maintainer: Cas Nuy
* Download: http://download.moodle.org/download.php/modules/mambo_moodle.zip

==Mediawiki==

* For information on this integration (still in early stages), see:
** http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=52497
** http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=42233&mode=-1
** [[AuthMoodle]]
** [[MediawikiSSO]]

==Moodle Cron for Windows 2.0==

* This Windows package installs a service to automate some tasks on Windows servers (on Unix servers and most webhosts you can just use the built-in cron tool).
* Maintainer: Peter Honan, Petr Skoda
* Download: http://download.moodle.org/download.php/sourceforge/MoodleCron-Setup.exe

==Moodle4Xoops==

* For Moodle 1.4
* This module for Xoops allows Moodle to be embedded in Xoops.
* Maintainer: Jerome Baudin
* http://www.moodle4xoops.org/

AS of 3/21/2007 I was not able to locate this URL.

==pnMoodle==

* This is a module for PostNuke and Moodle that allows an existing Moodle installation to appear within a PostNuke installation, with single sign-on and even sideblocks.
* Maintainer: Cas Nuy
* Downloads: http://download.moodle.org/download.php/modules/pnMoodle.zip and http://download.moodle.org/download.php/modules/pnMoodle20.zip

==Drupal Moodle==
'''SSO Module'''
* This is a single signon module for Drupal.
* Maintainer: Cas Nuy
* Download: http://download.moodle.org/download.php/modules/drupal_moodle.zip

* Update (Victor Kane)
* Fri Dec 8
* Version of this module which supports the new Drupal 5.0 beta and Moodle 1.7.x
* Page: http://awebfactory.com.ar/node/174
* Download: http://awebfactory.com.ar/files/moodle.tgz

'''OpenAcademic'''
* An approach emphasizing Single Sign On using [http://openid.net OpenID] to connect Drupal, Moodle and Mediawiki. [http://openacademic.org OpenAcademic] is also looking at methods of moving content between Drupal and Moodle. This project looks to create a system simple enough for a small school/organization to install, yet robust enough to scale upwards (with the right hardware/staffing) to support large institutions. All code developed with this project will be released back to the open source community.

==Workforce Connections==

* For Moodle 1.3
* Moodle forms the core of this US Government package designed to "Empower the 21st Century Knowledge Worker".
* Maintainer: U.S. Department of Labor
* http://workforceconnections.dol.gov/

==See also==

*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=5558 CMS extensions and integrations forum]
*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=88750 Moodle 1.8.3/Drupal 5.6 Integration - Successful] forum discussion

[[Category:Administrator]]

Integrations

2008-08-25T14:25:46Z

Howardsmiller: /* Mahara */

<p class="note">'''Note:''' This article requires updating. Please add/remove systems as necessary.</p>

Moodle has been integrated with a variety of other systems. This page lists the most commonly-used ones.

==SME Server==

* For Moodle 1.83
* Moodle is maintained as 2 RPM packages, moodle and smeserver-moodle which means that if you run the SME Server operating system, you can install Moodle very easily.
* Maintainer: http://www.dungog.net/wiki
* SME Server Moodle Documentation: http://wiki.contribs.org/Moodle

==Debian==

* For Moodle 1.6+
* Moodle is maintained as a Debian package, which means that if you run the Debian operating system, you can install Moodle very easily.
* Maintainer: Isaac Clerencian
* Debian Bug report logs: http://bugs.debian.org/moodle
* Debian download: http://packages.debian.org/moodle

==FreeBSD==

* For Moodle 1.5+
* Moodle is available as two packages for FreeBSD, one for MySQL and one for PostgreSQL.
* Maintainer: Kevin Lo
* FreeBSD download: ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/3.8/packages/

==Fantastico==

* For Moodle 1.8.4
* The Fantastico system for Cpanel provides one-click installation for a [http://netenberg.com/fantastico_scripts.php number of open-source software packages]. Moodle has been part of Fantastico for years now as the standard package for Education within the suite. The majority of cheap web hosts on the Internet use Fantastico allowing you to install Moodle with a single click.
* Discussion: http://www.netenberg.com/forum/
* Maintainer: Netenberg
* Fantastico De Luxe: http://netenberg.com/fantastico.php

Here is a sample of what Moodlers have reported about their experiences with Fantastico over the last few months in the [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=15 Installation Problems forum], in chronological order, starting with the oldest:
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=63765#287608
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=64372#290265
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=67127#p301944
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=67397#p303165
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=77219
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=80337#p356281
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=80672#p362259
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=80672#p365671

==4PSA Integrator==

* For Moodle 1.4.4+
* This product is just like Fantastico, but for the less-common Plesk control panel. And yes, Moodle is in there too.
* Maintainer: 4PSA
* 4PSA Integrator: http://www.4psa.com/products/4psaintegrator.php

==Joomla==

* A Joomla component (1.3 and 1.5) that, when added as a Joomla menu link, will log Joomla users into Moodle.
* Can use either Joomla authentication (with Moodle using the external database authentication plugin) or Moodle authentication (with Joomla using the available Moodle authentication plugin).
* For more information see:
**http://promoodle.com

==Mahara==

* Affectionately known as Mahoodle
* It's all built in to Moodle (1.9) and Mahara. At the moment it really just means single sign on and automatic account creation.
* There have been a few bugs sorted recently, so make sure you are running up to date versions of both
* Setting it all up has quite a few steps that need to be followed carefully - it's documented here (PDF) - [https://eduforge.org/docman/view.php/176/3200/Mahoodle.pdf https://eduforge.org/docman/view.php/176/3200/Mahoodle.pdf]

==Mambo-Moodle 1.0==

* For Moodle 1.4
* This is a module for Mambo that allows it to merge very nicely with a Moodle installation.
* Maintainer: Cas Nuy
* Download: http://download.moodle.org/download.php/modules/mambo_moodle.zip

==Mediawiki==

* For information on this integration (still in early stages), see:
** http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=52497
** http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=42233&mode=-1
** [[AuthMoodle]]
** [[MediawikiSSO]]

==Moodle Cron for Windows 2.0==

* This Windows package installs a service to automate some tasks on Windows servers (on Unix servers and most webhosts you can just use the built-in cron tool).
* Maintainer: Peter Honan, Petr Skoda
* Download: http://download.moodle.org/download.php/sourceforge/MoodleCron-Setup.exe

==Moodle4Xoops==

* For Moodle 1.4
* This module for Xoops allows Moodle to be embedded in Xoops.
* Maintainer: Jerome Baudin
* http://www.moodle4xoops.org/

AS of 3/21/2007 I was not able to locate this URL.

