Change the document root

I am using a dedicated CentOS server, with access to WHM and cPanel. 
What I want to do is unload my moodle code into a nice, organized file structure within my "File Manager" on cPanel." The end result should be that I can put my moodle code here:

public_html/moodle
public_html_moodledata

And still reference my site like this:  www.mysite.com 
(instead of normally having to extend the url like:   www.mysite.com/moodle/)

Since I have root ssh access on my server, I am going to edit where the documentroot points to. 

Login to SSH
Since I'm using a windows machine to access my server, I went ahead and downloaded PuTTY, a free ssh client. 

1. I opened up putty and input my server's IP address. 
2. I logged in as the root user. 
1. If logged in as another user, use the command su -  command to enter root password and gain root access.
3. Now we need to open and edit your domain file. Again, you can only do this as root user. Type in the following command:   vi /var/cpanel/userdata/USERNAME/DOMAINNAME
1. An example would be:   vi /var/cpanel/userdata/testuser/mysite.com
4. Now the file should be open within PuTTY. Click the "i" key to start editing mode, and use arrows to navigate to the section of text called "documentroot."
5. Change that text to say:     documentroot: /home/testuser/public_html/moodle
6. Rebuild the Apache conf and restart Apache. You can do this through SSH:
1. /scripts/rebuildhttpdconf
2. service httpd restart
7. Or through the WHM panel. Type in the search bar "Apache Config". Go to the page.Save and rebuild.
8. The change will be immediate. Simply clear your browser cache and force refresh the page!

I used this blog guide as a reference:

http://blog.servint.net/2012/03/30/the-tech-bench-changing-a-document-root-in-cpanel/

Install memcache on moodle 2.4

So...this took me a stupidly long time to wrap my head around it. But I think I finally installed everything correctly. Even though Moodle 2.4+ supports caching through memcache, you first need to install it on your server.

ON YOUR SERVER
Hopefully you will be using WHM manager to have a nice interface when interacting with your server.

1)  Login to your WHM panel as the root user
2)  Go to "Easy Apache". Click through the screens until you get to the php setup page.
3)  Scroll down so you will see the "See Exhaustive Options" button. Click it.
4)  Now there are more options on the page. Simply search the page until you find "memcache." Check the option and save your configuration.
5)  Now you need to go into "Software -> Module Installers -> PHP Pecl". Click on the manage button so you option up the new options screen.
6)  Now you should see the area on the screen that says "Install php Pecl module" and an empty text box. Inside the box you can type "memcache" and/or "memcached".
7)  Click the "Install Now" button.
8)  Once the installation process is complete, you will need to restart apache. (Restart services -> HTTP (apache))

ON MOODLE
1)  Login to moodle as the administrator
2)  Go to "Site Administration -> Plugins ->Caching -> Configuration."
3)  You will come to a new page where you will see the caching options listed inside the first table on the top of the page. Inside the row that says "memcache", you should now see a new link in the right-most column that says "Add Instance." Click the link
4)  You will come to a new page where you configure which server should be memcached. In my case, it's the same server that I am hosting on.
5)  Name your file and enter the domain of your server like:   mydomain.com (you don't need the www in front).
        a)  I also needed to add the default port number to make this work. mydomain.com:11211
6)  Save your changes.
7)  Now you need to go into "Plugins ->Caching ->CacheStores ->Memcache." Enter the same domain like step #5 (mydomain.com:11211).
8)  Save your changes.
9)  On the "Plugins ->Caching -> Configuration,"  you will need to modify the other settings within those tables and map them to your new memcache store. Just like the right-most column that said "Add instance", the right-most column in the other tables are links. You need to "Edit" some of those columns and activiate your new memcache store to start loading things. Like the strings.
10)  Finally, you should go into "Plugins ->Caching ->Test Performance." The "result" column should say "tested" next to the memcache row. If it doesn't you didn't install it properly.

Easily find the course id for any page

Here is a nice code snippet to find the course id of a page (assuming it's actually related to a course).

global $PAGE;

$context = $PAGE->context;
$coursecontext = $context->get_course_context();

// current course id
$courseid = $coursecontext->instanceid;

Tada! Came across this on stackoverflow today and thought I would keep a record of it for myself :)

Define a new font-face using $CFG->wwwroot

It's been several times now where I defined a new font-face type with my CSS file using an absolute url path to my website. And of course, that doesn't work if I want to port my code to another server. Or even put it on my local machine.

The best way to do this is to point my css to use the $CFG->wwwroot location when including my font files. This way, you only have to modify the config.php (one file, instead of many) to change your site url.

