Moodle Tip: How to Hide Available Courses Section on the Front Page

Is there a way to hide the “Available Courses” section on my Moodle site’s front page? This is an often asked question by customers who bought the Maker theme. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to do that in Moodle.

Step 1

Log in as an admin and navigate to:

Site Administration > Front page > Front Page Settings

moodle-hide-course-list-on-frontpage-settings-path

Step 2

Find the options “Front page” and “Front page items when logged in“. Remove “List of courses” from the relevant dropdown menu by selecting option “None”. Save your changes.

moodle-hide-course-list-on-frontpage-settings

That’s it, now the course list is no longer displayed on your site’s front page.

Below is a before and after comparison figure. The theme used in the figure is our Maker theme and you can view the demo site here.

moodle-hide-course-list-on-frontpage-before-after

Moodle Theme Maker for Moodle: New course list layout styles for your Moodle site’s frontpage

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

In the latest Maker theme we’ve added more options for you to configure the layout of your Moodle course list on your site’s frontpage. In this tutorial we’ll show you the available options so you can make a more informed decision in choosing the best option for your Moodle site.

To configure the options you need to go to the theme settings page and select the “Course settings” tab: Site administration > Appearance > Themes > Maker Settings

Style 1 – Default

By default the course list will be shown as a list of blocks. This style works best if you make sure the course summary is truncated to max 200 characters and your course image size is 440px x 280px, or 880px x 560px if you are going to use the image as the course header image as well.

Output:

moodle-theme-maker-course-list-layout-style-default-output

Configurations:

moodle-theme-maker-course-list-layout-style-default-config

Style 2 – Cards

This style shows your list of courses as cards with equal heights. This style works best with a truncated course summary (you can set the truncation length based on your needs). If you are going to use this style, it’s recommended to have at least 3 available courses on your site, otherwise the layout will look a bit odd.

Output:

moodle-theme-maker-course-list-layout-style-cards-output

Configurations:

moodle-theme-maker-course-list-layout-style-cards-config

Style 3 – Masonry

This style shows your list of courses as cards with their auto heights. It places the cards in optimal position based on available vertical space. You don’t need to truncate the course summary when using this style as the course items with various heights will automatically stack to each other and fit into the available space.

One thing to note is that this layout orders your course items from top to bottom then left to right.

Again, if you are going to use this style, it’s recommended to have at least 3 available courses on your site, otherwise the layout will look a bit odd.

Output:

moodle-theme-maker-course-list-layout-style-masonry-output

Configurations:

moodle-theme-maker-course-list-layout-style-masonry-config

Moodle Tip: How to remove messaging

By default, Moodle allows users to message each other. However, some organisations might want to prevent students from messaging each other. In this tutorial we’ll show you how to disable your Moodle site’s messaging system.

Step 1 – Disable Messaging Site-Wide

Log in as an admin and go to: Site administration > Advanced features
Find the option “Enable messaging system” and untick the checkbox. Save your changes.

moodle-disable-messaging

Step 2 – Remove relevant link

After Step 1, some links related to messaging (see figure before) will be removed automatically.

moodle-messaging-related-links

However, you will need to manually remove the “messages” link in the user dropdown menu.

Go to: Site administration > Appearance > Themes > Theme settings and remove the message-related code inside of the “User menu items” input field (see figure below).

moodle-remove-user-menu-item

Save your changes and the link will disappear from the user menu:

moodle-user-menu-remove-message-link

Moodle Course Tip: How to add full-width responsive videos in Moodle Boost or Boost-based themes

Moodle’s core theme Boost is built on the latest Bootstrap 4 framework. If you are using Boost or a Boost-based theme (eg. Moove, Fordson) you can take advantage of the Bootstrap 4 “embed” utility to add responsive Youtube/Vimeo videos in your Moodle course.

In this tutorial we will show you how to do that.

Live Demo

(Our demo uses Maker theme which is our latest Boost-based Moodle theme.)

