Edutor – A Brand New Moodle 4.0+ Theme Based On Boost (Main Features & Settings)

Posted on 27 April, 2022 by Admin

Moodle version 4.x has finally arrived and it’s packed with brand new UX features and improvements. To move forward with Moodle we have developed a new premium theme, Edutor, based on Moodle’s core theme Boost. Built on the ever-evolving Boost theme, our Edutor theme inherits all of the best UX and UI features from the Boost theme which makes it future proof and perfect for universities and corporate Moodle sites.

Edutor theme’s overall design is super modern and on-trend. It also contains a plethora of configurable settings and features which empower you to quickly convert your plain Moodle site into a professional-looking bespoke online learning platform.

Live Demo Theme Details

Below are the main theme settings pages.
You can configure them via Site administration > Appearance > Themes > Edutor

Page Index

General Settings
Header Area Settings
Footer Area Settings
Frontpage Hero Section Settings
Frontpage Logo Section Settings
Frontpage Search Section Settings
Frontpage Featured Section Settings
Frontpage Categories Section Settings
Frontpage Call-To-Action Section Settings
Frontpage FAQ Section Settings
Frontpage Promo Section Settings
Frontpage Teachers Section Settings
Frontpage Testimonials Settings
Course Settings
Login Page Settings
Advanced Settings

General Settings

You can set your site’s overall branding colours in this section. It also gives you the option to fine tune the course header image styling.

Theme Settings:

Header Area Settings

You can upload your site logo to be displayed in the top bar area and add Moodle’s responsive custom menu next to it. You also have the option to display an alert right under the top bar on the front page.

Frontend View:

Theme Settings:

In the footer area you can add your site’s branding (eg. logo and about information), social media links, footer content areas (perfect for adding a footer menu and additional content).

Want to learn how to add the footer menu as shown on our demo? Check out our post here.

Frontend View:

Theme Settings:

Frontpage Hero Section Settings

You can configure the hero section slideshow in this section. Edutor theme allows you to upload up to 6 slides with captions and call-to-action buttons. You can also add one Youtube or Vimeo video in this section. The original Photoshop PSD file for creating the demo hero background images is included in the theme zip file so you can make similar hero images to use for your site.

Want to learn how to use the Hero Section to captivate learners? Check out our post here.

Frontend View:

Theme Settings:

Frontpage Logo Section Settings

This section is great for adding partnership or your organisation’s credential logos. You can add up to 12 logos with optional links.

Frontend View:

Theme Settings:

Frontpage Search Section Settings

You can add a course search section in the frontpage with section intro and a call-to-action button (optional).

Frontend View:

Theme Settings:

Frontpage Featured Section Settings

This section is perfect for adding your featured courses or content. It’s a tabbed structure and you can add up to 6 tabbed panes. Each pane allows you to add custom HTML and up to 10 pre-designed blocks. In each block you have the option to upload your own course image, add course description, target link, course label and price.

Want to learn more about how to configure and customise this section? Check out our post here.

Frontend View:

Theme Settings:

Frontpage Categories Section Settings

This section allows you to add up to 20 blocks with titles, images, descriptions and links. It’s perfect for adding custom Moodle course categories.

Want to learn more about how to configure and customise this section? Check out our post here.

Frontend View:

Theme Settings:

Frontpage Call-To-Action Section Settings

Apart from adding the call-to-action content and image you can also add up to 4 data boxes and up to 6 benefit boxes.

Want to learn more about how to configure and customise this section? Check out our post here.

Frontend View:

Theme Settings:

Frontpage FAQ Section Settings

In this section you can add up to 10 Q&As and you can also link the section to a dedicated FAQ page.

Want to learn more about how to configure and customise this section? Check out our post here.

Frontend View:

Theme Settings:

You can add up to 6 promo items in this section. Each item can have a title, a description (HTML), a call-to-action button and link to a Youtube or Vimeo video. The original Photoshop PSD template file for creating the demo promo images is included in the theme zip file so you can make similar images to use for your site.