==pnMoodle==

* This is a module for PostNuke and Moodle that allows an existing Moodle installation to appear within a PostNuke installation, with single sign-on and even sideblocks.
* Maintainer: Cas Nuy
* Downloads: http://download.moodle.org/download.php/modules/pnMoodle.zip and http://download.moodle.org/download.php/modules/pnMoodle20.zip

==Drupal Moodle==
'''SSO Module'''
* This is a single signon module for Drupal.
* Maintainer: Cas Nuy
* Download: http://download.moodle.org/download.php/modules/drupal_moodle.zip

* Update (Victor Kane)
* Fri Dec 8
* Version of this module which supports the new Drupal 5.0 beta and Moodle 1.7.x
* Page: http://awebfactory.com.ar/node/174
* Download: http://awebfactory.com.ar/files/moodle.tgz

'''OpenAcademic'''
* An approach emphasizing Single Sign On using [http://openid.net OpenID] to connect Drupal, Moodle and Mediawiki. [http://openacademic.org OpenAcademic] is also looking at methods of moving content between Drupal and Moodle. This project looks to create a system simple enough for a small school/organization to install, yet robust enough to scale upwards (with the right hardware/staffing) to support large institutions. All code developed with this project will be released back to the open source community.

==Workforce Connections==

* For Moodle 1.3
* Moodle forms the core of this US Government package designed to "Empower the 21st Century Knowledge Worker".
* Maintainer: U.S. Department of Labor
* http://workforceconnections.dol.gov/

==See also==

*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=5558 CMS extensions and integrations forum]
*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=88750 Moodle 1.8.3/Drupal 5.6 Integration - Successful] forum discussion

[[Category:Administrator]]

Integrations

2008-08-25T14:24:42Z

Howardsmiller: /* Joomla */

<p class="note">'''Note:''' This article requires updating. Please add/remove systems as necessary.</p>

Moodle has been integrated with a variety of other systems. This page lists the most commonly-used ones.

==SME Server==

* For Moodle 1.83
* Moodle is maintained as 2 RPM packages, moodle and smeserver-moodle which means that if you run the SME Server operating system, you can install Moodle very easily.
* Maintainer: http://www.dungog.net/wiki
* SME Server Moodle Documentation: http://wiki.contribs.org/Moodle

==Debian==

* For Moodle 1.6+
* Moodle is maintained as a Debian package, which means that if you run the Debian operating system, you can install Moodle very easily.
* Maintainer: Isaac Clerencian
* Debian Bug report logs: http://bugs.debian.org/moodle
* Debian download: http://packages.debian.org/moodle

==FreeBSD==

* For Moodle 1.5+
* Moodle is available as two packages for FreeBSD, one for MySQL and one for PostgreSQL.
* Maintainer: Kevin Lo
* FreeBSD download: ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/3.8/packages/

==Fantastico==

* For Moodle 1.8.4
* The Fantastico system for Cpanel provides one-click installation for a [http://netenberg.com/fantastico_scripts.php number of open-source software packages]. Moodle has been part of Fantastico for years now as the standard package for Education within the suite. The majority of cheap web hosts on the Internet use Fantastico allowing you to install Moodle with a single click.
* Discussion: http://www.netenberg.com/forum/
* Maintainer: Netenberg
* Fantastico De Luxe: http://netenberg.com/fantastico.php

Here is a sample of what Moodlers have reported about their experiences with Fantastico over the last few months in the [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=15 Installation Problems forum], in chronological order, starting with the oldest:
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=63765#287608
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=64372#290265
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=67127#p301944
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=67397#p303165
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=77219
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=80337#p356281
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=80672#p362259
* http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=80672#p365671

==4PSA Integrator==

* For Moodle 1.4.4+
* This product is just like Fantastico, but for the less-common Plesk control panel. And yes, Moodle is in there too.
* Maintainer: 4PSA
* 4PSA Integrator: http://www.4psa.com/products/4psaintegrator.php

==Joomla==

* A Joomla component (1.3 and 1.5) that, when added as a Joomla menu link, will log Joomla users into Moodle.
* Can use either Joomla authentication (with Moodle using the external database authentication plugin) or Moodle authentication (with Joomla using the available Moodle authentication plugin).
* For more information see:
**http://promoodle.com

==Mahara==

* Affectionately known as Mahoodle
* It's all built in to Moodle (1.9) and Mahara. At the moment it really just means single sign on and automatic account creation.
* There have been a few bugs sorted recently, so make sure you are running up to date versions of both
* Setting it all up has quite a few steps that need to be followed carefully - it's documented here - [https://eduforge.org/docman/?group_id=176 https://eduforge.org/docman/?group_id=176]

==Mambo-Moodle 1.0==

* For Moodle 1.4
* This is a module for Mambo that allows it to merge very nicely with a Moodle installation.
* Maintainer: Cas Nuy
* Download: http://download.moodle.org/download.php/modules/mambo_moodle.zip

==Mediawiki==

* For information on this integration (still in early stages), see:
** http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=52497
** http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=42233&mode=-1
** [[AuthMoodle]]
** [[MediawikiSSO]]

==Moodle Cron for Windows 2.0==

* This Windows package installs a service to automate some tasks on Windows servers (on Unix servers and most webhosts you can just use the built-in cron tool).
* Maintainer: Peter Honan, Petr Skoda
* Download: http://download.moodle.org/download.php/sourceforge/MoodleCron-Setup.exe

==Moodle4Xoops==

* For Moodle 1.4
* This module for Xoops allows Moodle to be embedded in Xoops.
* Maintainer: Jerome Baudin
* http://www.moodle4xoops.org/

AS of 3/21/2007 I was not able to locate this URL.

