Book Image

Moodle 1.9 Theme Design: Beginner's Guide

Book Image

Moodle 1.9 Theme Design: Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

Moodle is a highly extensible virtual learning environment and is used to deliver online teaching and training materials. Theming is one of the main features of Moodle that can be used to customize your online courses and make them look exactly how you want them to. If you have been looking for a book that will help you develop Moodle Themes that you are proud of, and that your students would enjoy, then this is the book for you.This book will show you how to create themes for Moodle, change pre-installed Moodle themes, and download new themes from various resources on the Internet. It is filled with suggestions and examples for adapting classroom activities to the Virtual Learning Environment.This book starts off by introducing Moodle, explaining what it is, how it works, and what tools you might need to create a stunning Moodle theme. It then moves on to show you in detailed steps how to choose and change a Moodle theme, and explains what Moodle themes are and how they work. It shows you how to change an existing theme and test the changes that you have made.The latter half of this book will start you off on the road to creating your own themes from scratch. It provides detailed instructions to guide you through the stages of creating a stunning theme for your Moodle site. From planning theme creation, through to the slicing and dicing, and more advanced Moodle theming processes, this book will give you step-by-step instructions to create your own Moodle theme.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Moodle 1.9 Theme Design
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface
Glossary of Useful Terms and Acronyms

Time for action—preparing our new theme


  1. 1. Navigate to your htdocs\theme\blackandblue folder, right-click on it, and choose Copy.

  2. 2. Paste this folder somewhere safe (maybe on your desktop), as you might want to use it later.

  3. 3. Go back to your blackandblue folder and delete all of the files inside it. Navigate to the standardwhite folder, and copy all of the files by selecting them all and then right-clicking and choosing Copy.

  4. 4. Navigate back to your blackandblue theme's folder, right-click inside it, and then choose Paste. Your folder should look like the following screenshot:

  5. 5. Right-click again and choose New | Text Document. Rename this text document to user_styles.css.

  6. 6. Right-click on the config.php file and choose Open With | WordPad.

  7. 7. Change the line:

    $THEME->sheets = array('gradients');
    

    To:

    $THEME->sheets = array('user_styles');
    

    This ensures that you will be using your own stylesheet in the blackandblue theme.

  8. 8. Save the config.php file, go back to your Moodle site, and...