Waffle Bytes

Another easy customization that can be added to your Moodle 2 site is header/footer information specific to your site.  Again, prior to Moodle 2 you had to hack into a theme and add this information (requiring knowledge of PHP, HTML, and CSS).  Now, it is a customization that can be added to any of your themes using the web browser and logging in as the Moodle Administrator.  Unlike creating a custom site menu, if you do want to "pretty it up" you do need to know (or lookup) some HTML. Here's the video (if you prefer written instructions, they are below): To add a custom header and/or footer to your site, login as the Moodle Administrator.  In the Site Administration area, click on the Appearance link, then select Additional HTML. This will give you and area to type in the information you want in the header, body and/or footer area on your Moodle site.  (For most if not all themes, the BODY information is displayed immediately after the HEAD informa...

One of the easiest ways to get common links onto your site (and force them on every page) is creating a custom site menu.  Prior to Moodle 2, this meant either creating or customizing a Moodle theme with menus...an activity that required a steep learning curve unless you had prior experience working with HTML and CSS.  With Moodle 2, an area has been added where any site administrator can create a custom menu for the site simply using the web browser - no HTML or CSS knowledge required.  Here's the video (if you prefer written instructions, they are below): To create a custom menu for your site, login as the Moodle Administrator.  In the Site Administration area, click on Appearance link, then Themes, then Theme Settings.  Look about 3/4 of the way down the page - you will see a paragraph entry box on the page. Create your menu! Some items of note: for each item in your menu: the only required piece is the text that appears in the menu the first ...

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 th...

Having students self-enroll into a course can save a lot of time. A teacher still has control of whom is in the course, yet does not need to go in and manually add the students by hand. One trick some teachers use to prevent additional students from adding the course once a majority of students are enrolled is to change the enrollment key. Here are the directions for setting up and using this features in Moodle 2.+. Find out if your Moodle Administrator has enabled Self enrollment; this must be enabled first at the site level.

 (if they haven’t, you can share with them that it is done at: Settings -- Site administration -- Plugins -- Enrolments --; Manage enroll plugins )
   When in your course, go to Settings -- Course administration -- Users and click on Enrollment methods.
   Click on the icon to edit the Self enrollment settings ( NOTE: the icon will vary depending on your theme):   Change appropriate settings (definitely make sure “Allow self e...