Want to learn more about how to configure and customise this section? Check out our post here.

Frontend View:

Theme Settings:

Frontpage Teachers Section Settings

In this section you can add up to 20 profiles with names, images and bio description (HTML). The Photoshop PSD template file for creating the demo profile images is included in the theme zip file.

Frontend View:

Theme Settings:

Frontpage Testimonials Settings

In this section you can add up to 6 testimonials with user profile images, quote highlight and star ratings.

Frontend View:

Theme Settings:

Course Settings

You can configure how the Moodle course list is displayed on the frontpage in this section. You can also fine tune the course header image.

Frontend View:

Theme Settings:

You can upload a site logo and a background image for the login page.

Frontend View:

Theme Settings:

Advanced Settings

This section contains advanced settings for theme customisations.

Theme Settings:

What’s New In Moodle 4.x

Posted on 20 April, 2022 by Admin

Moodle 4.0+ is released in April 2022 and it contains significant UX and UI improvements desired by the whole Moodle community. In this blog post we have listed all of the improvements and new features related to Moodle courses.

Moodle 4.x Live Demo

New course tabbed navigation design

Prior to Moodle 4.0, all of the course management related options are hidden under the “Actions Dropdown Menu” which is only accessible by clicking the cog icon in the course header area. Moodle 4.0 revamped the old dropdown menu system and replaced it with a tabbed navigation system. The new navigation system contains all the contextual management options related to the current course page which is more intuitive to users.

New course sliding side panels

Moodle 4.0 added two sliding side panels on the left and right hand side of the course page.

Left Panel

The left panel contains the course index items. It not only provides a quick way for learners to jump to a specific course section or activity/resource, it also enables course teacher/admin to rearrange the course activities/resources by dragging and dropping them directly in the panel.

Right Panel

The right panel contains the course side blocks. Prior to Moodle 4.0 all of the side blocks were displayed on the course page which took up valuable screen space. Now users can toggle the panel to hide the blocks and focus on the course content.

New Moodle course icons for activities and resources

Moodle 4.0 completely revamped the old icon system and replaced the old dated-looking icons with modern sleek line icons.

Collapsible course sections

In Moodle 4.0 course sections are collapsible. Users can collapse all of the sections at once or collapse individual sections.

Extra information for course activity

Moodle 4.0 displays extra information for each activity. For example, the assignment activity displays “opened date” and “due date” under the activity description. (see the comparison figure below)

New way to activate course editing mode

Moodle 4.0+ places an “Edit mode” switch in the page header area across the site. Users can click the switch to toggle the Moodle site between editing and non-editing mode. Moodle 3.x displays a “Turn Editing On” button on the course page for users to toggle course editing mode.

New langue menu position

If your Moodle site has more than one language pack installed, a language menu will be displayed by default. Moodle 3.x displays the language menu in the Moodle custom menu. Moodle 4.0+ displays the language menu in the page header top bar area for logged-out users. Logged-in users can access the language menu under the user dropdown menu.

Moodle 4.0+ guest view:

Moodle 4.0+ logged-in view:

How to force users to log in before viewing default content in Moodle 4.x

Posted on 19 April, 2022 by Admin

Update:

This post has been updated to reflect changes in Moodle 4.x

By default, Moodle’s Front page usually contains a list of available courses, news items and some Moodle blocks depending on the site’s configuration, and the default Moodle content on the page can be viewed by all the site’s visitors. Some of our clients wanted to prevent anonymous site visitors from seeing any of Moodle’s default content (eg. available Moodle courses), and asked us if it is possible to force users to log in to view Moodle content. The answer is Yes and it is actually really easy to do in Moodle.

Step 1

Log into your Moodle site as an admin user, and navigate to the Site security settings option by going to Site administration > Security > Site security settings

Step 2

Tick the “Force users to login” option checkbox.