==pnMoodle==

* This is a module for PostNuke and Moodle that allows an existing Moodle installation to appear within a PostNuke installation, with single sign-on and even sideblocks.
* Maintainer: Cas Nuy
* Downloads: http://download.moodle.org/download.php/modules/pnMoodle.zip and http://download.moodle.org/download.php/modules/pnMoodle20.zip

==Drupal Moodle==
'''SSO Module'''
* This is a single signon module for Drupal.
* Maintainer: Cas Nuy
* Download: http://download.moodle.org/download.php/modules/drupal_moodle.zip

* Update (Victor Kane)
* Fri Dec 8
* Version of this module which supports the new Drupal 5.0 beta and Moodle 1.7.x
* Page: http://awebfactory.com.ar/node/174
* Download: http://awebfactory.com.ar/files/moodle.tgz

'''OpenAcademic'''
* An approach emphasizing Single Sign On using [http://openid.net OpenID] to connect Drupal, Moodle and Mediawiki. [http://openacademic.org OpenAcademic] is also looking at methods of moving content between Drupal and Moodle. This project looks to create a system simple enough for a small school/organization to install, yet robust enough to scale upwards (with the right hardware/staffing) to support large institutions. All code developed with this project will be released back to the open source community.

==Workforce Connections==

* For Moodle 1.3
* Moodle forms the core of this US Government package designed to "Empower the 21st Century Knowledge Worker".
* Maintainer: U.S. Department of Labor
* http://workforceconnections.dol.gov/

==See also==

*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=5558 CMS extensions and integrations forum]
*Using Moodle [http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=88750 Moodle 1.8.3/Drupal 5.6 Integration - Successful] forum discussion

[[Category:Administrator]]

Themes

2008-08-25T13:19:54Z

Howardsmiller: /* Creating your own theme */

{{Themes}}
A Moodle theme is a pre-designed user "view" (interface) that can be changed by the site administrator, teacher, or student. While robust, it does not effect how Moodle functions, just how it looks. Moodle comes with a standard set of themes and there is a [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?id=6552 large free library] available to download.

==Moodle themes==
Moodle has a powerful themes system that allows for a variety of effects through the use of XHTML and CSS.

* Themes may be [[Theme settings|selected]] at site level, course level and/or user level.
* Each page is individually-addressable via CSS, allowing you to pinpoint exact items.
* Our CSS class naming system uses simple English, is consistent and easily understood.
* New modules can tell Moodle what styles they need and automatically include these in the stylesheet.
* Themes can be based on the ''standard'' theme, which is very plain but functional. You simply override styles you want to change by adding to the stylesheet in your own theme. This means that if you upgrade Moodle later and new styles are needed, your custom theme will still work without any changes, because the new classes will be defined in the ''standard'' theme.
* Themes can also be based on any other theme. This allows you to easily create families of themes, or variations on a theme. For example you might create a spectrum of pastel shades for use in different courses, but with the same basic layout and logos. You may also want to create a family of differently-coloured themes for accessibility purposes.

==Theme selector==

Moodle has a number of themes for you to choose from using the theme selector, including an interactive theme called [[Chameleon]]. Chameleon uses Ajax technology to enable you to easily design your own theme or enhance an existing theme. The Ajax editing interface for Chameleon loads for administrators only.

Alternatively, you can download a theme from the Moodle.org [http://moodle.org/themes Themes database].

== Creating your own theme ==

If you plan to work on your own theme please create a new one (with its own named subfolder) and use Moodle's theme system to base your theme on an existing theme such as ''standard''. If you just modify one of the delivered themes it will be overwritten by the next Moodle update.

Check out the "See also" section at the bottom of this page for some tutorials.

To distribute your theme, zip the theme folder and submit to the Moodle.org [http://moodle.org/themes Themes database].

== Installing a theme ==

To install a theme:
# Unzip the .zip file to an empty local directory.
# Upload folder to your web server to the /moodle/theme/[Theme Name]. (Replace [Theme Name] with the name of the theme you have downloaded.) Ensure the new theme folder and its contents are readable by the webserver. Change Read and Write permissions (CHMOD) for the files and folder to 755 - Owner read/write/execute, Group read/execute, Everyone read/execute. Incorrect permissions may prevent display of the newly installed theme.
# Choose your new theme from within Moodle via ''Administration > Appearance > Themes > Theme selector'' (version 1.7+) or ''Administration > Configuration > Themes'' (older versions).

== Theme system changes ==

Themes have improved a great deal in recent versions of Moodle. If you are using your own theme and want to upgrade, please refer to one of the following:
* [[1.6 theme upgrade]]
* [[1.7 theme upgrade]]
* [[1.8 theme upgrade]]

==Core themes==

Themes included in Moodle 1.9 are [[Chameleon theme|chameleon]], cornflower, [[Custom corners theme|custom corners]], formal white, metal, oceanblue, orangewhite, orangewhitepda, standard (default), standardblue, standardgreen, standardlogo, standardred, standardwhite, wood

==See also==

*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPUB_ReBPeg Installing 3rd Party Modules and Themes in Moodle video]
*[[Creating a custom theme]]
*[[Make your own theme]] - another take on creating themes

[[es:Temas]]
[[fr:Thèmes]]
[[ja:テーマ]]
[[pt:Temas]]

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T13:18:12Z

Howardsmiller:

{{Themes}}

There are a number of ways of creating new themes for Moodle. This page describes a simple way of making a new theme based mostly on changing the colours, fonts and headings. Hopefully it gives you a start to do more adventurous things.

== Getting started ==

I need to make a few assumptions. There are many different ways to set up Moodle and I can't cover all of them. I am therefore assuming that you can handle the following...
* Copying files and directories in your Moodle installation.
* Editing a file in you Moodle installation.
* You have at least a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.
* If you need custom graphics you have a basic understanding of web graphics and can work graphics creation/editing software.

If there is a "trick" to this it is the ability to analyse the existing CSS for the Moodle page. There are a number of tools, but the best I have found is [http://www.getfirebug.com/ Firebug]. This is an extension for the [http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ Firefox] web browser, so you'll need that first. Basically, Firebug allows you to right click on any element on an HTML page, select "Inspect Element" and it will show you loads of information about that element including the CSS rules that affect it.

== Some basic information you should know ==

The cornerstone of Moodle themes is the 'Standard' theme. Every other theme (should) simply describe the '''differences''' from the Standard theme. This makes theme development relatively simple as you only have to identify the elements of the Standard theme that you wish to change. Often there are very few.

== First steps ==

The first thing to do is to make a new "empty" theme on you site. The easiest thing is to start with a theme that is very similar to the Standard theme and delete some stuff.

