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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)

WordPress 3.0.2 was just released with an important security update. Everyone should upgrade, but it’s particularly important if you have other authors on your blog. See details at the link below. Notice this was fixed on the same day it was reported and the new release was sent out to all users with an automatic notification in the admin area of every WP blog in use.  That’s effective and responsible open source security practice in action. Are you paying attention Moodle devs?

http://wordpress.org/news/2010/11/wordpress-3-0-2/

The wait is finally over for everyone holding their breath in anticipation of the release of Moodle 2.0…its was officially released as stable today. Moodle 2.0 has been hyped-up and billed as the release to revolutionize the LMS. To paraphrase a famous line from Napoleon Dynamite, for the past 3+ years, disciples over in Moodle-Land have been chanting the phrase “Wait for Moodle 2.0 and your wildest dreams will come true.”

Well, it’s here and my first thought is — where’s the 2.0 part?

I see a clunky, significantly slower system, with a much more complex and confusing navigation structure and a far less user-friendly teacher management/admin interface.  Read more... (244 words, 1 image, estimated 59 secs reading time)

FlexBooks is a site where you can create custom free textbooks under a creative commons licenses. Interesting…selection is a little limited, but may be of use to some…

http://www.ck12.org/flexr/

Assisted Learning for All is a website published by Saddleback College with over 150 short nursing videos…could be a good resource for those involved in nursing education.

http://www.saddleback.edu/alfa/vid_index.aspx

The link below is to the Khan Academy website where you will find hundreds of short video tutorials on various subjects. If you are a math teacher, you will want to check this out. All videos are made available under a creative commons license.

http://www.khanacademy.org/

A Dutch security company called Online 24 released a “research” study claiming to have found 84 security vulnerabilities in the Blackboard LMS. You can download the paper from Webwereld.

Research? Strikes me as simply a load of unsupported, extremely vague ramblings. Why would I say that? Maybe it’s due to their liberal use of “Imagine this” support in their “study”:

Imagine this situation:
“An attacker is able to gain access to files outside Blackboard’s document directory.
The attacker includes Blackboard’s access logs. These logs can be influenced by
the attacker, so exploitation would lead to a new highly dangerous vulnerability
that allows the attacker to execute custom commands on the Blackboard server.”  Read more... (270 words, estimated 1:05 mins reading time)

I was helping a real estate agent move and clean up some problems with his WordPress site this week. He also wanted a better way of listing properties. After looking around a bit at different themes, I stumbled across the WP-Property plugin…in a word…very nice. Okay, two words

If you’re looking for a nice, easy way to list properties, check it out…with a little creativity you could probably think of lots of other uses for this cool plugin as well.

http://twincitiestech.com/plugins/wp-property/

Moodle released the following security vulnerability notice today following the irresponsible notification process they have used for years now that puts your moodle site at risk. Moodle.org touts the fact that they have over 1 million registered users however, this notice didn’t go out to them. Surely the devs are smart enough to at least send an email to the million email addresses they have in their moodle.org database?  Read more... (498 words, estimated 2:0 mins reading time)

The first WordCamp Louisville will be held on Saturday, December 4th. Can’t beat the price at $20 a ticket. I’ll be there and may even conduct a session or two. If you’re in the local area and are interested in WP, then it may be a good way to spend a Saturday.

http://www.wordcamplouisville.org/

BALTIMORE — According to an SEC filing, Moodlerooms, Inc. has raised $7.15 million in equity investment.Founded in 2005, Moodlerooms provides an e-learning platform- using moodle, a free, Web-based Learning Management System–for K-12, higher education, corporations, government agencies, and non-profit organizations.

Named in the filing were Stephen Hoffman, chairman; Martin Knott, chief executive officer; Thomas Murdock, founder and chief architect; Louis Pugliese, president; James Miceli; Mark Leuba, chief technology officer; and directors and investors James Savage, Waltham, Mass.-based Longworth Venture Partners; Jason Palmer, New York-based Kaplan Ventures; and Mark Grovic, College Park, Md.-based New Markets Growth Fund.

Read more here…  Read more... (228 words, estimated 55 secs reading time)

The exchange below regarding the way files are handled in Moodle 2.0 is…let’s just say, interesting. The way file management is handled in Moodle has changed drastically in 2.0 and most people liken it to fixing something that wasn’t broken. In fact, file management in Moodle was one of the few things that was simple and actually quite useful — aside from the annoying technical issue of them being attached to courses and not users requiring you to duplicate files every time you duplicated a course.  Read more... (271 words, 1 image, estimated 1:05 mins reading time)