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 would say the title of this posts about sums it up. This was pulled from the post on moodle.org pasted below. The poster is rightfully frustrated with the general usability and navigation system. If you have played with it at all, you can understand where the poster is coming from…unfortunately for Moodle, the navigation system is the least of the unmitigated disasters awaiting those who upgrade to Moodle 2 “stable”…or as my friend Marc would call it…Moodle 2 stable-but-broken 
A couple days ago, I reported about the hair-brained idea of ending support for the latest stable version of moodle — moodle 1.9.x — in December of this year. Seems that resulted in a lot of backlash for Moodle HQ. So today, Mo announced support would continue through June 2012 and in the same announcement, stated the following:
I hope this assuages any fears anyone had (possibly having the misleading “End of Life” in the title of this thread wasn’t helping much!)
Source: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=168021#p738502
It’s official…Larry, Mo, and Curly leading Moodle into the future
The official advice being given for months on moodle.org has been, if you are planning on upgrading to Moodle 2.0–don’t! Anyone who has been following the moodle 2 saga, knows that’s good advice. Now, the moodle lead dev (aka Mo) chimes in and announces that support for moodle 1.9.x will cease less than a year from now, in Dec 2011. So, let’s see where that puts you:
WARNING: This report is (NSFMD), Not Safe for Moodle Disciples. Read at your own risk!
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~n51ls801/MoodleTwoNCSUCoursesFall2010Web.pdf
This is a “must read” report for anyone in a decision making position considering adopting Moodle as an institutional Learning Management System (LMS).
The very first line in the Introduction section of the 61 page report should serve to alert any reader that this is not your typical “I’m a blind Moodle lover and can’t see the flaws” type report that is prevalent on moodle.org.
Our experience with using Moodle as a Learning Management System contrasts sharply with the faculty experiences described in Vista to Moodle: Everybody’s Doing It2
Why do I like Marc (net-buoy)? Below is an example…hard to find that kind of integrity around moodle-land these days. Most of the free thinkers have left and it’s a place dominated by disciples–some so obvious they even change their names to things like “Moodleman”
Oh dear Julien….. yet another back-handed remark from the evangelistas?
Ian, what I find untenable is that during the discussion on moodle.org of the specifics of the possible enforcement by Moodle HQ of any rights to the use of logo, trademark etc., you and others remained mum. I can;t just blame it on Brits as people on this side of the pond seem to have turned their backs on Mr. Emerson and seem to be most willing to duck, duck… until they are the goose, at which point they appear to whine inordinately….
Now there’s a question all Moodle users should be keen to know the answer to. I think the end of life for Moodle as you know it is around the corner and the end of life of Moodle as a viable LMS may well come before the end of life support for 1.9. When you have a userbase so afraid of your newest and greatest release, that they want to know how many years they can just keep using the old stuff, then you should start seeing the writing on the wall
I have so many Moodle 2 nightmare stories bookmarked, it’s becoming difficult for me to find the time to blog about all of them, but the following post from yet another new moodle user caught my eye. This type review from those who are seeing Moodle for the first time is quite common these days…could it be that expectations for what constitutes a true 21st century web app has changed over the past few years?
http://iandavidwild.blogspot.com/2011/02/is-moodle-partner-programme.html
Have you been hiding under a rock for the past 5 years Ian?
I know you have been around Moodle for a while, so why the interest all the sudden? Get rejected as one of the chosen few and now don’t like “the program”?
Here is a little history lesson on the subject for you. Moodle.com doesn’t only try to control who uses their logo (which is understandable) they try to corner the market to a point of attempting to prevent anyone from even using the plain text word Moodle to advertise that they offer moodle services.
A lot of people are posting and tweeting about the following video being a message from Instructure to Blackboard, but seems to me it’s a message to all of the “last decade”, entrenched LMS’s out there. The message may be, your old “kludgy”, closed, ridged systems are on the way out. Students live in a connected, web 2.0 world and Canvas intends to embrace that world.
This could be the sign of a real competitor for Moodle in the open source LMS market. I’ve reviewed their Canvas LMS and it’s light years ahead of Moodle in virtually every area. It remains to be seen how “open source” they really become…not all open source is equal. But, for anyone out there looking for a viable alternative to Moodle’s tired old 1990′s look, feel, and functionality, you should take a look at Canvas to see what a web 2.0 LMS looks like.
Saw an interesting post in moodle-land today. Actually, it was a reply in a long, interesting thread about Moodle 2.0 backups and how broken that entire process really is now. The part of the reply that is very interesting, is quoted below:
True enough… and of course we are already backing up the Moodle data area and the database, though now that the database and the Moodle data area are so closely linked, it’s unclear how to get consistent backups.
Source: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=167471#p735217
Sometimes a fresh set of eyes can spot the ugliness that others seem to have learned to live with and can no longer see.
For a demonstration of just how true this really is, see the post about a new Moodle admins experience with moodle 2.0…he hasn’t been jaded by the nightmare of an upgrade…he just installed a fresh copy of 2.0 and is looking at it in its natural glory. As of now, no one has replied in moodle-land…but I’m sure it won’t be long before the disciples descend and attempt to explain in painstaking detail why that ugliness is so beautiful to them.
No elaboration needed here…this from one of the most loyal Moodle disciples in moodle-land and an official Moodle business partner.
I would like to be able to placate you in some way but, unfortunately, although I might not put it so strongly you make some compelling points. The documentation for Moodle 2.0 is currently lacking, plain wrong or non-existent. The new file manager is proving to be a source of confusion for many and I strongly suspect bitter experience will result in some rework in future versions.
I will tell you what I’m honestly telling most people… unless you have a compelling reason to move from 1.9 – don’t
Been busy working on real projects for the past few days and haven’t had time to check the forums over in moodle-land for a while. Looked in today and everything seems to be the same….lots of ticked off people feeling like they are being used as beta testers for Moodle 2.0 “stable”, lots of angry, naive admins who trusted they could upgrade to 2.0 “stable” only to see their sites get destroyed in the process. The following “frustrated, confused, and angry” person caught my eye.
Keep up the great work Moodle…seems to me you’re on the right path
If I recognize the name on the post quoted below, this is from a long time moodle disciple. When you get that kind of review from your biggest fans, then you know you’re in trouble. Listening yet, moodle devs?
I usually only highlight one moodle 2.0 upgrade disaster from the forums each day that I decide to visit moodle-land, but after my previous post today, I saw another one that I just couldn’t pass up. It’s posted below and pretty much speaks for itself. I notice no disciple over in moodle-land has offered assistance yet, so I’ll tell the poster what they seem to be too “shy” to tell him in the forums.
How do you feel about starting over? Because if you don’t have a local backup of your db and moodledata directory, then you are toast!
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