I will use the "Standard White" theme. Find the ''theme'' directory in the top level of your Moodle directory and find the ''standardwhite'' theme within. Copy the ''standardwhite'' directory and all its contents (important!) to a new directory still within the ''theme'' directory. You can call it whatever you like.

From now on we will be working entirely inside this new directory.

You can now (in the new directory - I won't say this again) delete two files - ''gradient.png'' and ''gradients.css''. These are specific to this theme and we won't need them. You can now login to your Moodle site as Administrator and select your "new" theme from the list. If you can't see it, check your new folders permissions and ownership are the same as all the other theme directories. All being well, this will now be identical to the Standard theme.

== Dealing with the config.php file ==

This is the one in every theme directory, not that other one! Open the file for editing and find the line (near the top)...

$THEME->sheets = array('gradients');

This line sets the CSS files that will be loaded by your theme. You can have more than one and the one there now refers to the file we just deleted. You should change the name '''gradient''' to, again, whatever you like (we'll create the file in a moment). I'm going to use '''user_styles''':

$THEME->sheets = array('user_styles');

There are lots of other options in this file which I won't consider. They are all well commented however. One interesting one is right at the end:

$THEME->custompix = false;

...see next section...

== Changing your icons ==

I don't really like the standard icons, the "chamelion" theme has a nicer set. If you want to use them simply copy the entire ''pix'' folder from within the chamelion theme directory to your new theme directory (take care with permissions). And change the setting in config.php...

$THEME->custompix = true;

== Creating the new CSS file ==

It's now (finally) time to create the file to contain all your custom CSS definitions. I set this in ''config.php'' to be '''user_styles''' so, in my case, I'm going to create an empty file called ''user_styles.css'' - don't forget the '''.css''' extension and watch the permissions!

Basically "all" we have to do now is to add CSS definitions to this file that "override" the CSS in the Standard theme that we want to change. For the most part you need to copy the definition exactly for the element you want to change. This can be heavy going but Firebug can make it "relatively" easy. There are loads of thins you can change, here are a few worked through examples. My new theme is going to be broadly blues, greys and blacks. Not a million miles from the Standard theme (luckily).

=== Background color ===

This doesn't really need any poking about with Firebug. I want a light grey background to my site, so I'll add the following line to ''user_styles.css''':

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

Refresh the page. Your white background is now grey.

=== Default fonts ===

By using Firebug's Inspect Element and checking out the CSS on my example site I have established that the font family needs to be ''Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Moodle's is slightly different ''Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Not the end of the world, but we might as well have it right. You may have a completely different list.

Right click on a text element in the Site Administration and select "Inspect Element". The Firebug panel will appear with the HTML source selected (you can change the selected source in this panel if required, especially if you "missed" the element you intended to inspect). Make sure that "Style" is selected in the tabs on the right. There is quite a list of CSS affecting this text and some override others (styles that are overriden are handily struck-through). Run down the list until you see the font-family defined (not struck through). For me this was a definition for "body, table, td, th, li". You can add the new definition to you ''user_styles.css'' file:

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

=== Block headers ===

The next thing I want to do is to make the side-block headers have a blue background. Using Firebug I select the text of one of the blocks. However, I need to back up a bit to the ''div class="header"'' to get the bit I want. Notice that as you mouse over bits of the HTML the affected region is highlighted on the original. Clever! The elemenst seem to be '''.sideblock .header''' and no background colour is defined either here or further down the list. So, let's try:

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

Cool! It does what I needed. If it didn't, I would have had to play around a bit but there's no way around that.

=== Course Content ===

It's all a bit grey at the moment. I want the course content to be white. Again I use Firebug to find examine the bit I want. A bit of poking around finds that this is done with a table cell with class '''content'''. The CSS element is '''td.content''', again with no background colour defined. Ok, so in our user_styles.css let's add:

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

Well it worked but I'm not happy yet. The Topic Outline isn't white yet and the column to the left of the content is also white and can't be seen. This is what I did:

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

Note in the second case that even though I just wanted to change the background colour, I can't use '''background-color''' as that is different to ''background'' and won't override it. I have to reproduce the whole line and just change the bit I want. I also changed the background colour for the '''.generalbox''' class to white.

It's not the nicest theme ever but in a few minutes and with just a few lines of simple CSS we have made a big difference to the look of the Moodle site.

== Change the header ==

Probably the thing most people want is a custom header. This is all done by editing an HTML file (although there's a bit of PHP in it too) in the theme directory called '''header.html'''. The file checks if you are on the front page or any other page. The header is (or can be) different for each state.

Nearly everything that matters is in a small area of the code, so find this...

if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } ?>

What I am going to do is to remove the generated heading and simply replace it with an image. The slight trick is that you need to locate the URL of the theme directory. I copied my image straight into the theme directory first (you could put it in the pix sub-directory, but I didn't bother). The magic PHP code is this

<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>

this gets replaced with the URL of your theme directory (no matter what you name it).

So this is what I came up with...

// if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
if (true) { // force home page style for everything
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<div style="text-align: center">
<img src="<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>/logo.png" alt="logo" />
</div>

<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading

Note that I have commented out lines that I don't need anymore rather than deleting them (in case I want to change it back). The first if has now been "forced" true so that the same style will always be displayed. The $heading text has been commented out and replaced with an image (although you leave out the comment and have both). I've cheated slightly and add a snippet of CSS in the div to centre the image.

== Final CSS ==

This is the full CSS I ended up with. It's very simple and there's a lot more you can do. It's often all you need though.

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

.generalbox {
background-color: #fff;
}

.headermenu {
float: none;
background-color: #666b6e;
padding: 4px;
}

== Tips ==

* It's very common to have to make Moodle look like some other existing site. Use Firebug on that site to "steal" the CSS of the various elements to make sure it matches exactly.

Themes

2008-08-25T13:17:50Z

Howardsmiller:

{{Themes}}
A Moodle theme is a pre-designed user "view" (interface) that can be changed by the site administrator, teacher, or student. While robust, it does not effect how Moodle functions, just how it looks. Moodle comes with a standard set of themes and there is a [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?id=6552 large free library] available to download.

==Moodle themes==
Moodle has a powerful themes system that allows for a variety of effects through the use of XHTML and CSS.

