Moodle 1.9 theme design : beginner's guide : customize the appearance of your Moodle Theme by using Moodle's powerful theming engine

308 Pages·2010·10.31 MB·English

by  Paul James Gadsdon

Moodle 1.9 Theme Design
Beginner's Guide
Customize the appearance of your Moodle Theme by using
Moodle's powerful theming engine
Paul James Gadsdon

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Moodle 1.9 Theme Design
Beginner’s Guide
Copyright © 2010 Packt Publishing
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However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: April 2010
Production Reference: 1150410
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-849510-14-1
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Ed Maclean ([email protected])
Credits
Author Editorial Team Leader
Paul James Gadsdon Akshara Aware
Reviewer Project Team Leader
Mauno Korpelainen Priya Mukherji
Acquisition Editor
Project Coordinator
David Barnes
Prasad Rai
Development Editor
Proofreaders
Dhiraj Chandiramani
Joel T. Johnson
Technical Editor Dirk Manuel
Namita Sahni
Graphics
Copy Editor Geetanjali Sawant
Lakshmi Menon
Production Coordinator
Indexer Aparna Bhagat
Hemangini Bari
Cover Work
Aparna Bhagat
About the Author
Paul James Gadsdon has been at the forefront of the web development industry for
more than 12 years. He has worked as a web developer/designer and project manager for
various national and international companies during this period. He has also worked for a
local government in an advisory capacity, and undertakes consultancy work in a variety of
technical subjects. His technical expertise lies in areas such as SQL, ASP, ASP.Net, VB, C#,
DotNetNuke, Joomla, and PHP. Some four years ago he became involved in Moodle and
since then he has worked as an e-Learning Technologist and a Moodle Virtual Learning
Environment Developer.
Paul currently works for the University of Wales, Lampeter.
I would like to thank my partner Steph Copson for the whole 30 minutes of
patience she afforded me over the time of writing this book.
About the Reviewer
Mauno Korpelainen teaches Mathematics for high school and adult students in Hyvinkää,
Finland and has been a PHM (Particularly Helpful Moodler) for several years, and is one of
the moderators of the moodle.org forums.

Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Moodle 7
What are Virtual Learning Environments? 8
Importing/exporting and/or creation of course materials 9
Delivery of course materials over the Internet 9
Communication and collaboration between students and educators 9
Online tracking and assessment of student progress 10
Modularized activities and resources 10
Customization of the interface 10
What types of VLEs are there? 10
What are the advantages of using a VLE? 11
What is Moodle? 12
Why should I use Moodle? 12
Features 13
Philosophy 13
Community 13
Free and open source 14
What will you be doing? 14
What skills will you need? 14
Tools for the job 15
Hardware 15
Software 15
Adobe Photoshop 16
Firefox 16
FileZilla 16
Other web browsers 16
Summary 17
Table of Contents
Chapter 2: Moodle Themes 19
Important preliminary points 19
What is a Moodle theme? 20
Browsing and selecting a Moodle theme 20
Time for action – browsing and selecting a Moodle theme 21
Theme types 25
Theme priority 26
Parent themes 26
Theme directory 27
Time for action – browsing the 'Standard' theme folder 27
The pix folder 29
config.php 29
meta.php 29
doctyles.php 29
screenshot.jpg 29
favicon.ico 29
README.html 29
header/footer.html 30
styles_moz.css 30
styles_ie6.css 30
styles_ie7.css 30
styles_fonts.css 30
styles_color.css 31
styles_layout.css 31
rtl.css 31
Searching for and downloading Moodle themes 31
Time for action – searching for Moodle themes 32
Installing a new Moodle theme 33
Time for action – downloading a new Moodle theme 33
Time for action – extracting and installing your Moodle theme 36
Moodle's theme settings 40
Time for action – forcing users to use your theme choices 40
Theme settings list 44
Theme list 45
Allow user themes 45
Allow course themes 45
Allow category themes 45
Allow users to hide blocks 46
Show blocks on module pages 46
Hide activity type navigation 46
Summary 47
[ ii ]
Table of Contents
Chapter 3: Customizing the Header and Footer 49
Important preliminary points 50
Customizing the header 50
Time for action – making a copy of the standard theme 50
Adding your own logo 52
Time for action – copying your logo to your mytheme directory 53
Time for action – adding the logo code to your header.html file 54
Time for action – adding the logo code to your header.html file again! 56
Making your own Moodle logo visible 59
Time for action – changing the title text 60
Customizing the footer 62
Removing the Moodle logo 62
Time for action – deleting the Moodle logo 63
Removing the login info text and link 64
Time for action – deleting the login info text 65
Time for action – adding your own footer text 67
Browser compatibility – checking whether your changes have worked 69
Time for action – installing Mozilla Firefox 69
Time for action – checking whether your changes have worked 72
Recommendations 75
Summary 77
Chapter 4: Adjusting the Colors and Fonts 79
Important preliminary points 79
Installing Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar 80
Time for action – installing the Firebug extension for Firefox 80
Cascading Style Sheets and Moodle 83
Time for action – creating a new Cascading Style Sheet 84
Changing the default font 86
Time for action – changing the default font by using Firebug 86
More on Firebug 88
Time for action – making our changes permanent 88
Setting the font color and size 89
Time for action – changing the font color 90
Changing the default font size 91
Time for action – setting the font size 91
Setting the link colors 92
Time for action – changing the link colors 92
Changing the background 94
Time for action – changing the background color 94
[ iii ]