Vibrant eCourses Learning Management System
Modifications to the Standard Moodle System

Last Modified: May 20th, 2008 (6:26 am)
Current Time: Jan 5th, 2009 (6:44 pm)
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Introduction

This document describes the modifications that were made to the PHP scripts in the standard Moodle system for the Vibrant eCourses Learning Management System (LMS).

The broad aims of the modifications were as follows:

Modification Details

On the server, the path to the Vibrant eCourses LMS directory is :
/usr/local/etc/httpd/vhosts/www.vibrantelectroniccourse.com/htdocs/lms

The above directory is accessible via the web at:
http://www.vibrantelectroniccourse.com/lms/

The majority of the Moodle files were untouched, but the scripts listed below were modified:

• config.php
  various configuration settings
  • server path to the Moodle directory ("lms")
  • server path to the data direcctory ("lms_data")
  • the URL of the LMS
  • MySQL access information
• index.php
  modified code to present a simpler page
  • do not display "Main Menu"
  • do not display "Turn Editing /Off" button
  • do not display first column unless user is administrator or there are news items
  • do not display Moodle link (at bottom of page) unless user is administrator
• admin -> modules.php
  • allow forum module to be made invisible, since forums are not used on this site
• course -> edit .php
  • set default format to "Topics format"
  • set default number of news items to "0"
  • add form field to input "folder" containing course files
  • check the "folder" field is valid (either blank or the URL of an existing folder)
  • automatically add sections for the files in the course files folder
• course -> view.php
  • do not focus on the "forum search" box, if there isn't one
  • set default format to "Topics format"
• course -> format -> topics.php
  • do not display the forum search box, if the "forum" module is not visible
  • do not display the "participants" link, except to admnistrators
• files -> mimetypes.php
  • add mimetypes for Hot Potatoes file extensions (jbc, jcr, jcw, jms, jmt, jmx, jqz)
• files -> pix
  • add icons for Hot Potatoes files (jbc, jcr, jcw, jms, jmt, jmx, jqz)
• lang -> en -> moodle.php
  • change "Topic outline" message to "Course Outline"
• lang -> en -> vibrant.php
  • a new file containing the error and information messages used by the "vibrant" module
• mod -> forum -> post.html
  • set default forum subscribe to "0", so that new forums are NOT created for new courses
• mod -> vibrant
  • the files in this folder comprise the "vibrant" module which allows a high level user to create, edit and delete "vibrant" quizzes (readings and their associated Hot Potatoes quizzes). These files are based on those in the mod ->resource folder
• mod -> vibrant -> db -> all files
  • the PHP routines and MySQL commands to setup up the tables used by the "Vibrant" quizzes

When amending files, a backup copy of the original was left in the same directory as the amended file. The backup copy has the suffix ".old" appended to its file name.

Comments in the Script Files

The modified files contain comments with the following information:

At the top of each modified script is a comment listing ALL the modifications made to that script. In addition, comments are also inserted in the script at the point where each modification was made. Here is an example of a modification comment from the index.php script:

// ==================
// 2004.01.05 Gordon: hide "Main Menu"
// ==================