* Themes may be [[Theme settings|selected]] at site level, course level and/or user level.
* Each page is individually-addressable via CSS, allowing you to pinpoint exact items.
* Our CSS class naming system uses simple English, is consistent and easily understood.
* New modules can tell Moodle what styles they need and automatically include these in the stylesheet.
* Themes can be based on the ''standard'' theme, which is very plain but functional. You simply override styles you want to change by adding to the stylesheet in your own theme. This means that if you upgrade Moodle later and new styles are needed, your custom theme will still work without any changes, because the new classes will be defined in the ''standard'' theme.
* Themes can also be based on any other theme. This allows you to easily create families of themes, or variations on a theme. For example you might create a spectrum of pastel shades for use in different courses, but with the same basic layout and logos. You may also want to create a family of differently-coloured themes for accessibility purposes.

==Theme selector==

Moodle has a number of themes for you to choose from using the theme selector, including an interactive theme called [[Chameleon]]. Chameleon uses Ajax technology to enable you to easily design your own theme or enhance an existing theme. The Ajax editing interface for Chameleon loads for administrators only.

Alternatively, you can download a theme from the Moodle.org [http://moodle.org/themes Themes database].

== Creating your own theme ==

If you plan to work on your own theme please create a new one (with its own named subfolder) and use Moodle's theme system to base your theme on an existing theme such as ''standard''. If you just modify one of the delivered themes it will be overwritten by the next Moodle update.

For more information on creating your own theme, visit this [https://docs.moodle.org/en/How_to_easily_make_your_Moodle_theme tutorial]

To distribute your theme, zip the theme folder and submit to the Moodle.org [http://moodle.org/themes Themes database].

== Installing a theme ==

To install a theme:
# Unzip the .zip file to an empty local directory.
# Upload folder to your web server to the /moodle/theme/[Theme Name]. (Replace [Theme Name] with the name of the theme you have downloaded.) Ensure the new theme folder and its contents are readable by the webserver. Change Read and Write permissions (CHMOD) for the files and folder to 755 - Owner read/write/execute, Group read/execute, Everyone read/execute. Incorrect permissions may prevent display of the newly installed theme.
# Choose your new theme from within Moodle via ''Administration > Appearance > Themes > Theme selector'' (version 1.7+) or ''Administration > Configuration > Themes'' (older versions).

== Theme system changes ==

Themes have improved a great deal in recent versions of Moodle. If you are using your own theme and want to upgrade, please refer to one of the following:
* [[1.6 theme upgrade]]
* [[1.7 theme upgrade]]
* [[1.8 theme upgrade]]

==Core themes==

Themes included in Moodle 1.9 are [[Chameleon theme|chameleon]], cornflower, [[Custom corners theme|custom corners]], formal white, metal, oceanblue, orangewhite, orangewhitepda, standard (default), standardblue, standardgreen, standardlogo, standardred, standardwhite, wood

==See also==

*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPUB_ReBPeg Installing 3rd Party Modules and Themes in Moodle video]
*[[Creating a custom theme]]
*[[Make your own theme]] - another take on creating themes

[[es:Temas]]
[[fr:Thèmes]]
[[ja:テーマ]]
[[pt:Temas]]

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T12:44:19Z

Howardsmiller: /* Final CSS */

There are a number of ways of creating new themes for Moodle. This page describes a simple way of making a new theme based mostly on changing the colours, fonts and headings. Hopefully it gives you a start to do more adventurous things.

== Getting started ==

''I'm working on this page at the moment - it ain't finished :-)'' --[[User:Howard Miller|Howard Miller]] 04:35, 25 August 2008 (CDT)

I need to make a few assumptions. There are many different ways to set up Moodle and I can't cover all of them. I am therefore assuming that you can handle the following...
* Copying files and directories in your Moodle installation.
* Editing a file in you Moodle installation.
* You have at least a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.
* If you need custom graphics you have a basic understanding of web graphics and can work graphics creation/editing software.

If there is a "trick" to this it is the ability to analyse the existing CSS for the Moodle page. There are a number of tools, but the best I have found is [http://www.getfirebug.com/ Firebug]. This is an extension for the [http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ Firefox] web browser, so you'll need that first. Basically, Firebug allows you to right click on any element on an HTML page, select "Inspect Element" and it will show you loads of information about that element including the CSS rules that affect it.

== Some basic information you should know ==

The cornerstone of Moodle themes is the 'Standard' theme. Every other theme (should) simply describe the '''differences''' from the Standard theme. This makes theme development relatively simple as you only have to identify the elements of the Standard theme that you wish to change. Often there are very few.

== First steps ==

The first thing to do is to make a new "empty" theme on you site. The easiest thing is to start with a theme that is very similar to the Standard theme and delete some stuff.

I will use the "Standard White" theme. Find the ''theme'' directory in the top level of your Moodle directory and find the ''standardwhite'' theme within. Copy the ''standardwhite'' directory and all its contents (important!) to a new directory still within the ''theme'' directory. You can call it whatever you like.

From now on we will be working entirely inside this new directory.

You can now (in the new directory - I won't say this again) delete two files - ''gradient.png'' and ''gradients.css''. These are specific to this theme and we won't need them. You can now login to your Moodle site as Administrator and select your "new" theme from the list. If you can't see it, check your new folders permissions and ownership are the same as all the other theme directories. All being well, this will now be identical to the Standard theme.

== Dealing with the config.php file ==

This is the one in every theme directory, not that other one! Open the file for editing and find the line (near the top)...

$THEME->sheets = array('gradients');

This line sets the CSS files that will be loaded by your theme. You can have more than one and the one there now refers to the file we just deleted. You should change the name '''gradient''' to, again, whatever you like (we'll create the file in a moment). I'm going to use '''user_styles''':

$THEME->sheets = array('user_styles');

There are lots of other options in this file which I won't consider. They are all well commented however. One interesting one is right at the end:

$THEME->custompix = false;

...see next section...

== Changing your icons ==

I don't really like the standard icons, the "chamelion" theme has a nicer set. If you want to use them simply copy the entire ''pix'' folder from within the chamelion theme directory to your new theme directory (take care with permissions). And change the setting in config.php...

$THEME->custompix = true;

== Creating the new CSS file ==

It's now (finally) time to create the file to contain all your custom CSS definitions. I set this in ''config.php'' to be '''user_styles''' so, in my case, I'm going to create an empty file called ''user_styles.css'' - don't forget the '''.css''' extension and watch the permissions!

