I created a field in the Moodle User Profile whereby staff and students enter their unique Flickr ID code.
If a code has been entered then a Flickr box appears on the user profile page (view.php). This box is a dynamic link which opens an Ajax window displaying the users Flickr pictures.
It uses the Flash Tilt Viewer and looks fantastic.
One of the most annoying things about the Moodle messaging system is that when a user receives a message from a user who has blocked them it doesn't show.
The message windows still pops up and says there is a message waiting but the user in unable to read it.
Many of our students complained about this as the pop-ups become increasingly annoying.
To fix this I changed the code in /message/discussion.php Read more »
Moodle Detective is a tool which collates user information from Moodle and displays it on a page that only Administrators can access.
Moodle Detective came about when I was asked to investigate an particular students'' Moodle activity. This student had been sending inappropriate messages to other users and posting obscene things in the forums.
It was then we realised that we needed a reporting feature in Moodle that would bring up a users entire message, blog and forum logs...and that''s exactly what Moodle Detective Does!',
There appears to be a bug in the database module in Moodle.
This is only apparent if you upgrade from Moodle 1.8 to Moodle 1.9, like we did.
When a user searches the database the CPU on the server hits 100% and hangs. The only way to restore activity is to restart the MySQL and Apache processes. Read more »
When a user posts to a forum and unless they click otherwise they are then subscribed to that forum. Many of our users don't read that far down the page and then complain to me when they receive 100+ forum posts via email.
To stop this from happening I changed the default subscription option at the bottom of the forum reply page so that the default option is DO NOT receive copies of this forum by email.
Here's how to do it:
We need to change 2 lines of code in the file /mod/forum/post_forum.php (around line 47) Read more »
To further increase the functionality of Moodle I added a small PHP script which detects if a user is on campus or working remotely. With this script I am able to show different information and restrict information based upon location.
First we need to get the network information of the user
$IP = $_SERVER[''REMOTE_ADDR''];
$hostname = @gethostbyaddr ($IP);
Then we can create a variable which stores the hostname
$hostnamecheck = strstr($hostname,"college"); Read more »
Moodle messaging is a fantastic tool but it is often abused by our students here at college. Students have been reported to spend too much time sending messages in class. Often the male students spend time looking for female students to whom they can send a message to.
When a student receives an unwanted message they can report it by clicking a link.
The topics course format on Moodle is one of our most popular, followed by the weekly format. However, on some courses, tutors required the topic layout but without the confusing numbers on the side. To achieve this I created a new format called "Clear Topics - No numbering".
This works really well, especially on intranet or information courses.
Although it is possible to remove forum posting rights using roles in Moodle I needed a quick way to ban posting rights for a particular user and forum.
We use Moodle as a student intranet as well as a VLE. On the student intranet we have a student forum where students can discuss almost anything. Occasionally, some students abuse this and post inappropriate messages. We required a way to ban re-offenders from posting to the student intranet forum but retain their posting rights for their course forums. Read more »
The Moodle bar provides a quick glance as to how many users are using Moodle at any point in time. In order to extend this functionality we created an Online Users page which does exactly what it says on the tin.
It grabs a list of active users that have been using Moodle in the last 5 minutes. It displays their name and a link to their profile.
When an administrator views this page they see a link to Moodle Detective, a loginas button, an edit profile button, a message history button and an option to send the user a message. Read more »