Step 3

Click the “Save changes” button. Now, if you log out and try to access your Moodle site again, you will need to log in first before viewing any Moodle content.

How To Check Your Moodle Site’s Version And Build

Posted on 19 April, 2022 by Admin

Update:

This post has been updated to reflect changes in Moodle 4.x

The Moodle installation package is built weekly with new fixes. As a Moodle site administrator it’s always handy to know your installation’s version and build to be able to identify version or build related bugs and decide if you need to upgrade to the latest version.

To check this piece of information, all you need to do is navigate to the “Notifications” option by going to Site administration > General > Notifications as shown on the screenshots below.

The screenshots used are taken from our latest Moodle 4.x theme Edutor.

moodle-4.x-how-to-check-moodle-site-version-and-build-1

moodle-4.x-how-to-check-moodle-site-version-and-build-2

How To Install A New Moodle Theme

Posted on 1 April, 2022 by Admin

There are two ways of installing a new Moodle theme. In this tutorial we will show you the two methods by installing one of our premium Moodle themes, Maker.

Update:

This post has been updated to reflect interface changes in Moodle 4.x

Method 1 – Upload the theme folder to your server directly

This is the traditional method and our preferred way of installing a new Moodle theme. It’s very easy if you have FTP access to your remote server or for working on your localhost. All you need to do is to upload or place your new theme’s theme folder (extracted from the zip file) under the “theme” folder in your Moodle installation.

Upload/place the theme folder on your remote or local server:

Your Moodle installation > theme > maker

Method 2 – Upload the theme zip file via Moodle’s plugin page

If for some reason you don’t have access to your server, you can also use Moodle’s “Install Plugins” page to install the theme.

Site administration > Plugins > Install plugins

If you want to install a free Moodle theme you’ve downloaded from Moodle’s official site, you can upload the downloaded theme zip file directly there.

Please note: For all of our premium Moodle themes you need to follow the steps below to create a valid zip file before uploading via Moodle’s “Install plugins” interface:

Step 1

Extract the product zip file you’ve downloaded and you will see a readme file and the theme folder

Step 2

Compress the theme folder into a zip file. Give the newly created zip file whatever name you like and upload the zip file via Moodle’s “Install plugins” interface.

Activate the new theme

Now you’ve successfully installed your new theme. To use the new theme for your Moodle site you have to activate the theme in Moodle first.

Go to the theme selector page as an admin and activate the theme as shown below:

Top 3 Boost-based Moodle Themes for Your Site

Posted on 1 April, 2022 by Admin

Since Moodle 3.x, Boost became Moodle’s new core theme. It’s designed to improve the overall user experience of Moodle across desktop and mobile devices and it comes with a new navigation system, course layout and convenient editing options. Moodle has been encouraging developers to build their Moodle themes based on Boost to utilise all the latest features available to themes in Moodle.

At the time of writing, there aren’t many Moodle themes based on the new Boost theme. Most of the free or premium themes are all based on old Moodle core themes. As Moodle is moving forward with Boost we expect more and more theme developers to adopt Boost as their base theme in the near future.

Among all of the available Boost based Moodle themes, below is a list of the top 3 themes you can use to future-proof your Moodle site.

2022 Update:

We have released a brand new Boost-based theme for Moodle 4.x.

Live Demo Theme Details

1. Moove Theme (Free)

Moove is a free Moodle theme compatible with Moodle 3.x and 4.0. Moove (for Moodle 3.x) provides an app-like modern interface and is designed to help your users focus on your site’s content. This theme is developed and maintained by Willian Mano. If you’d like to support the theme author and help keep the theme “free and alive” you can head to the theme details page to make a donation.

Moove Theme Frontpage (Moodle 3.x):

You can add a header image with heading and 4 marketing spots with icon images, content and links. There is a custom login form overlaid on top of the header image for quick user login.

Moove Theme Course Page (Moodle 3.x):

You can toggle the navigation drawer and the side blocks, maximising screen space to focus on the course content.