Step 1 – Get the Youtube/Vimeo video embed code

For Youtube video, you can follow the guide here

For Vimeo video, you can follow the guide here

Step 2 – Prepare the video code snippet for your Moodle course

Okay, so you’ve got your video embed code ready. To add the responsiveness to the video in your Moodle course, you need to wrap the embed code in Bootstrap’s utility code as shown below:

<div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9">

  <!-- Replace the iframe below with your video embed code -->
  <iframe class="embed-responsive-item" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zpOULjyy-n8?rel=0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

</div>

Tip: You can change the video aspect ratio by replacing embed-responsive-16by9 with other modifier classes. You can find the list of classes on the Bootstrap 4 official docs here.

Step 3 – Add the video code snippet to your Moodle course

Log into your desired Moodle course as a teacher or admin. Turn editing on and add a “Label” using the “+ Add an activity or resource” link.

Copy and paste your prepared video code snippet from Step 2 into Label’s HTML code editor (as shown in the figure below).

moodle-course-add-video
Save your changes and you’ve successfully added a responsive video to your Moodle course.
moodle-course-add-responsive-video

Moodle Theme Maker – How to reorder the frontpage theme sections

Our premium Moodle theme Maker is a Boost-based Moodle theme so it’s very easy to change the order of the frontpage sections by editing the related theme template file(s). In this tutorial we will show you how to make the changes so you can customise the frontpage section order to best suit your site’s landing UX needs.

Step 1 – Find the template files

There are two files related to the Maker theme’s frontpage layout. Both of them are located under the theme templates folder: maker > templates

File 1frontpage.mustache

This template is used to control the layout for logged-in users. If your Moodle course allows guest login then this template applies to logged-in guest users as well.

*File 2frontpage_guest.mustache

*Note: This file only applies to Maker theme for Moodle 3.x. Maker theme for Moodle 4.x doesn’t have this file.

This template is used to control the layout for visitors (not logged-in users)

Step 2 – Edit the template

Open your desired template file in a text editor and change the order of the relevant code snippets.

Below is a list of the code snippets for displaying the frontpage sections.

  • Header Alert
    moodle-theme-maker-frontpage-alert
    {{{ output.header_alert}}}
    
  • Slideshow Section
    moodle-theme-maker-slideshow
    {{{ output.fp_slideshow }}}
    
  • Search Courses Section
    moodle-theme-maker-frontpage--search-courses-section
    {{{ output.fp_searchcourses }}}
    
  • Benefits Section
    moodle-theme-maker-benefits
    {{{ output.fp_benefits }}}
    
  • Featured Section
    moodle-theme-maker-featured-blocks
    {{{ output.fp_features }}}
    
  • Promo Carousel Section
    moodle-theme-maker-promo-carousel
    {{{ output.fp_promo }}}
    
  • Logos Section
    moodle-theme-maker-logos-section
    {{{ output.fp_logos }}}
    
  • Teachers Section
    maker-theme-teachers-section
    {{{ output.fp_teachers }}}
    
  • Testimonials Section
    moodle-theme-maker-testimonials
    {{{ output.fp_testimonials }}}
    
  • Moodle Frontpage Content
    moodle-theme-maker-frontpage-moodle-content
    <div id="page" class="container-fluid">
    ...
    </div>
    
  • FAQ Section
    moodle-theme-maker-frontpage-faq-section
    {{{ output.fp_faq }}}
    
  • CTA Section
    moodle-theme-maker-cta-section
    {{{ output.fp_ctasection }}}
    
  • For example, say you want to display the Promo Carousel section above the Featured section for visitors, you can edit the file frontpage_guest.mustache and move the Promo snippet {{{ output.fp_promo }}} above the Featured snippet {{{ output.fp_features }}}. If you want to do the same for the logged-in users (Moodle 3.x only) then you need to make the same changes to the file frontpage.mustache as well.

    Below is a figure showing you the frontpage before and after the changes:

    moodle-theme-maker-frontpage-change-section-order-before-after

    After the section order change, the promo section looks too close to the section below. To fix this you can add some spacing after the promo section via your custom CSS:

    Go to: Site administration > Appearance > Themes > Maker Settings > Advanced Settings and enter the following CSS into the “Raw SCSS/CSS” input field:

    .promo-section {margin-bottom: 60px;}

    moodle-theme-maker-custom-css
    Important note:

    Any changes you made to the theme files will need to be re-applied when you upgrade your theme later. So make sure you keep a note of what you’ve changed so you can re-apply the changes quickly when it’s time to upgrade.

