Kenneth Newquist :: Blog

We're pleased to announce that Elgg has been featured as the best open source social networking platform in InfoWorld's 2008 Best Of Open Source Awards. Elgg joins WordPress, which won for best blogging platform, Firefox, which won for best web browser, and MySQL, which was featured as the best database system.

From the article:

While Elgg lets corporations, governments, and schools quickly establish blogs, the system's collaborative features encourage building communities of users with shared interests. Other Elgg fine points include podcast support, file repositories, user profiles, an RSS aggregator, and branding features. Significantly, the software integrates with other IT systems and provides OpenID authentication.

Elgg is the software which powers this EduSpaces service.

Alexei Sayle made a rap record in the 80s called ello John, gotta new motor where he  dances  all around a  Ford Cortina mk IV! 

Anyhow, I've been motoring along with Moodle 1.9.2 and getting things ready for the new semester. Here'sthe modules I'm going for:

•  Course Menu block. This is totally brill and I'm sure faculty will love it.
• Attendance. Did this last year and I think more will be interested.
• Feedback. I'm not going to make a big hullabaloo about this but it's there.
• Book. Back by request.

What I'm not going to put into production right away but will  install on a test system is:

• Nanogong. Crude but effective?
• Different course formats -- the biggie here is Flexible Page Format.

I've been testing these out on a CVS test system and tomorrow I shall download the latest freshest 1.9.2 available and use that for my initial system. 

As we gear up for the first release of the next generation of Elgg, we are inviting those who are Elgg users into our test site to help with debugging etc. Not all the features have an interface on them yet, but there is enough there for people to get an idea of what the new Elgg is going to be like.

Elgg is the open source social networking software that powers this site, Eduspaces. 

If you would like an invite, please send an email to info at elgg dot com

Cheers.

Hi All,

We are in the process of testing out the next generation of Elgg (the software which powers this network) and are looking for people to help with the testing. If you fancy helping out, send us an email to: info@curverider.co.uk

Cheers.

My blog seems to have stopped being updated from an external source. I've had to change the feed (it seemed to go off the last one).

The feed that I'm now using is showing the posts if I look at it via " View Content". I've ticked the "publish to blog" - (and checked that the tick is still showing). However, it doesn't seem to be picking it up.

Clearly the function is still working, as I can see the multiple posts in Portuguese on the home page, as we've commented about before, so it's clearly me. Any suggestions? 

I've been blogging about the Moodle 1.9 bugs that I've been finding and squashing during our run up to deploying 1.9 on campus. Rather than recreate all those posts here, I'll just point you to my edublogs blog (which I'm also using as a testbed for WordPress Mu, which we'll be experimenting with here at Lafayette later this year):

 http://knewquist.edublogs.org/tag/moodle19+bugs/

So far I've got six bugs chronicled, with patches for most of them available in tracker (or about to be rolled into core).

 

I have a funny story that involves "blocks". When I first came to the United States of America way back in 1986 I visited Washington DC with a Dutch acquaintance. We were a bit lost and struggling to find a museum (where are the signposts???) so I asked a passerby in my best English accent "Is the museum near by?" Blank stare. "Is it a couple of blocks away?", I persisted. "Whaaat?", was the reply. At this point my friend, Jan, interjected, "I think he means 'blaaacks' ". "Oh, 'blaaaaaacks'!", she replied, " Yes, it's two blaaacks down the road". 

The UK and the US -- so near and yet so far. Separated by a common language they say :-)

I've been pushing folks here to format their Moodle courses with 2 columns (ie a column of blocks and the Outline) rather than the default three (blocks, Outline, blocks). In order to further this aim, I'd like to:

1. Make the default configuration for new courses have a single column of blocks.
2. Have the  "Blocks" block  appear on the left side rather than the right side.

I should add that I have tried setting  the arrangement of default blocks in the  config.php but I found to my dismay that when I did so the News forum disappeared (but I don't recall reporting this or adding it to the Tracker -- <guilt>).
Any ideas about making these adjustments?

Having sworn in the previous post that I would not use CVS I diddled about with it this afternoon and found that it weren't so bad.

Following destructions on the CVS for admins page I was able to get things to work. Frumentius has all it's ports blocked except 80 so I figured I'd use Barnabas for development and then port things over as they solidify.

Commands:

1. Install CVS : sudo apt-get install cvs
2. Login to the CVS server : cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@us2.cvs.moodle.org:/cvsroot/moodle login
3. Create a directory to put it in : mkdir moodle_cvs
4. download the weekly update : cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@us2.cvs.moodle.org:/cvsroot/moodle co -d moodle_cvs -P -r MOODLE_19_WEEKLY moodle

At this point I figured I'd get some modules from contrib. But I quickly realised that I didn't want the whole shooting match. So I browsed to the CVS site : http://us2.cvs.moodle.org and dug down until I found the directory I was interested in (mod/attendance). Now I could get just the modules or blocks I'm interested in:

$ mkdir moodle_contrib
$ cd moodle_contrib
$ cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@us2.cvs.moodle.org:/cvsroot/moodle -d moodle_contrib/ co 
contrib/plugins/mod/attendance

Cool, eh?
Now, all I need to do is :

1. copy moodle_cvs into the server web space and copy the modules I want into their appropriate places.
2. Hack away, apply themes, customize, etc
3. In a month's time, update the CVS, and then do a diff between the working version and the CVS version and copy the changed files. If any of these have been hacked I will see straight away and can reapply the requisite changes.

 

Here's a conundrum about which folks may have some useful comments to make. I want to set up a new moodle instance, apply some needed hacks (ie ATwyatt's mega-useful hacks that I used last year — go to the link and scroll down to the entry for June 20th 07) install some modules and then test it out with course backups from last year's courses. So far, so good. But then having done all this I really want to use this particular installation as the production code. In and of itself this is no problem — just tar-gzip the code and copy it into the production location. But the catch then becomes how should I do the initial install?

I could download the latest stable build which is advertised as the best choice for a new server!. This apparently applies all the latest bug fixes but no new features. So, if I do this today I freeze the code at the state it was on July 1 2008. But since I'm going live in mid-August, what about all the bug fixes in the 6-7 weeks between now and then?

Another possibility is to use the CVS download and update this in the interim. But the problem here is that :

1. I've been bitten by CVS updates screwing over working installations and having to clean up the mess.
2. Making sure CVS updates don't overwrite your hacks is a pain

I ran into the same issue with Elgg and came up with this procedure which essentially enables me to update only non-hacked code with bug fix updates. However, Elgg uses SVN and I'm not sure that the same process could be applied to Moodle with CVS.

So I'd be interested to hear how folks are tackling this issue. Normally, I'm dead keen to get as bug free a version as possible as the basis for my production Moodle. After all, this code will have to last untouched for at least a semester. However, my experience is that 95% of the bug fixes would not affect my users. OTOH when you order the bug fixes in priority order for Issue Navigator — 1.9.x resolved you'll see the so-called blockers at the top. Currently the only bug that would really screw me over if it weren't fixed is MDL-13866 "scale ratings do not work in forum".