Moove Theme Dashboard (Moodle 3.x):

For admin users, the dashboard contains a quick overview of useful stats such as disk usage, online users, and course and user totals.

Download Moove Live Demo

2. Fordson Theme (Free)

Fordson is another free Boost-based Moodle theme compatible with Moodle 3.2+. It contains lots of useful features and is mainly designed for educational organisations. It’s developed based on feedback from users and aims to provide the best experience for students “from login to learning”. To find out more about the Fordson theme you can take a look at the theme promo page here.

Fordson Theme Frontpage:

You can add a slideshow, have the option to show a quick login form for logged out users and add up to 6 marketing spots either at top or bottom of the page. For logged in users, you can add up to 8 icons to act as quick links to other sections.

For logged-out users:

For logged-in users:

Fordson Theme Course Page:

For each course, you have the option to upload a course banner image to be displayed above the course name. As a course teacher, you can also toggle a custom course management panel to access all of the options for managing the course.

Fordson Theme Dashboard:

It contains a prominent user profile section and the design is clean and simple.

Download Fordson Live Demo

3. Maker (Premium)

Maker is a premium theme developed for Moodle LMS platform. It’s primarily designed for businesses, government organisations and higher education to provide a cost-effective way to transform their Moodle sites into outstanding learning platforms. It’s packed with configurable features and is highly customisable to suit any company/organisation’s branding. For a full feature list, please visit the theme details page here.

Maker Theme Frontpage:

Configurable items include: Header alert, slideshow, benefits blocks, featured blocks, promo carousel, logos, testimonials, course list layout styles , FAQ and Call-To-Action section.

Feature Update: You can choose a different course list layout style via the theme settings page.(learn more)

moodle-theme-maker-course-list-layout-styles-banner

Maker Theme Course Page:

This theme provides lots of useful Bootstrap components for teachers to use in course creation. It also allows you to set a course image to be displayed in the course header area.

Maker Theme Dashboard & My Courses:

The design is super clean and sleek. All the information is presented in a simple yet effective way.

Dashboard Page (Moodle 4.x)

My Courses Page (Moodle 4.x)

Maker Theme Static Pages:

Maker has built-in static page styling so you can add professional-looking pages (eg. “About Us“, “Contact us” and “FAQ“) to your Moodle site. You can learn more here.

Maker Theme Login Page:

Maker supports social logins with custom styling. You can learn how to enable social logins in your Moodle site here.

Live Demo Maker Theme Details

How To Change The Default Words And Phrases In Moodle 4.x

Posted on 1 April, 2022 by Admin

Is it possible to change the default words and phrases on a Moodle site?

This is a frequently asked question by Moodle administrators. The answer is yes, and you can find detailed instructions for doing so in the official Moodle documentation. However, it is a bit difficult to follow the documentation without some visual guidance, so we have made this tutorial to guide you through it with screenshots taken from our Moodle 4.x demo.

To start with, let’s set a task:

If you have added a custom message on Moodle’s login page you will notice that the default message title says “Is this your first time here?” In this tutorial we will change this phrase to “Welcome to our Moodle demo“.

moodle-4.x-change-default-words-and-phrases-0

Step 1

Log into your Moodle site as an admin user and navigate to the Language customization option: Site administration > Language > Language customization

moodle-4.x-change-default-words-and-phrases-1

Step 2

Select English from the language dropdown menu

Step 3

Click the “Open language pack for editing” button, then once that’s loaded click the “continue” button.

moodle-4.x-change-default-words-and-phrases-2.1

moodle-4.x-change-default-words-and-phrases-3

Step 4

Select moodle.php in the selection box, as the string we want to replace belongs to moodle.php. In the “Only strings containing” filter box, enter “Is this your first time here?” (or any other text you want to replace it with, without the quotation marks).

moodle-4.x-change-default-words-and-phrases-4

Step 5

Enter “Welcome to our Moodle demo” to the Local customisation box, and then click the “Save changes to the language pack” button.

moodle-4.x-change-default-words-and-phrases-6

Step 6

You will then see the screen below. Click the “continue” button to confirm and carry on.

moodle-4.x-change-default-words-and-phrases-5

Step 7

Now you can log out, then refresh your browser and go to the login page, and you should see that “Is this your first time here” is now “Welcome to our Moodle demo”.