Moodle Course Tip: How to Quickly Enrol Users in Boost Theme

If you are using Boost or a Boost-based theme for your Moodle site, enrolling users to your course has become really straightforward.

Instead of navigating to the “Enrolled Users” option via the course administration page, the course teacher can quickly enrol users to the course by clicking the “Participants” link in the navigation drawer as shown in the screen capture below:

Looking for a Boost-based Moodle theme? Check out our latest Moodle theme Maker

How to show your Moodle course’s progress on the dashboard

In the latest Moodle you can show progress bars on the dashboard page as a visual way to let your students keep track of their course progress. However, by default this feature is not enabled in Moodle. In this tutorial we will show you how to enable this feature so your students can track their course progress.

Below is a screenshot taken from our Moodle theme demo site. You need to log in here as a student to see the student dashboard page demo.

moodle-theme-maker-course-progress-bars

Step 1 – Enable the feature at the site level

Log in as an admin and go to: Site administration > Advanced features
Find an option called “Enable completion tracking” and tick the checkbox.

moodle-enable-course-completion-tracking

Step – 2 – Enable the feature at the course level

Go to your desired course’s settings page as a teacher and find a section called “Completion tracking”. Make sure you select “Yes” from the dropdown menu as shown in the figure below.

moodle-enable-course-completion-tracking-course-settings

Step – 3 – Enable the feature at the course activity level

A course teacher can configure the course activities/resource settings to enable the activity completion according to his/her criteria.

Activity/Resource setting

A checkbox will be displayed next to the activity/resource if its completion tracking is enabled

Now you’ve successfully enabled the course progress feature and a progress donut chart should be displayed next to the course name on the dashboard.

How to make useful Moodle course layout/component templates available to your teachers in Moodle’s text editor

Want to provide predefined and preformatted course layout/component templates such as tables, cards, badges and buttons for your teachers to easily drop into courses they are creating? We’ve found the perfect solution for you – you can install a Moodle plugin called “Templates” to achieve that. This could be a great way to empower your teachers to create engaging courses with beautiful layouts and useful components. You can even use this to make fully-fledged course templates for teachers to choose from.

In this tutorial we will walk you through the whole process of making a template available for your teachers to use in Moodle’s text editor.

Step 1 – Install Plugin

Download the “Templates” plugin from Moodle’s plugins directory and upload the downloaded zip file to your Moodle’s plugins page: Site administration > Plugins > Install plugins

moodle-install-plugin

Step 2 – Create Templates

Go to the plugins’ settings page to add your templates: Site administration > Plugins > Text editors > Atto HTML editor > Template settings

By default, you can add 3 templates but you can add as many templates as you want by increasing the number in the “Template count” field.

To define a template, you need to enter the template name (plain text) and content (raw HTML code). For this tutorial, we created three templates called “tables”, “cards” and “buttons”. The HTML code used in the templates was taken from the built-in Bootstrap components in our Moodle theme Maker (Maker is the theme used for the demo site)

If you are using our premium Moodle themes, there are lots of built-in Bootstrap components you can utilise to create your templates. You might find the tutorials below useful:

Maker Theme: Tutorial
Labland/Impression/Herald/Gourmet/Element Theme: Tutorial 1 | Tutorial 2

moodle-text-editor-create-templates

Step 3 – Add “Templates” to the Moodle text editor’s toolbar

After creating your templates, you also need to add the “templates” utility to the Moodle text editor’s toolbar so your users can access the templates.

Go to the text editor’s settings page to configure: Site administration>Plugins>Text editors>Atto HTML editor

moodle-text-editor-plugin-add-templates

Now your teachers should be able to access all of the available templates in the text editor by clicking the “templates” icon in the text editor:

moodle-text-editor-templates-icon

Tip: When working with templates it’s very helpful to make the text editor go fullscreen so there is plenty of screen space for previewing and editing the inserted templates.

Learn more

Below are some screen captures to show you how to insert the templates to your desired course:

Add a label to a course so you can add content to the course:

moodle-course-add-a-label

Insert “Tables”:

moodle-text-editor-insert-template-tables

Insert “Cards:

moodle-text-editor-insert-template-cards

Insert “Buttons”

moodle-text-editor-insert-template-buttons

How to make your Moodle’s text editor go fullscreen

When creating course content in Moodle, it’s nice to have the option to make Moodle’s text editor go fullscreen so you have more screen space to work with the content. This is particularly useful when your content is long or needs to be presented in advanced layout format which contains tables/tabbed content/cards.

