[Closed] User sync

Sync password: no need to think about Moodle passwords if you are using Joomdle: users DON'T have a password in Moodle.

If you are thinking about syncing the other profile info, that is OK. I am not sure if Moodle has hooks for profile updating, though.

chris wrote:

mmmm many many thoughts to comment on - it's nice that this is getting some discussion as it what makes a better product.

Indeed!
chris wrote:

Once the first sync is done, we cannot rely on admin having to sync continuously or even have a cron job as users will expect that data to be live.

True, but i was thinking about this function as a temp fix. not a solution. it can also manage sync errors in the future.

chris wrote:

If it's possible to allow changing from both sides, this would be positive but again I do not want to make an assumption about this yet.

Agreed, this would be the best solution but i guess it may take time.

chris wrote:

Where we see a slight different view, than yourself I presume, is that I believe Moodle users are a subset of Joomla's users and thus we cannot force all Joomla users to take a course or enter Moodle just to participate in the community.

not really. users don't need to join courses to use moodle's forums private messages and profile. I agree the forums are not the best for huge communities in the order of tens of thousand active users, but then - these kind of sites wouldn't use moodle anyhow.

chris wrote:

For example I could have a very large IT community (tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands if you are joomla.org) that uses VBulletin, Joomla, Wikipedia, Jomsocial and Moodle.

if you want to have two instances of everything: wiki, forums, profile, instant messaging, that should be ok. i personally don't envy the admin who needs to take care of such a site.. I still think it should be possible with making due without so many extensions installed. after all, one joomla upgrade will break everything and users will have to wait on all of the dependent extensions to upgrade...
Supporting 3rd party extensions is good, but imho, having moodle work with a clean joomla is more important.

chris wrote:

We cannot nor should not force all those users into Moodle to participate in non course related community activities.

force users? its just part of the site. they can use it just like they use any other part of the site. again, users don't need to register to courses in order to use moodle.

May i ask what you guys use moodle for?
chris wrote:

I agree community builder is scaring ppl off already and IMO that is because it is old now and has not kept pace with the changes in the market. I know many ppl will argue with me on this but as said it is MHO.

true, CB is bad, weird and spam oriented. its one of the most annoying extensions i've ever seen.

chris wrote:

I have not used com_seminar before as I thought it didn't integrate with Virtuemart. I will have another look - thanks for reminding me of this extension.

Its possible to integrate it easily with any cart. im using it with paypal buttons directly. who needs another extension?

chris wrote:

Finally, perhaps something worth thinking about - for those communities that wish to do everything in Moodle or like 70-80% of their "tasks" in Moodle then I would ask the question, why use Joomla? Especially with Moodle 2.0 coming down the road which will give greater CMS features I believe??

joomla is a cms, moodle is not even close. i've seen the roadmap for moodle 2, and it will not be able to replace it. In a website, content is the most important thing. the rest is just bells and whistles. getting moodle to look right is a pain.

In short, i am sure adding extensions to joomla is important, but joomla is a poor choice for making community sites. joomla is a CMS. Its forum extensions are slow, it doesn't integrate will with the major forums, its social extensions are awkward and buggy. adding extensions is a choice the user makes to expand his cms. building dependancies on other extensions is not such a good idea.

antonio wrote:

Sync password: no need to think about Moodle passwords if you are using Joomdle: users DON'T have a password in Moodle.

If you are thinking about syncing the other profile info, that is OK. I am not sure if Moodle has hooks for profile updating, though.

1) if they change their username all of their moodle information is lost to them
2) if they change their email they start getting emails in tow accounts
3) if they change their password, it doesnt affect joomla.

personally i prefer using ONLY moodle's profile. now i have to make a warning in the moodle profile and hack it to add a link to the joomla profile. this duality looks bad.

I think both Halkon and me are willing to start coding this part. why don't you guys setup an SVN repository, so we can hook up to the tip. you decide what goes inside and what's left out. what do you think?

1) As far as I know, usually cannot change their usernames (at least on default Moodle and Joomla)
2) I guess you mean, if they change their email in Moodle. That is right: there is no moodle -> joomla sync going on.
3) There is NO password. I don't know how to say this clearer: Joomdle users CAN NOT enter directly to Moodle. They don't have a password there, so they cannot change it.

I am with you on setting up a SVN repository, but I don't have much time now. Will get to it as soon as I can.

But, before start coding, we should know what we are talking about. I guess the wanted feature is: update Joomla profile when updating Moodle one. Is that right?

Great I was going to ask if you guys wanted to get "more" involved since you are doing a fair bit already. Antonio and I discussed this b4 and thought it would be good to start opening up. In light of this I starting looking ad redmine.org as I frequent the Tienda development project. Looks quite good, but to be honest I do not have a lot to compare against and never used SVN b4 - I don't think it existed in my coding days 20+ years ago!

I have ruby running already (which is required for redmine), so I believe it is just a matter of loading up the code and pushing the go button. Does anybody have anything better to suggest?

I think redmine and SVN serve different purpouses:
- redmine for issue tracking
- svn for code collaboration

I would go with the two.
I will set up sourceforge's SVN along the weekend, so we can start collaborating.
Then I think you (Haikon and red_muze) have to get an account on sourceforge and join the project, so I can give you access.

Taking a look at redmine's page, I see it integrates with SVN, so I think it should be a good choice.

1) As far as I know, usually cannot change their usernames (at least on default Moodle and Joomla)

actualy they can, and it messes up the registration from joomla. It can be blocked, but i think its better synchronized

3) There is NO password. I don't know how to say this clearer: Joomdle users CAN NOT enter directly to Moodle. They don't have a password there, so they cannot change it.

Again, im talking synchronization. if they change the password, joomla creates a new user in moodle, which messes everything up... so i disabled it and reffering them to the joomla profile for just name, password, and username, it just seems so counterintuitive..

I have redmine running on my site
before you install it know this:
1) it is a bitch to install
2) its non php so in order to meddle with it's code you need to know Ruby on Rails
3) it hard porting its data to other issue trackers if you end up not liking it.

i like redmine, but i have a problem with the installation, i cant get it to auto-launch when my server restarts.

for those reasons, i was thinking of getting mantis.

if any of you guys know how to help me with the auto launch issue id be happy to open a project on my site and host it there, i can also open a repository on my svn sever if you wish to avoid those installations.

Antonio.. when we talk about password sync (i think that i talk by red_muze too) doesn't mean that we "NEED" to have a moodle password, that is just an option and i just think that is easy to do that, but just an idea, and in some times i need a pass in moodle, maybe is a little bug, but is not the question here..

we both (red_muze and i), was talking about use the moodle profile to change some things in global profile, like name, email and password. Joomla profile is more easy to an admin to have access and modify, but for a common user (teacher, student) is more easy and handle the moodle profile.

password sync can be made not to sync, but it can be (and must be i think) "the way" to change the password in joomla.

and i'm glad to collaborate.. actually i work in a proyect that integrate joomla and moodle as a college portal, and it include a learning object repository network, and all development oriented to get a better integration is a need to me. I can tell you that one of the points to this proyect is to can make a login network between portals, i mean if i login in one of the portals of the system, or in the general portal, then i am login in all the rest of the portals... maybe we can work together in this some day...