“Moodle 2.0 Not Production Ready” — Conclusion of 14 Independent Colleges
After over three years of development and nearly four months after the Moodle lead dev declared Moodle 2.0 Stable, 14 independent colleges have concluded that Moodle 2.0 is “Not production ready”…in fact, it’s far from being suitable for any real production environment.
I think the only people who are actually in denial of that fact by now are the disciples over in moodleland. Although Mo, continues to tout the fact that moodle.org is running 2.0, what he and his disciples have always failed to comprehend is that a social site that only uses discussion forums (such as moodle.org) is not even remotely close to being the equivalent of what is needed in a production, educational environment. Heck…as I’ve pointed out here on several occasions, moodle.org doesn’t even use the Moodle wiki, relying instead on Mediawiki for moodle documentation (see at about 30 seconds into this video). I love the comment in the report about the wiki upgrade failing and all the wiki problems highlighted…guess that wasn’t a problem during the upgrade to 2.0 on moodle .org–irony you think? 
Some of the major findings in the report:
After careful assessment, CLAMP has concluded that Moodle 2.0.1 is not production ready.
Major issues that will likely prevent colleges from upgrading to Moodle 2.0 include:
● Grade data is purged when a student is removed from the course
● Moodle 2.0 upgrades from 1.9 often fail or require manual intervention
● Moodle 1.9 backups can not be restored to Moodle 2.0 installations.
● Administrators can no longer perform mass uploads of files to courses.In addition, several important modules or blocks are not yet ready for Moodle 2.0 and would
prevent the upgrade for schools who rely on them. These modules include:● Quickmail block
● Feedback module
● Scheduler module
● Shopping Cart module
● Banner IMS Enrollment plug-inThere have also been significant interface changes to the administration and faculty navigation
menus. This necessitates reworking or rewriting existing documentation and will likely require
retraining faculty and staff as well.
- In Moodle 2.0, when a student is unenrolled from a course, their grade data is deleted.
- There is not a good method for administrators to mass upload files to a course. This is because administrators can no longer simply copy files into a course folder within moddata; instead every file must be added through the file interface so that Moodle can create a hashed-reference to the file. We are evaluating workarounds.
- Moodle 2.0 upgrades from 1.9 often fail or require manual intervention
- Wiki Upgrade Fails
- JMeter load tests of Moodle 1.9 and 2.0 have revealed that Moodle 2.0 can be significantly slower at the same tasks than it’s 1.9 counterpart.
- Moodle 1.9 course backups can not be restored in Moodle 2.0
Related posts:
- Disciple pride and confidence in Moodle 2.0 — Can you feel it? :-) Tweet I can just feel the pride and confidence oozing...
- Upgraded to Moodle 2.0 — Data “mangled” in over 200 courses Tweet This morning’s Moodle 2.0 upgrade disaster has left one...
- Use the HotPot mod & upgrading to Moodle 2.0 “stable”? — Think again! Tweet The HotPot module is one of the most popular...
- Moodle 2 “…it is a semi catastrophe…” Tweet Today is the first time I’ve looked at the...
- New Moodle Leadership: Larry, Mo, and Curly leading moodle into the future ;-) Tweet It’s official…Larry, Mo, and Curly leading Moodle into the...
Is there a consensus on MoodleRooms Joule running Moodle 2.0? I’ve seen a web demo and was impressed, but we all know there could be a host of issues lurking behind the demo.
As for my recollection, the only thing memorable about MoodleRooms is seeing a who lot of porn on sites they and remote-learner were hosting a couple years ago. It’s easy to impress during a sales pitch…but buyer beware!
Thank you so much for this posting and a consortium of opinions and trials to substantiate my conclusions. I am a staff of one working with a small university in Abu Dhabi – I was very gunho to install 2.0 but the more read and tried it out myself the more I doubted that installing 2.0 was the right thing to do – now. Will you be posting additional updates and comments as new releases are released?
Thank you again – I deeply appreciate all of your work and sharing of your conclusions.
Nancy k Hoke
Instructional Technology Coordinator
Khalifa University
Abu Dhabi, UAE
@Nancy K Hoke
You’re welcome. I gave up on Moodle once I started learning about all the security holes and the complete indifference from Moodle devs about those problems. It’s simply not a secure system that can be trusted these days. I’ll continue to post when I have the time/interest, but bottom line…anyone who is interested in the security of their LMS should look elsewhere.
http://thejournal.com/articles/2011/03/29/moodle-tackles-lms-security-vulnerabilities.aspx
Apparently Moodle is tackling at least SOME of the vulnerabilities. I’ve had less problems with Moodle (granted it was 1.9) than Backboard or StudyWiz.
@Chris
I rest my case…anytime a supposedly mature application releases more major security fixes than it does minor patches, then you know there is a BIG problem. But quoting a previous comment by you in another post…”Moodle doesn’t have particularly talented web programmers.” And, you’re going to trust your institutional data to their product having come to that conclusion?
Thanks for the Moodle explanation!