By default Moodle’s text editor Atto doesn’t come with the fullscreen functionality, however, there is a third-party plugin you can install to add this handy utility to your Moodle text editor so your teachers can use it to help with their course creation process.

moodle-text-editor-fullscreen-mode

In this tutorial we will show you how to install and add the utility to your Moodle text editor.

Step 1

Download the plugin zip file from Moodle’s plugins directory and upload the zip file to Moodle’s plugins page.

Go to the plugins page: Site administration > Plugins > Install plugins

moodle-install-plugin

Step 2

Once installed, you need to add the fullscreen utility to the Moodle text editor’s toolbar so it can be accessed by your users.

Go to the editor config page: Site administration > Plugins > Text editors > Atto HTML editor > Atto toolbar settings

moodle-admin-atto-editor-settings

Add “fullscreen” to the editor toolbar:

moodle-text-editor-configure-fullscreen

That’s it. Now you will see the fullscreen icon is available in your Moodle’s text editor and your users can click the icon to activate the editor fullscreen mode whenever they want to.

Moodle Theme Maker – How to customise the theme to use your brand’s colour scheme

In our latest Boost-based Moodle theme Maker, changing the default colour scheme to meet your own branding needs has never been easier. You just need to pick your brand colours in the theme settings page. It only takes seconds to bring the theme in line with your branding.

Theme Live Demo

Once you have installed the theme, log in as an admin and go to the “General Settings” section under the theme settings page: Site administration > Appearance > Themes > Maker

moodle-theme-maker-theme-settings-page

moodle-theme-maker-theme-branding-colour-settings

Enter your site’s main colour (hex code) in the “Brand primary colour” input field. If you have a secondary colour for your brand you can enter the colour code in the “Brand secondary colour” input field. If you don’t have a secondary colour then you just need to copy and paste your main colour’s hex code into the “Brand secondary colour” field to override the theme’s default.

Example 1

This is an example of using just one colour for the theme (#F88706)

moodle-theme-maker-custom-color-scheme-example-1-final

Example 2

This is an example of using two colours for the theme (Primary colour: #0A23B7 | Secondary colour: #A123B7)

moodle-theme-maker-custom-color-scheme-example-2-final

Don’t have a brand colour? We’ve got you covered. You can still choose from one of the six default colour schemes on Maker’s theme settings page. We hand-picked the colour combinations so they all look beautiful.

moodle-theme-maker-color-schemes-all

Selling online courses? – Learn how to set up paid Moodle courses with Stripe and PayPal payment gateways

Do you want to sell your courses online and take payment via Stripe or PayPal? Moodle could be the perfect learning platform for you to set up and manage your paid courses.

moodle-courses-width-PayPal-Stripe

In this tutorial we will show you how to set up a paid Moodle course. You have the option to configure your course’s payment gateway using Stripe or PayPal.

Set up a course with Stripe enrolment

Step 1 – Install the Moodle Stripe Plugin

Download the Stripe plugin here and upload the downloaded zip file to your Moodle site via the Install plugins page: Site Administration > Plugins > Install plugins. You need to be a site admin to install and use the plugin.

moodle-install-plugin

Step 2 – Enable and configure the plugin

Once installed, go to the plugin management page to enable and set up the plugin: Site Administration > Plugins > Enrolments > Manage enrol plugins

moodle-enable-stripe-paypal-plugins

You need to create an account with Stripe and get the required secret key and publishers key. Please note: you’ll need to verify and activate your Stripe account before you can get the live API keys.

activate-stripe-account

For more information about setting up your Stripe account please see the plugin documentation.

Step 3 – Enable Stripe as the course enrolment method

Go to your desired course as an admin and add “Stripe Payment” as the enrolment method for that course and enable it by clicking the eye icon.

You can set the course price etc via the Stripe Payment settings page in that course.

