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So many Moodle 2.0 “stable” upgrade issues and so little blog space

Moodle devs…do you see a trend yet?

We’ve recently upgraded to 2.0. Today is the first day of classes and it seems no one can enrol themselves in courses (students and course creators).

Under Site administration> Plugins> Enrolments> Manage enrol plugins

We have, in order:  Read more... (223 words, estimated 54 secs reading time)

• Self enrolment
• Manual enrolments
• Guest access
• Cohort sync
• Category enrolments

The HotPot module is one of the most popular “standard” modules in moodle and has been for years. If you are using that module in Moodle and you decide to “press the upgrade button” to Moodle 2.o, then get ready to be surprised. This “standard” module isn’t in moodle 2.0 and if you upgrade, you’ll more than likely destroy what you have. But then again, distruction of HotPot will most likely be only one of many issues you find on your plate with moodle 2.0 “stable”.

Gordon,  Read more... (529 words, estimated 2:07 mins reading time)

Saw the following post on moodle.org today (among many other pleas for 2.0 help). It’s short, but very telling. Tried to upgrade to moodle 2.0…had problems and decided to abort…now original site is borked…has original moodledata and moodle source code…but doesn’t seem to have original moodle db…

A very familiar story…

Sorry friend…your moodle site is like a lot of others…toast. Your option? How do you feel about starting from scratch?

Hi,  Read more... (125 words, estimated 30 secs reading time)

In the video below I demonstrate the basics of how to set-up a child theme in WordPress 3.0 or later and how to do some basic editing to significantly change the look of the theme. This is intended as a very basic how-to video for non-techies and those wanting to learn to make some simple edits to the default WordPress theme. If you are a theme creating guru, then you’re not going to get much out of this. Enjoy!

Yet another dissatisfied Moodle 2.0 customer. The following from an admitted”Moodle fanatic”. I’ve never seem the loyal user-base turn on Moodle like it has with this 2.0 “stable” release…even the upheaval with the disastrous 1.7 release doesn’t match the level of dissatisfaction seen with 2.0.

So, what’s Moodle to do? Admit their mistake and reclassify 2.0 as “beta” to prevent misleading other’s into thinking it’s really stable or just hunker down and keep trying to sell the illusion that this is really a stable and viable product? Unfortunately, I’ve never seen the lead Moodle dev admit a mistake before and I don’t think he has the maturity to start doing it now. Oh well…maybe Moodle 2.0.1 is the answer to all your Moodle dreams?  Read more... (305 words, estimated 1:13 mins reading time)

A very interesting blog post of 21 Things That Became Obsolete This Decade can be found at the link below. I’m not sure what will be on the list next in 10 more years, but I would be willing to bet good money the Desktop Computer and the LMS will be among the other 19 things on the list…enjoy them while they’re still somewhat relevant

http://www.businessinsider.com/21-things-that-became-obsolete-this-decade-2009-12#pdas-1

One of the biggest PR nightmares for Moodle in recent years was the revelation about 3 years ago that 10s of thousands of Moodle sites all over the world had been hacked and infested with vial porn advertisements.

A little background…

I initially discovered this problem when doing routine maintenance on my own Moodle sites back in late 2007 and reported a fix on moodle.org. Unfortunately, the moodle devs, including the lead dev, ignored the problem choosing to blame users and local admins for not properly securing their moodle sites.  Read more... (687 words, estimated 2:45 mins reading time)

WordPress just released a critical security update–version 3.0.4. If you are running an older WordPress version this upgrade is a must. You can upgrade automatically in the admin area of your site or search this blog for a video demonstrating how to upgrade manually. Don’t disregard this upgrade…it’s important.

Yet another cry for help in the moodle.org forums today about a completely borked upgrade attempt from Moodle 1.9 to the latest and greatest Moodle 2.0.1…the user’s site is destroyed and he can’t even login. The very long reply from a forum disciple started with the following that I found particularly interesting:

How far into the install have you got?

I am presuming you have followed all the documentation on upgrading from Moodle 1.9 to Moodle 2.0? It’s not easy and not really recommended, as there are a number of different issues still.  Read more... (337 words, estimated 1:21 mins reading time)

One of the more common nightmares for those eager beavers who believe the propaganda that Moodle 2.0 is actually “stable” and ready for prime-time, is after pushing that upgrade button, and feeling very lucky if it actually upgrades without total destruction, they suddenly realize all their uploaded files are no longer linked in their courses. Think about it…if you are a heavy Moodle user, how many files (documents, images, etc.,) do you have uploaded and linked throughout your courses?  Read more... (583 words, estimated 2:20 mins reading time)

I haven’t tried the plugin below yet, but it looks pretty promising for those brave individuals looking to put together their own personal computing platform and get off the outdated, clumsy, LMS’s. About the only things people use an LMS, like Blackboard, Moodle, Sakai, etc., for is a document repository, gradebook, discussion board, electronic assignments, and maybe quizzes/exams. With just a little work, you can create your own learning platform in WordPress that will beat any LMS out there.