Basically "all" we have to do now is to add CSS definitions to this file that "override" the CSS in the Standard theme that we want to change. For the most part you need to copy the definition exactly for the element you want to change. This can be heavy going but Firebug can make it "relatively" easy. There are loads of thins you can change, here are a few worked through examples. My new theme is going to be broadly blues, greys and blacks. Not a million miles from the Standard theme (luckily).

=== Background color ===

This doesn't really need any poking about with Firebug. I want a light grey background to my site, so I'll add the following line to ''user_styles.css''':

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

Refresh the page. Your white background is now grey.

=== Default fonts ===

By using Firebug's Inspect Element and checking out the CSS on my example site I have established that the font family needs to be ''Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Moodle's is slightly different ''Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Not the end of the world, but we might as well have it right. You may have a completely different list.

Right click on a text element in the Site Administration and select "Inspect Element". The Firebug panel will appear with the HTML source selected (you can change the selected source in this panel if required, especially if you "missed" the element you intended to inspect). Make sure that "Style" is selected in the tabs on the right. There is quite a list of CSS affecting this text and some override others (styles that are overriden are handily struck-through). Run down the list until you see the font-family defined (not struck through). For me this was a definition for "body, table, td, th, li". You can add the new definition to you ''user_styles.css'' file:

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

=== Block headers ===

The next thing I want to do is to make the side-block headers have a blue background. Using Firebug I select the text of one of the blocks. However, I need to back up a bit to the ''div class="header"'' to get the bit I want. Notice that as you mouse over bits of the HTML the affected region is highlighted on the original. Clever! The elemenst seem to be '''.sideblock .header''' and no background colour is defined either here or further down the list. So, let's try:

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

Cool! It does what I needed. If it didn't, I would have had to play around a bit but there's no way around that.

=== Course Content ===

It's all a bit grey at the moment. I want the course content to be white. Again I use Firebug to find examine the bit I want. A bit of poking around finds that this is done with a table cell with class '''content'''. The CSS element is '''td.content''', again with no background colour defined. Ok, so in our user_styles.css let's add:

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

Well it worked but I'm not happy yet. The Topic Outline isn't white yet and the column to the left of the content is also white and can't be seen. This is what I did:

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

Note in the second case that even though I just wanted to change the background colour, I can't use '''background-color''' as that is different to ''background'' and won't override it. I have to reproduce the whole line and just change the bit I want. I also changed the background colour for the '''.generalbox''' class to white.

It's not the nicest theme ever but in a few minutes and with just a few lines of simple CSS we have made a big difference to the look of the Moodle site.

== Change the header ==

Probably the thing most people want is a custom header. This is all done by editing an HTML file (although there's a bit of PHP in it too) in the theme directory called '''header.html'''. The file checks if you are on the front page or any other page. The header is (or can be) different for each state.

Nearly everything that matters is in a small area of the code, so find this...

if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header'); ?>
<h1 class="headermain"><?php echo $heading ?></h1>
<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } ?>

What I am going to do is to remove the generated heading and simply replace it with an image. The slight trick is that you need to locate the URL of the theme directory. I copied my image straight into the theme directory first (you could put it in the pix sub-directory, but I didn't bother). The magic PHP code is this

<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>

this gets replaced with the URL of your theme directory (no matter what you name it).

So this is what I came up with...

// if ($home) { // This is what gets printed on the home page only
if (true) { // force home page style for everything
?>
<?php print_container_start(true, '', 'header-home'); ?>
<div style="text-align: center">
<img src="<?php echo $CFG->themewww .'/'. current_theme() ?>/logo.png" alt="logo" />
</div>

<div class="headermenu"><?php echo $menu ?></div>
<?php print_container_end(); ?>
<?php } else if ($heading) { // This is what gets printed on any other page with a heading

Note that I have commented out lines that I don't need anymore rather than deleting them (in case I want to change it back). The first if has now been "forced" true so that the same style will always be displayed. The $heading text has been commented out and replaced with an image (although you leave out the comment and have both). I've cheated slightly and add a snippet of CSS in the div to centre the image.

== Final CSS ==

This is the full CSS I ended up with. It's very simple and there's a lot more you can do. It's often all you need though.

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

.generalbox {
background-color: #fff;
}

.headermenu {
float: none;
background-color: #666b6e;
padding: 4px;
}

== Tips ==

* It's very common to have to make Moodle look like some other existing site. Use Firebug on that site to "steal" the CSS of the various elements to make sure it matches exactly.

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T12:43:40Z

Howardsmiller: /* Course Content */

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T12:18:02Z

Howardsmiller: /* Course Content */

There are a number of ways of creating new themes for Moodle. This page describes a simple way of making a new theme based mostly on changing the colours, fonts and headings. Hopefully it gives you a start to do more adventurous things.

== Getting started ==

''I'm working on this page at the moment - it ain't finished :-)'' --[[User:Howard Miller|Howard Miller]] 04:35, 25 August 2008 (CDT)

I need to make a few assumptions. There are many different ways to set up Moodle and I can't cover all of them. I am therefore assuming that you can handle the following...
* Copying files and directories in your Moodle installation.
* Editing a file in you Moodle installation.
* You have at least a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.
* If you need custom graphics you have a basic understanding of web graphics and can work graphics creation/editing software.

If there is a "trick" to this it is the ability to analyse the existing CSS for the Moodle page. There are a number of tools, but the best I have found is [http://www.getfirebug.com/ Firebug]. This is an extension for the [http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ Firefox] web browser, so you'll need that first. Basically, Firebug allows you to right click on any element on an HTML page, select "Inspect Element" and it will show you loads of information about that element including the CSS rules that affect it.

== Some basic information you should know ==

The cornerstone of Moodle themes is the 'Standard' theme. Every other theme (should) simply describe the '''differences''' from the Standard theme. This makes theme development relatively simple as you only have to identify the elements of the Standard theme that you wish to change. Often there are very few.

== First steps ==

The first thing to do is to make a new "empty" theme on you site. The easiest thing is to start with a theme that is very similar to the Standard theme and delete some stuff.

I will use the "Standard White" theme. Find the ''theme'' directory in the top level of your Moodle directory and find the ''standardwhite'' theme within. Copy the ''standardwhite'' directory and all its contents (important!) to a new directory still within the ''theme'' directory. You can call it whatever you like.