The way to do this is:

1)  Inside of your own theme, you should have a lib.php file. In my case, this is the file structure:  theme/mytheme/lib.php

2)  I used this forum post as inspiration, but I'll also give a quick recap down below: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=220495

3)  Inside of lib.php, create a new function:
<?php

function mytheme_process_css($css, $theme) {
    $css = mytheme_set_fontwww($css);
    return $css;
}

function mytheme_set_fontwww($css) {
    global $CFG;
    
    $tag = 'setting:fontwww';
    $css = str_replace($tag, $CFG->wwwroot . '/theme/mytheme/fonts/', $css);
    return $css;
}
?>

That part that is highlighted in yellow above, make sure that it is the location of where your font files are located. (So an extra step would be making sure you put your font files on the server to begin with :)

Next, you need to modify your css file. For myself, I defined my new font inside of theme/mytheme/style/core.css.

@font-face
{
    font-family: ArchitectsDaughter;
    src: url('setting:fontwwwArchitectsDaughter.eot'); /* IE8-9 */
    src: url('setting:fontwwwArchitectsDaughter.eot?#iefix') format('embedded-opentype'),  
         url('setting:fontwwwArchitectsDaughter.ttf') format('truetype');

}

Notice that the parts I highlighted above are the same text as the "$tag" variable I assigned in the previous functions. Also, my code has multiple font files to suit both Internet Explorer and other browsers.

Make sure to refresh the theme caches on your server and/or computer. After that, you should see your new font appear.

Setting up cPanel account from WHM

Setting up a server with the WHM panel is pretty easy, since most of that is done for you by your hosting company. But it's not so intuative to setup the cPanel account itself (for the first time installation). So here are some instructions:

Here is a video: http://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/1091/97/web-hosting-tutorials-how-to-create-a-cpanel-account-in-whm

First you need a domain:
1) Purchase one from godaddy.

Or create a subdomain:
http://support.godaddy.com/help/article/4080/managing-a-domain-names-subdomains?pc_split_value=1&countrysite=in
1) From Account manager, click on the "Domains" section to open it up. Select the domain you want and click on the "Launch" button.
2) Click on the "DNS Zone File" tab
3) Click on the "Edit" button.
4) Now you should be inside the DNS Manager section. At the very top of the page, there should be a tool bar with icons. Click on the "Add Record" icon.
5)  From the drop-down box, choose the option called "A (Host)."
6)  Inside the box called "Host Name", enter the subdomain you want to use. (For example, dev.mydomain.com)
7)  Enter the IP it should point to.
8)  Click Okay. Now you will return to the DNS Manager page.
9)  Remember to now click on the "SAVE FILE" button at the top of the page.
10)  You'll probably need to wait a couple hours before it takes affect.

Then setup WHM:
1)  Login to your WHM panel and go to:   Home -> Account Functions -> Add new account
2)  Fill in all the information with your domain.
3)  Create a default package with manual settings. Leave everything as is.
4)  Click save!

Now you have an account that will access cPanel. From the WHM manager, you can go to: Accouts -> List Accounts. Then click on the cPanel icon to login.

Or you can login to your cPanel directly: http://myip:2083
===========================

Now setup a database in cPanel:
1) Inside of cPanel, go to the section called "msqyl databases". You need to create a new database with collation utf8_unicode. Remember the name.
2)  Create a new user for your database
3)  Finally assign the user you just made, to the new database you just created. Give the user all privileges.

Additions to moodle install:
http://docs.moodle.org/24/en/CentOS_Linux_installation
http://docs.moodle.org/24/en/PHP
- Enabled XCache for php
- Enable IonCube Loader if necessary for custom licensing tools
- Make sure you have mysqli installed for the database (done through WHM->software->easyapache)
- Make sure you have curl installed

Now to setup moodle inside of cpanel:
1) Go to the Filemanager.
2) Create a folder named "moodledata" at the same level as the "public_html" item. Or simply remember to install it at a higher level than the moodle code. It needs to be one level higher in a folder hierarchy.
3) Go inside the "public_html" item. Upload a zip file of the latest moodle release. Upack the zip file. (Note: the zip file might extract to a folder called "moodle." For our purposes, make sure that all files are not within a separate folder, but extracted directly inside of "public_html."
4) Access the website via url to start the moodle installation process.

During installation:
1)  Make sure the "unix socket" check box is on.
2)  Make sure your database was set with the utf8_unicode option

After installation:
1)  Make sure you set the cron for the moodle site and server.
http://docs.moodle.org/24/en/Cron_with_web_hosting_services
2)  Go into cPanel for your server. Scroll down to the "Advanced" section and click on the "Cron Jobs" button.
3)  Choose the timing for your cron job (normal is to every 30 minutes)
4)  Enter the cron command like this example:  /usr/local/bin/php -q /home/username/public_html/moodle/admin/cli/cron.php

Redirect user to course page upon login

This is a feature I've been wanting for a while, especially for teachers. I would like that teachers are re-directed to their course page immediately after login. I've created some code inside the "login/index.php" file to accomplish this feature.

