Moodle 2 for Admins - Theme Settings

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I'm finally back to some of my Moodle work.  Currently I'm working on creating a video collection for Moodle 2 Administrators that will be housed in iTunes U.  This series is focused on all the customization that can be done on the web browser, so no server access is required.  It just makes sense to blog about the features at the same time I'm creating the videos...

Theme Settings in Moodle 2

The theme settings can be used to set some limitations on your themes, as one would expect.  However there are a couple other items in this area that bear some noting as it is probably not intuitive to look for them here; I've colored them in orange below.  Here's a short run down of what is here and what it does (if you prefer the text version, I've included it below...).


  • Theme List - too many themes on your server? or some themes not working correctly? Limit what themes are actually available to your users here.  List the theme names, separating them with commas (no spaces).  For instance, if I only want my users to have access to the themes Brick, Fusion, and Zebra, I would enter brick,fusion,zebra in the box.  To give back access to the full list, simply delete all contents from the box. 
  • Theme designer mode - turn this on when playing with changing themes, either on the server or with the new online options available.  Otherwise, leave it off to speed things up.
  • Allow user themes - Can users set their own themes?  Or do you want them to only use the site themes as assigned?  Note - individual users cannot override course themes set by teachers.
  • Allow course themes - Can themes be set within a course?  Note that course themes override all other themes used
  • Allow category themes - set the theme at the category level.  For instance, set all courses in your high school category to look alike, all middle school courses to look alike.  Remember, though, if  you have course themes enabled and teachers set them they will override the category themes
  • Allow theme changes in the URL - an appendage can be added to your Moodle URL to change the theme
  • Allow users to hide blocks - turns on/off the ability for your users to hide block information; the title of the block still shows (on the block they click a +/- to turn it on or off)
  • Allow blocks to use the dock - turns on/off the ability for your users to dock the blocks on the left side of the page (new Moodle 2 feature - give more real estate for content)
  • Custom menu items - create a custom menu item at the top of your Moodle site; 
  • Enable device detection - enabling this lets you set multiple themes (in another area); when the browser detects the device it displays the appropriate theme.
  • Device detection regular expressions - create your own "device" type to be recognized to apply even another theme for specific devices



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