From now on we will be working entirely inside this new directory.

You can now (in the new directory - I won't say this again) delete two files - ''gradient.png'' and ''gradients.css''. These are specific to this theme and we won't need them. You can now login to your Moodle site as Administrator and select your "new" theme from the list. If you can't see it, check your new folders permissions and ownership are the same as all the other theme directories. All being well, this will now be identical to the Standard theme.

== Dealing with the config.php file ==

This is the one in every theme directory, not that other one! Open the file for editing and find the line (near the top)...

$THEME->sheets = array('gradients');

This line sets the CSS files that will be loaded by your theme. You can have more than one and the one there now refers to the file we just deleted. You should change the name '''gradient''' to, again, whatever you like (we'll create the file in a moment). I'm going to use '''user_styles''':

$THEME->sheets = array('user_styles');

There are lots of other options in this file which I won't consider. They are all well commented however. One interesting one is right at the end:

$THEME->custompix = false;

...see next section...

== Changing your icons ==

I don't really like the standard icons, the "chamelion" theme has a nicer set. If you want to use them simply copy the entire ''pix'' folder from within the chamelion theme directory to your new theme directory (take care with permissions). And change the setting in config.php...

$THEME->custompix = true;

== Creating the new CSS file ==

It's now (finally) time to create the file to contain all your custom CSS definitions. I set this in ''config.php'' to be '''user_styles''' so, in my case, I'm going to create an empty file called ''user_styles.css'' - don't forget the '''.css''' extension and watch the permissions!

Basically "all" we have to do now is to add CSS definitions to this file that "override" the CSS in the Standard theme that we want to change. For the most part you need to copy the definition exactly for the element you want to change. This can be heavy going but Firebug can make it "relatively" easy. There are loads of thins you can change, here are a few worked through examples. My new theme is going to be broadly blues, greys and blacks. Not a million miles from the Standard theme (luckily).

=== Background color ===

This doesn't really need any poking about with Firebug. I want a light grey background to my site, so I'll add the following line to ''user_styles.css''':

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

Refresh the page. Your white background is now grey.

=== Default fonts ===

By using Firebug's Inspect Element and checking out the CSS on my example site I have established that the font family needs to be ''Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Moodle's is slightly different ''Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Not the end of the world, but we might as well have it right. You may have a completely different list.

Right click on a text element in the Site Administration and select "Inspect Element". The Firebug panel will appear with the HTML source selected (you can change the selected source in this panel if required, especially if you "missed" the element you intended to inspect). Make sure that "Style" is selected in the tabs on the right. There is quite a list of CSS affecting this text and some override others (styles that are overriden are handily struck-through). Run down the list until you see the font-family defined (not struck through). For me this was a definition for "body, table, td, th, li". You can add the new definition to you ''user_styles.css'' file:

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

=== Block headers ===

The next thing I want to do is to make the side-block headers have a blue background. Using Firebug I select the text of one of the blocks. However, I need to back up a bit to the ''div class="header"'' to get the bit I want. Notice that as you mouse over bits of the HTML the affected region is highlighted on the original. Clever! The elemenst seem to be '''.sideblock .header''' and no background colour is defined either here or further down the list. So, let's try:

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

Cool! It does what I needed. If it didn't, I would have had to play around a bit but there's no way around that.

=== Course Content ===

It's all a bit grey at the moment. I want the course content to be white. Again I use Firebug to find examine the bit I want. A bit of poking around finds that this is done with a table cell with class '''content'''. The CSS element is '''td.content''', again with no background colour defined. Ok, so in our user_styles.css let's add:

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

Well it worked but I'm not happy yet. The Topic Outline isn't white yet and the column to the left of the content is also white and can't be seen. This is what I did:

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

Note in the second case that even though I just wanted to change the background colour, I can't use '''background-color''' as that is different to ''background'' and won't override it. I have to reproduce the whole line and just change the bit I want. I also changed the background colour for the '''.generalbox''' class to white.

It's not the nicest theme ever but in a few minutes and with just a few lines of simple CSS we have made a big difference to the look of the Moodle site.

== Tips ==

* It's very common to have to make Moodle look like some other existing site. Use Firebug on that site to "steal" the CSS of the various elements to make sure it matches exactly.

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T12:12:54Z

Howardsmiller: /* Block headers */

There are a number of ways of creating new themes for Moodle. This page describes a simple way of making a new theme based mostly on changing the colours, fonts and headings. Hopefully it gives you a start to do more adventurous things.

== Getting started ==

''I'm working on this page at the moment - it ain't finished :-)'' --[[User:Howard Miller|Howard Miller]] 04:35, 25 August 2008 (CDT)

I need to make a few assumptions. There are many different ways to set up Moodle and I can't cover all of them. I am therefore assuming that you can handle the following...
* Copying files and directories in your Moodle installation.
* Editing a file in you Moodle installation.
* You have at least a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.
* If you need custom graphics you have a basic understanding of web graphics and can work graphics creation/editing software.

If there is a "trick" to this it is the ability to analyse the existing CSS for the Moodle page. There are a number of tools, but the best I have found is [http://www.getfirebug.com/ Firebug]. This is an extension for the [http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ Firefox] web browser, so you'll need that first. Basically, Firebug allows you to right click on any element on an HTML page, select "Inspect Element" and it will show you loads of information about that element including the CSS rules that affect it.

== Some basic information you should know ==

The cornerstone of Moodle themes is the 'Standard' theme. Every other theme (should) simply describe the '''differences''' from the Standard theme. This makes theme development relatively simple as you only have to identify the elements of the Standard theme that you wish to change. Often there are very few.

== First steps ==

The first thing to do is to make a new "empty" theme on you site. The easiest thing is to start with a theme that is very similar to the Standard theme and delete some stuff.

I will use the "Standard White" theme. Find the ''theme'' directory in the top level of your Moodle directory and find the ''standardwhite'' theme within. Copy the ''standardwhite'' directory and all its contents (important!) to a new directory still within the ''theme'' directory. You can call it whatever you like.

From now on we will be working entirely inside this new directory.