NOTE:  This code will only redirect the teacher to the FIRST course they are enrolled in. For me, this is okay because each teacher is only enrolled in one course anyway. If you want the user to be redirected to a specific course (out of many), you will need to modify this code and search for the course by name or id.

1)  Go to login/index.php on your moodle server.

2)  Around line 222, you will see some code that determines if the user will be redirected to the site home or the my moodle page. (In a previous post, I set up my system that teachers were sent to the my moodle page, and students were sent to the site home)

3)  Now we will add some code to get the user's list of courses and redirect the page to a specific course page.


// Go to my-moodle page instead of site homepage if defaulthomepage set to homepage_my
if ($home_page == HOMEPAGE_MY && !is_siteadmin() && !isguestuser()) {
         if ($urltogo == $CFG->wwwroot or $urltogo == $CFG->wwwroot.'/' or $urltogo == $CFG->wwwroot.'/index.php') 
                {
                     $urltogo = $CFG->wwwroot.'/my/';

                    // I set up the page to redirect teachers to the 'my' page. 
                    // So here, instead of looking for user's role, I simply see if they
                    // are directed to the mymoodle page. Then I know it's a teacher and 
                   // I redirect to their course.
   if ($courses = enrol_get_my_courses(NULL, 'visible DESC, fullname ASC')) 
   {
           foreach($courses as $course)
                          {
                                $urltogo = $CFG->wwwroot.'/course/view.php?id='.$course->id;
                                break;
                          }
                    }
          }
 } 


4)  If you wanted to search for a specific course, then add logic inside of the foreach loop to look at the $course->id, $course->name, etc.

Create new block for "My Courses" including activities

I want to make a custom block that will show the courses I'm enrolled in and the activities included within.
I don't want to show anything extra: no reports, participants, or grades.
So the structure I'm looking for will be similar to this:

Block Name:  My Courses

• Course 1
• Topic 1
• Topic 2
• Activity 1
• Activity 2
• Activity 3
• Topic 3
• Course 2

I'm going to duplicated the "Courses" block and modify it to create a new, custom block for myself. Then I'm going to use the "My courses" branch within the Navigation block as inspiration to make the list of content that I want to have.

Duplicate the "courses_list" block

1)  You will need access to your moodle server. Go inside /blocks and find the folder called "course_list." Copy the folder and rename it to....whatever name you want to give the new block.

For example, I will name my folder "course_outline."

2)  Now we'll need to rename some files:

-- block_course_outline.php

-- lang/en/block_course_outline.php

3)  Modify data in those files:

-- db/access.php:  rename all instances of "block_course_list"  with "block_course_outline"

-- lang/en/block_course_outline.php:  Give the pluginname = your name. ("Course Outline")

-- In all the remaining files, rename all instances of "block_course_list"  with  "block_course_outline"

4)  Go to your moodle site and login as admin. Click on "Site Administration -> Notifications."  You should now see your new block ready to be installed. 

Choose "upgrade moodle database" and install the block. 

Now we customize our new block

1)  The next thing we need to do is populate the course list to show activities.

2)  Go into the blocks/course_outline/block_course_outline.php file. Around line 35, you will see code like this:

foreach ($courses as $course) 

{

       $coursecontext = context_course::instance($course->id);

       $linkcss = $course->visible ? "" : " class=\"dimmed\" ";

       $this->content->items[]="<a $linkcss title=\"" . format_string($course->shortname, true, array('context' => $coursecontext)) . "\" "."href=\"$CFG->wwwroot/course/view.php?id=$course->id\">".$icon.format_string($course->fullname). "</a>";

}

Right now, that code is only printing out the course name. So we need to insert some new code that also prints out the activities of that course. Here is the new code we will add:

foreach ($courses as $course) 

{

       $coursecontext = context_course::instance($course->id);

       $linkcss = $course->visible ? "" : " class=\"dimmed\" ";

       $this->content->items[]="<a $linkcss title=\"" . format_string($course->shortname, true, array('context' => $coursecontext)) . "\" "."href=\"$CFG->wwwroot/course/view.php?id=$course->id\">".$icon.format_string($course->fullname). "</a>";

         $myactivities = get_array_of_activities($course->id);

         if(!empty($myactivities))

         {     

                 $activityList = "<ul>";

                  foreach($myactivities as $activity)

                  {

                        $activityList .= '<li><a $linkcss 

                         href="'.$CFG->wwwroot.'/mod/'.$activity->mod.'/view.php?id='.$activity->cm.'" 

                         title="'.$activity->name.'" >'.$activity->name.'</a></li>';

                   }     

                   $activityList .= "</ul>";

                   $this->content->items[]=$activityList; 

          }

}

3)  You can see that we get the activities within the course and save it in an array variable called "$myactivities."  Then we are going to make a list of the activities and add that to the content of the block.