Configuration problems

Where to start. Firstly I can see the enormous potential in Joomdle but secondly the lack of documentation is a major issue for someone of some but limited IT skills.

What I have been trying to achieve is a seamless view of course ware within Joomla (1.7) and to have one single point of registration within Joomla. The user should not be required to complete any forms other than that at the initial registartion point.

After a false start and some great support from Chris, I did get the registration working and synching as it should.

I have two major issues:
1. When a new user registers in Joomla, they are then able to see and follow a menu link to 'Free Courses'. This opens up a display of courses, (ex moodle), from which the user can choose by clicking on the linked course title.

This takes them to a second page which has an enroll link. At this point the user is then presented with their Profile page.

I had locked a number of fields in the profile page with the exception of 'Description', it shows locked in admin but it isn't in the Joomla view.

I complete the 'Description' field and update that and the Profile page remains, the user is not able to get past that page so there is no access to the training courses.

I intend to try and manually update the students profile and see if that works although that would seem to defeat the purpose.

2. The display of courses is another issue in my case.

Earlier I had been able to display an embedded Articulate presentation which didn't include any of the blocks surrounding the course that you would see in the Moodle view, just the description of the content and beneath that a large screen 'wrapper' view of Articulate.

That's exactly what I wanted for all my courses, unfortunately that view doesn't happen anymore, the view presented is the full Moodle page in a wrapper which, because of the size of the Joomla page, does not now display in its full width, it is cut short.

Bottom Line
The bottom line is this, I want to be able to have a site where a user can register one time and be granted access to all of the course ware and be able to select the course/s they want from a list of categories and be automatically enrolled for their selections. They should be given immediate access to the content and that content should be displayed in it's full size in a wrapper without being cut short. The same should apply to any video clips or web pages, they should also appear in a wrapper and I believe that I set that up correctly at the back end of Moodle.

I am confident that Joomdle is very capable of doing this sort of configuration but the lack of documentation is a real problem.

For the record, the course ware and materials on my site are focused on the needs of small businesses and will be made available at no cost, free and open source. It is a genuine community effort to get businesses up to speed on a wide range of topics without cost to them.

The site url, still in the process of construction, is sblc.com.au . Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Gordon,

For your first issue, am I correct to say that
- you have locked the registration details / user profile details in moodle
- you do not see those fields during registration in joomla

If the above assumption is correct, which user profile tool are you using in joomla? Jomsocial? CB? Ambra? Joomla does not offer all the additional fields in the user registration. Any extra fields are offered by 3rd party extensions. These extensions need to be defined in Joomdle so that the fields can be mapping and the data syncronised between Joomla (3rd party ext) and moodle.

Second, displaying of courses in still very much managed by Moodle. Joomdle does not take away the need for Moodle. Thus when you display the courses (Moodle) in a wrapper, you are still displaying Moodle in a wrapper and not the courses on their own. So if you want a totally invisible Moodle, you will need to ensure that the Moodle template is almost naked and ideally matching the Joomdle template from a look & feel perspective. In addition, I have noticed many sites when trying to display flash presentations, videos, etc. in a wrapper publish joomla modules in the left and/or right positions. Thus reducing the amount of width available for the flash. Third, depending on the size of your flash, you may need to have a slightly larger width joomla template. When embedding, there will always be some degree of space taken up on either side due to borders, divs, spaces, etc. Much of this will be determined based on the template you have chosen in joomla.

You mention that it worked and now it doesn't happen any more. Do you mean it happened inside Joomla using Joomdle? Or do you mean inside Moodle? If in Joomdle, my first question would be what has changed?

Finally, you comments regarding the documentation. Thus far we have only received positive feedback on the documentation except for the occasional correction here and there. I am interested to understand where you find it lacking so it can be improved further. Unfortunately, getting volunteers to contribute to Joomdle's documentation and/or code is difficult, even when Joomdle is FOC.

Hi Chris,
First things first:
1. I changed the page display width in my Joomla template this morning, it now displays the full Moodle page and the Articulate presentation is fully visible and looks fine. For the record it's a Beez20 template and the change I made was to the position.php file, line 35 that specifies the page width as 1050px width should be removed or modified to suit the specific need.