Moodle-how-to-add-login-page-custom-message-6

Moodle 4.x – How To Add A Custom Welcome Message To The Login Page

Posted on 1 April, 2022 by Admin

Did you know you can display a custom welcome message on your Moodle site’s login page? If you’re using Moodle’s default core theme Boost or a Boost-based theme, you can easily add custom content on the login page. In this tutorial we will show you how to do that in a few simple steps. The screenshots used in this tutorial is taken from a Moodle 4.x site using the Boost-based theme Edutor.

Moodle-how-to-add-login-page-custom-message-moodle-edutor-theme

Step 1

Log into your Moodle site as an admin user, and navigate to the Manage authentication option: Site administration > plugins > Authentication > Manage authentication

Moodle-how-to-add-login-page-custom-message-2

Step 2

Now you are on the Manage authentication page, and if you scroll down the page a bit, you should see a form called “Instructions“.

Moodle-how-to-add-login-page-custom-message-3

Step 3

Enter your custom text message in the Instructions form. You can also enter HTML code content as shown below.

Moodle-how-to-add-login-page-custom-message-4

HTML code snippet used on our demo site:

<div class="row">
    <div class="col-xs-12 col-12 col-sm-6">
        <h5>Student login</h5>
        <p style="margin-bottom: 0"><strong>Username:</strong> student<br>
            <strong>Password:</strong> demo
        </p>
    </div>
    <div class="col-xs-12 col-12 col-sm-6">
        <h5>Non-editing teacher login</h5>
        <p style="margin-bottom: 0"><strong>Username:</strong> teacher<br>
            <strong>Password:</strong> demo
        </p>
    </div>
</div>

Save changes. Now if you log out and go back to the Moodle login page again, you should see that the message you just entered appears on the login page.

Moodle-how-to-add-login-page-custom-message-7

Improvement

You can also change the Moodle default title “Is this your first time here?” into something else, for example, on our Moodle demo site we have replaced it with “Welcome to our Moodle demo“. You can find out how to achieve this by reading my tutorial “How to change the default words and phrases in Moodle“

How To Add Facebook Login To Your Moodle 4.0+ Site

Posted on 28 March, 2022 by Admin

Having 2.9 billion monthly active users in the world, Facebook is still the most popular social media platform in 2022. Enabling Facebook login on your Moodle site can encourage new users to sign up to your Moodle courses. In this tutorial, we will show you all the steps you need to take to offer Facebook login on your Moodle 4.0+ site.

Live Demo

Pre-requirement:

You or your business needs to have an existing Facebook account.

Step 1

Go to Facebook (Meta) for Developers (https://developers.facebook.com/apps) Click the “Create App” button and you will be taken to an app creation page where you can enter the required information. Because you’re adding Facebook login to your site you can select “Consumer” as the app type.

Step 2

Now you have created an app, on the app configuration page you can add “Facebook Login” to your app.

Step 3

Select the “Web” option in the next step and enter your Moodle site’s URL and save. You can ignore fields 2 to 5 in the form as Moodle handles them automatically.

Step 4

Click “Settings” under the “Facebook Login” option on the left-hand side menu. Configure the Client OAuth settings section as shown in the figure below and save changes.

You need to enter the “Valid OAuth Redirect URIs” following a specific format – https://yourmoodlesite/admin/oauth2callback.php

Step 5

Click the “Basic” option under the “Settings” menu as shown in the figure below and enter all the required information. The App ID and App secret fields are auto generated and you will need them when you configure your Moodle site later.

Please note: you must enter a valid Privacy Policy URL here to make your app “Live” later.