You can now (in the new directory - I won't say this again) delete two files - ''gradient.png'' and ''gradients.css''. These are specific to this theme and we won't need them. You can now login to your Moodle site as Administrator and select your "new" theme from the list. If you can't see it, check your new folders permissions and ownership are the same as all the other theme directories. All being well, this will now be identical to the Standard theme.

== Dealing with the config.php file ==

This is the one in every theme directory, not that other one! Open the file for editing and find the line (near the top)...

$THEME->sheets = array('gradients');

This line sets the CSS files that will be loaded by your theme. You can have more than one and the one there now refers to the file we just deleted. You should change the name '''gradient''' to, again, whatever you like (we'll create the file in a moment). I'm going to use '''user_styles''':

$THEME->sheets = array('user_styles');

There are lots of other options in this file which I won't consider. They are all well commented however. One interesting one is right at the end:

$THEME->custompix = false;

...see next section...

== Changing your icons ==

I don't really like the standard icons, the "chamelion" theme has a nicer set. If you want to use them simply copy the entire ''pix'' folder from within the chamelion theme directory to your new theme directory (take care with permissions). And change the setting in config.php...

$THEME->custompix = true;

== Creating the new CSS file ==

It's now (finally) time to create the file to contain all your custom CSS definitions. I set this in ''config.php'' to be '''user_styles''' so, in my case, I'm going to create an empty file called ''user_styles.css'' - don't forget the '''.css''' extension and watch the permissions!

Basically "all" we have to do now is to add CSS definitions to this file that "override" the CSS in the Standard theme that we want to change. For the most part you need to copy the definition exactly for the element you want to change. This can be heavy going but Firebug can make it "relatively" easy. There are loads of thins you can change, here are a few worked through examples. My new theme is going to be broadly blues, greys and blacks. Not a million miles from the Standard theme (luckily).

=== Background color ===

This doesn't really need any poking about with Firebug. I want a light grey background to my site, so I'll add the following line to ''user_styles.css''':

body {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}

Refresh the page. Your white background is now grey.

=== Default fonts ===

By using Firebug's Inspect Element and checking out the CSS on my example site I have established that the font family needs to be ''Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Moodle's is slightly different ''Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,sans-serif''. Not the end of the world, but we might as well have it right. You may have a completely different list.

Right click on a text element in the Site Administration and select "Inspect Element". The Firebug panel will appear with the HTML source selected (you can change the selected source in this panel if required, especially if you "missed" the element you intended to inspect). Make sure that "Style" is selected in the tabs on the right. There is quite a list of CSS affecting this text and some override others (styles that are overriden are handily struck-through). Run down the list until you see the font-family defined (not struck through). For me this was a definition for "body, table, td, th, li". You can add the new definition to you ''user_styles.css'' file:

body, table, td, th, li {
font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;
}

=== Block headers ===

The next thing I want to do is to make the side-block headers have a blue background. Using Firebug I select the text of one of the blocks. However, I need to back up a bit to the ''div class="header"'' to get the bit I want. Notice that as you mouse over bits of the HTML the affected region is highlighted on the original. Clever! The elemenst seem to be '''.sideblock .header''' and no background colour is defined either here or further down the list. So, let's try:

.sideblock .header {
background-color: #06f;
}

Cool! It does what I needed. If it didn't, I would have had to play around a bit but there's no way around that.

=== Course Content ===

It's all a bit grey at the moment. I want the course content to be white. Again I use Firebug to find examine the bit I want. A bit of poking around finds that this is done with a table cell with class '''content'''. The CSS element is '''td.content''', again with no background colour defined. Ok, so in our user_styles.css let's add:

td.content {
background-color: #fff;
}

Well it worked but I'm not happy yet. The Topic Outline isn't white yet and the column to the left of the content is also white and can't be seen. This is what I did:

body#course-view .headingblock {
background-color: #fff;
}

#course-view .weekscss .section, #course-view .section td.side {
background:#666b6e none repeat scroll 0% 0%;;
}

Note in the second case that even though I just wanted to change the background colour, I can't use '''background-color''' as that is different to ''background'' and won't override it. I have to reproduce the whole line and just change the bit I want.

== Tips ==

* It's very common to have to make Moodle look like some other existing site. Use Firebug on that site to "steal" the CSS of the various elements to make sure it matches exactly.

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T11:58:27Z

Howardsmiller: /* Default fonts */

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T10:43:40Z

Howardsmiller: /* Background color */

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T10:19:24Z

Howardsmiller: /* Creating the new CSS file */

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T10:11:11Z

Howardsmiller: /* Creating the new CSS file */

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T10:06:31Z

Howardsmiller: /* Changing your icons */

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T10:01:08Z

Howardsmiller: /* First steps */

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T09:44:36Z

Howardsmiller: /* First steps */

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T09:40:36Z

Howardsmiller: /* First steps */

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T09:35:00Z

Howardsmiller:

Make your own theme

2008-08-25T09:34:22Z

Howardsmiller: New page: There are a number of ways of creating new themes for Moodle. This page describes a simple way of making a new theme based mostly on changing the colours, fonts and headings. Hopefully it ...

There are a number of ways of creating new themes for Moodle. This page describes a simple way of making a new theme based mostly on changing the colours, fonts and headings. Hopefully it gives you a start to do more adventurous things.

== Getting started ==

I need to make a few assumptions. There are many different ways to set up Moodle and I can't cover all of them. I am therefore assuming that you can handle the following...
* Copying files and directories in your Moodle installation.
* Editing a file in you Moodle installation.
* You have at least a basic understanding of HTML and CSS.
* If you need custom graphics you have a basic understanding of web graphics and can work graphics creation/editing software.

If there is a "trick" to this it is the ability to analyse the existing CSS for the Moodle page. There are a number of tools, but the best I have found is [http://www.getfirebug.com/ Firebug]. This is an extension for the [http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ Firefox] web browser, so you'll need that first. Basically, Firebug allows you to right click on any element on an HTML page, select "Inspect Element" and it will show you loads of information about that element including the CSS rules that affect it.

== Some basic information you should know ==

The cornerstone of Moodle themes is the 'Standard' theme. Every other theme (should) simply describe the '''differences''' from the Standard theme. This makes theme development relatively simple as you only have to identify the elements of the Standard theme that you wish to change. Often there are very few.

== First steps ==

The first thing to do is to make a new "empty" theme on you site. The easiest thing is to start with a theme that is very similar to the Standard theme and delete some stuff.