2. I wasn't aware of the docking facility in Moodle, but i sure am now. I simply docked the blocks left and right of the page so that there was far more space available for the courseware

3. I am really not sure what changed but to alter the presentation, I will need to go back through the process and find out.

4. The issue on documentation doesn't relate purely to Joomdle, Moodles user docs are anything but friendly. I have contribute something to the process and will contribute more. That particular issue related to getting locked out of Moodle. I mentioned in an earlier email that i will be putting something on the docs pages when I get this done.

5. The issue for new registered users is that only getting as far as their Moodle profile page is quite challenging. I locked every option but the 'Description' box keeps appearing regardless of being locked at the back end. The only way I could make it work was to go in and manually complete the profile for the test user. I understand that I now need to put a Joomla profile tool in place. Please don't take offense at this but that fact isn't stated as a pre-requisite in the docs that I could see, I will include that information on the wiki page as well as some Joomla 1.7 specifics and configuration aspects that I think may be useful.

6. I appreciate that this this tool is free of charge and in my case I will be doing the same with my site. I will be making every effort to ensure that the new users get as easy an experience as possible which will include some short tutorials on how to use the site and in particular how to use Moodle from the students perspective. By doing that I won't just have another site with tutorials the aim is to have an excellent training site regardless of whether it's free, I view it as my responsibility to look after the users experience not theirs. Having said that, users will be invited to provide feedback and ideas to help the site grow and remain relevant and pertinent to the users needs.

I sincerely believe that Joomdle has enormous potential, it could well and truly lead the market but I also believe that your biggest opportunity is to get the user documentation humming, that plus the smart functionality and services that you offer would be a huge differential between you and your competition, it would be remiss of me not to provide you with this honest feedback.

Thanks for the feedback Gordon.

Just a point of clarification on registration, a profile tool is not a requirement of Joomdle. I suspect the problem you are experiencing, is that moodle requires certain fields to be completed before allowing users to continue. Thus by locking the fields you are not giving users the opportunity to proceed as they have not entered the information anywhere.

My suggestion regarding one of the profile tools, was simply to provide you with an approach to collect the data since the fields are locked in Moodle. If you choose not to lock those fields, then you do not need a profile tool.

Thanks Chris,
I have downloaded CB and Acymailing and will install them, would I be correct in saying that if I don't install them and then leave the user profile fields 'unlocked if empty' then the user will have to complete their profile form after first registering in Joomla? If that's the case it's the step I wanted to avoid if at all possible. As it is I don't think CB has an appropriate field that maps to 'Description' as seems to be mandatory in Moodle and that's where I have been hung up.

Your little girl looks a bit like my little girl

Cheers

Gordon

Yes, this is a Moodle requirement - for any mandatory field it must be completed. At this point, I cannot remember which Moodle fields are forced mandatory by the system and which you can change from mandatory to optional.

You could hack the moodle code so that that the forced mandatory fields are not required, however, I am not sure if there is any impact down stream somewhere.

Regardless of CB, Jomsocial, etc. you can always create a new field called description and map that over to moodle. The mapping is done in Joomdle - you specify the fields to map from CB/Jomsocial to moodle. That said, I have never mapped across a description field but logically I do not see why this wouldn't work.

In J1.7 you don't need any extra components to handle description in registration, you can use own Joomla user profile plugin, and map "about me" to moodle's "description".

Thanks Antonio,
I will get that done today.. Coming together at last

Hi Antonio, I activated user profile as suggested and mapped 'aboutme' in the Joomla profile to 'description' in moodle. I returned to the create new account page and was presented with the normal registration requirement plus the 'About Me' field immediately beneath the registration form. I completed it and submitted it.

I was then presented with the edit user profile page which showed as having no data entered in the About Me field.

I entered some data in the field and submitted it. That worked and I was able to gain access to the courses.

Is this a Joomla issue? I checked the configurations and there seemed to be no reason for the double prompt. Is it a Joomdle issue whereby the initial data is not being transferred for some reason.

Hi.

I just tried this, and it worked fine:
- Enabled plugin
- Enabled aboutme and city fields
- Create mappings for the 2 fields above
- Register a new user, entering info in the 2 fields
- Logged into Joomla with the new user and opened a new window with Moodle site
- No edit profile screen appears, and if I go to my profile I see the info I entered in both fields is there

Not sure what may be happening to you....