Features  Read more... (220 words, estimated 53 secs reading time)

1. Easy to use and simple
2. Students access all their grades from one site including grades from previous terms

Breaking news…A popular open source software dev team releases an unstable, bug ridden, version of it’s code, calls it a new “2.0″ version, encourages everyone to upgrade and all along knows that the previous versions will not directly upgrade to the “new 2.0″ version without destroying the existing site.

Sound unlikely? Welcome to Moodle!

Below is one such common cry from a person naive enough to think he should be able to upgrade his site and it would just work and a reply from one of the only independent thinkers who still hangs around in moodle-land.

Hi  Read more... (244 words, estimated 59 secs reading time)

As Moodle continues on the slippery-slope of be owned and directed more and more by the for-profit, business arm of moodle.com, many long-time disciples are beginning to see the light. I have long recognized that Moodle sold-out to the corporate world and is an “open source” project in name only these days. Some of the long-time disciples are begining to see the results of that sell-out. Take the following posts from the developers forum as one example of the disillunisoment of loyal followers. Put simple, what they are reacting to below is the un-spoken message telling those “community developers”, thanks but your services are no longer required. I hate to break it to you guys, but you only have yourselves to blame…you’ve been providing free labor for a closed business community disguised as an open source community for a very long time…you were just too blind to see it and too deft to hear it.  Read more... (553 words, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)

The following post in the moodle.org forum is representative of the disillusionment of many who believed the 3+ year hype that Moodle 2.0 would surpass their wildest dreams. Mike should be thankful he at least got 2.0 installed and was able to actually login…most haven’t been so lucky. And for those trying to upgrade…well, that’s a whole different story. I doubt there is a single institution that values their LMS and has actually upgraded to Moodle 2.0 “stable”. There is simply no motive to do it…it’s broken and the added functionality is simply not there.  Read more... (288 words, estimated 1:09 mins reading time)

Note: The following is made available under GPL from http://codex.wordpress.org/GPL. It may be edited a little from its original form, but probably not a lot. There is no guarantee this information is accurate…use at your own risk.
—————————————————–

To get information about your server, you can use the PHP Info function:

• Type the code shown below into a text file

• Save as info.php
• Upload to server. Visit in your browser (www.example.com/info.php)

That will give you info about your php version, mod_rewrite, and lots of other server “stuff”.  Read more... (101 words, 1 image, estimated 24 secs reading time)

It will be interesting to see the response (or lack thereof) to the following challenge of the GPL requirement for Moodle themes posted to the theme repository. Of course, GPL grants a very liberal amount of freedom where CC is not always so free…Moodle long ago sold-out the complete control and direction of the project to the commercial arm of the business–moodle.com–so it’ll be interesting to see if it continues on the slippery slope of restricting user “rights” with the code that is distributed on moodle.org.

My guess? The challenge will just be ignored…  Read more... (284 words, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)

As I posted about on this blog a few months ago, WordPress did a great thing when the lead dev transferred the WordPress trademark to an independent foundation:

Automattic has transferred the WordPress trademark to the WordPress Foundation, the non-profit dedicated to promoting and ensuring access to WordPress and related open source projects in perpetuity. This means that the most central piece of WordPress’s identity, its name, is now fully independent from any company.

http://ma.tt/2010/09/wordpress-trademark/  Read more... (519 words, estimated 2:05 mins reading time)

WordPress 3.0.3 is available and is a security update for all previous WordPress versions.

This release fixes issues in the remote publishing interface, which under certain circumstances allowed Author- and Contributor-level users to improperly edit, publish, or delete posts. These issues only affect sites that have remote publishing enabled.

The WordPress security release process is a model that should be a standard for any open source project that really takes security seriously. The last two security upgrades were released within as many weeks. When WordPress devs become aware of a security problem, the release is usually out the same day and everyone is notified through several public outlets, not the least, with a notice in the admin area of every WordPress blog in use.  Read more... (324 words, estimated 1:18 mins reading time)

Outline of my presentations at WordCamp Louisville:

WP  Basic Installation and Setup:

• Install in subdirectory
• Install in root
• Install multiple copies
  • Using single database
  • Using different databases
  • Mention setting up a networking
• Install local copy for offline testing/development

Moving WP From One Host to Another:

• Move WP maintaining same url
• Move WP changing the url
• Move WP subdirectory to root & vice-versa
• Copy WP from hosting account to local computer

Tools used in presentations:

WinSCP: A simple ftp client I use in conjunction with hosting control panels such as Cpanel.  Read more... (183 words, estimated 44 secs reading time)

The following video demonstrates how to move your WordPress blog from one server to another and change the web address. This is an updated video from one I did a few years ago here. This video addresses the issue of changing the web address in the database where that information is entered as serialized data. To learn more about serialized data in WordPress, just use Google, but in short, if you use a text editor to do a search & replace of the url in the database dump–like I demo in the old video–then you will have problems with text widgets not coming over and you may have problems with values in some of your plugins. Using the procedure demonstrated in this new video should solve those problems, thanks in large part to the script provided at Spectacu.la. Download that script here for use as demonstrated in the video below.  Read more... (151 words, estimated 36 secs reading time)