Step 6

Click the “Permissions and Features” option under the “App Review” menu as shown in the figure below. Find public_profile and email in the list and click the “Get advanced access” buttons.

Step 7

Change your app’s mode from “Development” to “Live” by clicking the toggle in the top menu bar.

Step 8

Step 9

Click the “Facebook” button and you will be taken to the configuration page where you need to enter your Facebook app’s “Client ID” and “Client secret”. You can get them from your Facebook App’s settings page (see Step 5).

Save changes and your site is ready to let users log in using their Facebook accounts.

How to enable Moodle’s maintenance mode

Posted on 26 March, 2022 by Admin

When Moodle’s maintenance mode is enabled, only the site administrator can access the courses, and all other users will be notified that the site is in maintenance mode.

It’s good practice to put Moodle into maintenance mode if you are going to upgrade the site, make big changes to the existing courses or test different themes for the courses. This will ensure that your site users are not using the site while it is upgrading and that they will not see all of the changes on the fly and get confused by them while you are still working on any courses.

Step 1

Log into your Moodle site as an admin user, and navigate to the Maintenance settings option: Site administration > Server > Maintenance mode

moodle-enable-maintenance-mode-edutor-theme-settings-1

Step 2

Click “Enable” from the Maintenance mode drop-down list. You can also write your own maintenance message for users in the text editor as shown on the figure below.

moodle-enable-maintenance-mode-edutor-theme-settings

Step 3

Click the “Save changes” button and your Moodle site is now in maintenance mode, and the maintenance message will be shown when the non-admin users are trying to access the courses.

moodle-enable-maintenance-mode-edutor-theme

Once you’ve finished upgrading the site or making changes to your courses, don’t forget to disable maintenance mode.

Moodle Maker Theme – How to Display Moodle’s Default Login Form After The Social Logins

Posted on 27 February, 2021 by Admin

By default on Moodle’s login page Moodle will display the default login form before all the social login options. If social media logins are your site’s main login methods you might want to give priority to the social login buttons by displaying them before Moodle’s default login form. In this blog post we will share the custom css code snippet you can use to do just that.

Default Login Page View:

Step1

Copy the following code snippet.

#page-login-index .auth-blocks-wrapper .form-col {order: 12}

Step 2

Go to Maker theme’s Advanced Settings page and paste the code into the “Raw SCSS” input field. Save changes.

Now on the login page all the social login buttons should be displayed on the left hand side (on desktop) and above the Moodle login form (on mobile).

Page Index

General Settings

Header Area Settings

Footer Area Settings

Frontpage Hero Section Settings

Frontpage Logo Section Settings

Frontpage Search Section Settings

Frontpage Featured Section Settings

Frontpage Categories Section Settings

Frontpage Call-To-Action Section Settings

Frontpage FAQ Section Settings

Frontpage Promo Section Settings

Frontpage Teachers Section Settings

Frontpage Testimonials Settings

Course Settings

Login Page Settings

Advanced Settings

New course tabbed navigation design

New course sliding side panels

New Moodle course icons for activities and resources

Collapsible course sections

Extra information for course activity

New way to activate course editing mode

New langue menu position

Update:

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Update:

Update:

Method 1 – Upload the theme folder to your server directly

Method 2 – Upload the theme zip file via Moodle’s plugin page

Step 1

Step 2

Activate the new theme

2022 Update:

1. Moove Theme (Free)

Moove Theme Frontpage (Moodle 3.x):

Moove Theme Course Page (Moodle 3.x):

Moove Theme Dashboard (Moodle 3.x):

2. Fordson Theme (Free)

Fordson Theme Frontpage:

Fordson Theme Course Page:

Fordson Theme Dashboard:

3. Maker (Premium)

Maker Theme Frontpage:

Maker Theme Course Page:

Maker Theme Dashboard & My Courses:

Maker Theme Static Pages:

Maker Theme Login Page:

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Improvement

Pre-requirement:

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Step 5

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