Now you’ve successfully set up Stripe as the course payment gateway. When a new student visits the course he/she will be asked to make the payment before entering the course as shown in the screenshots below:

Set up a course with PayPal enrolment

Step 1 – Create and Configure PayPal Account

You need to create a PayPal account first. As a course seller it’s recommended to upgrade your account to “Premier” status and get your account “Verified”.

moodle-paypal-account-settings

In your PayPal account please make sure the PayPal button language encoding is set to UTF-8.

You can optionally turn on IPN in PayPal to interact with your Moodle site:

For more info you can reference Moodle’s official documentation.

Step 2 – Enable the PayPal plugin in Moodle

The PayPal plugin comes with Moodle so there is no need to install it. You can just go to the enrolment plugin management page to enable it and configure its settings accordingly.

Please note: For PayPal to work you must make sure the Manual enrolment is enabled too.

Step 3 – Enable PayPal as the course enrolment method

Go to your desired course as an admin and add “PayPal” as the enrolment method for that course.

You can set the course price etc via the PayPal Payment settings page in that course.

Now you’ve successfully set up PayPal as the course payment gateway. When a new student visits the course he/she will be asked to make the payment before entering the course as shown in the screenshots below:

Want to promote your courses and sign up paid users?

Check out our latest responsive Moodle theme Maker (all of the screenshots in this tutorial were taken from Maker), it has everything you need to set up a beautiful and user friendly Moodle site to start selling your courses.

How to add pages to Moodle using the Static Pages Plugin

Unlike WordPress, you can’t add “Pages” in Moodle as it only allows you to add “Courses”. Luckily, there is a brilliant Moodle third party plugin called “Static Pages” which can help you add HTML pages to your Moodle site with ease. It’s a great way to add some essential pages to your Moodle site to make it complete as a learning platform.

We’ve used the plugin to add “About Us”, “Contact Us”, “FAQ”, “Privacy Policy” and “Terms and Conditions” to our Moodle theme demo for Maker. In this tutorial we will show you how to add the pages as shown in our demo and you can download the relevant HTML page templates at the end of the tutorial.

moodle-static-page-promo

Live Demo

Want to add course landing pages to promote your featured courses? Learn More

Step 1 – Install the plugin

Download the Static Page plugin and upload the downloaded zip file to your Moodle site via the Install plugins page: Site Administration > Plugins > Install plugins. You need to be a site admin to install and use the plugin.

moodle-install-plugin

Step 2 – Configure the plugin

After installing the plugin, you can see the “Static Pages” option under the “Site Administration” section as shown in the figure below.

moodle-staticpages-option

Click the “Static Pages” link and you will be able to upload your HTML files and configure the relevant settings. You can find detailed explanations of each setting from the plugin’s online documentation here.

For setting up our demo, we changed the “Clean HTML code” option from default “Yes, clean HTML code” to “No, don’t clean HTML code”. Make sure you do the same if you’d like to use our HTML templates and embed iframe content such as Youtube/Vimeo video and Google maps in your pages.

moodle-static-pages-plugin-page

Step 3 – Add HTML Pages

Upload your HTML pages to the documents input field and save the changes. To make your HTML pages you can reference the plugin documentation here.

Basic code structure:

<html>
<head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
        <title>Imprint</title>
</head>
<body>
        <h1>Imprint</h1>
        [Your content goes here]
</body>
</html>

You can download the HTML pages we used in our demo below and edit the page content to suit your own needs.

Free Download (15952 downloads)

If you are using our Moodle theme Maker, there is no need to style the pages as all of the styling for the pages is included in the Maker theme.

If you are using a different Moodle theme you will need to add custom styling to the pages. You can either add your CSS to your theme’s Custom CSS option (if it has one) or include a <style> tag into the <head>> section of your HTML document as shown below:

<html>
<head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
        <title>Imprint</title>
        <style>
        [Your custom css code goes here]
        </style>
</head>
<body>
        <h1>Imprint</h1>
        [Your content goes here]
</body>
</html>

Step 4 – Link the Pages

After adding your pages, you can get the page URLs from the “List of static pages” page.

moodle-staticpage-page-list

In our demo, we used Moodle’s custom menu to link the pages (Learn how). If you’re using our Maker theme you can also add the page links in the header dropdown menu for easy access on mobile devices.

We hope you find this tutorial and the HTML page templates useful. If you think there are any other types of static pages that could be useful for a Moodle site please leave a comment below.


Want to add a contact form page as well? Learn more.