Resources for new developers

If you’re thinking of developing a new module for Moodle, you’ll be interested in the latest addition to our developer documentation – the NEWMODULE documentation, thanks to Daniele Cordella. The comprehensive documentation includes a tutorial, a reference, FAQ and even information on adding capabilities.

Another useful resource for new developers is the course Introduction to Moodle Programming which guides users through the process of developing a new block.

A big thank you to all our experienced Moodle developers who have written documentation to help new developers. It’s great that the Moodle community is so friendly and welcoming!

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Moodle errors in spelling

One of my weekly tasks as Moodle community manager is to respond to messages sent via the moodle.org contact form. Occasionally users logged in as a guest submit a message which I am unable to reply to if an email address is not provided. Yesterday I received one such message:

Moodle errors in spelling

Dear Moodle Support,

Our district is using Moodle as a support for our teachers and staff. It is a Wonderful resource; however, enrollment should have two (l’s). Our students found the error when the logged on. Please be advised and try to correct these spelling mistakes.

Of course this is a frequently asked question which is answered in the Enrolment FAQ. As people continue to ask the same question, I wonder if things could be made clear elsewhere. If you have any ideas, please post them in a Using Moodle forum.

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GHOP contest for 13-18 year olds coming soon!

Remember the Google Highly Open Participation (GHOP) contest in 2007/08? The contest, for 13-18 year olds, gave participants the opportunity to learn more about and contribute to various aspects of open source software development. Around 100 Moodle tasks were completed by 50 students – see GHOP/2007 for the list.

Google are planning on running GHOP (perhaps with a new name!) again this year, starting in early December. However, they are currently asking for help with testing and documenting the new system ‘Melange’. Please see the GHOP meeting summary discussion for details.

Finally, if you have any ideas for Moodle tasks suitable for the contest, please add them to Development:Task ideas.

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Particularly helpful Moodlers identified in community discussion courses

Thanks to Eloy, the scripts for automatically populating groups in Using Moodle are now available for all other community discussion courses on moodle.org.

• Core developers are developers with write access to part or all of cvs:/moodle.
• Translators are developers with write access to cvs:/lang.
• Moodle Partners group membership is copied from the Moodle Partners group in Using Moodle. (Please let me know if you should be in this group but have been missed out, as I’m responsible for adding users to this group manually!)
• Particularly helpful Moodlers are users who have written a lot of useful posts recently in the forums, as determined by the Moodle community when they rate posts. For example, Moodle en Español has a group Moodlers de gran ayuda and most recently, Moodle en français has a group Moodleurs particulièrement utiles.

If you’re a community discussion course facilitator and would like any of these groups in your course, please create a Moodle.org Sites issue in the Moodle Tracker about it.

If you’re wondering how group icons are added next to users’ forum posts on moodle.org, please see the create group documentation.

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Demos of new features in Moodle 2.0

Our online developer meeting last Friday was packed with demonstrations of new features coming in Moodle 2.0, including the navigation and settings blocks (thanks to Sam Hemelryk and Tim Hunt), the TaskChain module, a replacement for the HotPot module (thanks to Gordon Bateson), and the new Workshop module (thanks to David Mudrák).

Thanks to everyone who participated in the meeting, especially those who had to get up early or stay up late, and to Dan Poltawski who logged in whilst on holiday in Tenerife!

If you missed the meeting, Developer meeting September 2009 contains a recording link. Meeting notes will be available soon.

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