Hi, I just wanted to put in a plug for the Moodle/aMember integration which I personally think is a powerful package. I do have a bit of an agenda in that I would like to see a significant Moodle/aMember user base so that Alex will keep the plugin updated. That said I do want people to understand what this entails. When you look over on the Moodle forums whenever aMember is mentioned someone always acts like the integration is an urban legend. My website is proof that it does work and works with the most current versions of Moodle (1.9.3) and aMember (3.1.4). There is also the myth that Moodle is ugly. It is out of the box. I think my site looks pretty good. It isn't a Wordpress site using a Revolution theme, but it ain't shabby. I use a $40 theme (Vitality) from New School Learning. I did make a few subtle tweaks to the theme and a few Moodle files. OK... Drum Roll .... My Site: http://digitalliteracyproject.com While I am not currently offering courses for sell (but I will), I am using aMember to run the site registration and authenticate users. I require that a person log in before they can post in a forum. So if you want to see the aMember integration part you would have to at least look at the registration page. WARNING ======= Moodle is a powerful and complex piece of software and takes a serious commitment to master. This does not happen over night. It takes weeks to really master the program. aMember is a powerful and complex piece of software and takes a serious commitment to master. It also does not happen over night. Integrating these two programs is not particularly easy, luckily an active member of this site produced a great document on how to do this. If you are willing to commit the time to master Moodle and aMember and follow the integration instructions explicitly, it will work. If you are not willing to make this commitment, don't start. I personally think the end result produces a rock solid, industrial grade elearning platform. We use Moodle where I teach to deliver about 800 online classes to over 10,000 students. Here is what you need to do an integration: Moodle http://moodle.org Moodle Plugin http://www.amember.com/p/Integration/Moodle Integration Instructions http://www.puchemistry.org/testing/moodle_integration.pdf In closing... In this post I wanted to make the point that this integration does work, but the integration requires a significant commitment as mentioned earlier. I am in the middle of writing a book and do not visit the forums regularly. I am limited as to how much personal help I can provide on this integration, but I can assure you that the integration works if you follow the directions explicitly. There are other elearning software choices. Skippybosco, who works tirelessly to help people on this site (thanks SB!), has developed an aMember integration for eFront. This appears to be an easier integration, so this might be an option to consider. In my humble opinion, when it comes to open source elearning software Moodle is the 500-pound gorilla. They currently have over 46,000 registered sites, and served up over 93,000 downloads in Oct 2008. They also have a huge base of people that are active in the forums over at Moodle.org.
Hi Grant, Thanks for your useful post. We are planning on doing a moodle/amember/wordpress integration project very soon. I'll let you know how it goes. Hopefully your integration instructions will help a lot too!
Grant, Nice looking site! I tried poking around, but the network timed out on me, but maybe that's on my side. Gnicholas - I'd like to hear about your moodle/amember/wp integration.
Thanks Its the server. I noticed it too. It is rare. I have sent in a trouble ticket so I am sure it will be back to speed later today. I originally had this setup. I was using Wordpress to make the site look slicker. I had aMember and Moodle integrated, but neither one was integrated with Wordpress. When you hit on the "Online Learning" menu choice it went to Moodle, which was themed to match the Wordpress theme. It was a lot of work to keep three installations all upgraded and dealing with three learning curves. Just recently I opted to drop Wordpress and use Moodle for the entire site. It is not as slick as a well themed WP site, but it isn't too shabby. Ultimately you need to decide what is the core function of the website. I am preparing to deliver some online course in 2009, so I decided to go with pure Moodle to simplify my life and give me an industrial grade course management platform.
I'd just like to add my views to this. I'm now using the Moodle / Amember combination for a medium-sized educational site. We do sell quite a range of products and combinations of products. I've found it to be great! It does exactly what we need, and is loads better than the standard Moodle payment gateway. I'd really recommend it, and we have by and large had good support from Amember when there were some initial difficulties. I agree, the Moodle boards seem quite down on Amember but I think this is just because they have no experience of it. Also, some of them seem to have scruples about charging for educational resources. Personally I don't see why there should be an issue - after all, most educational institutions cost money to run, and charge (often heavily!) for their courses. I'd be happy to give further info about our setup if anyone is interested. James
I was a senior in the Moodle community for many years before switching over to eFront. My reasons for switching over were twofold: 1) the negative view of commerce based education 2) the lack of forward progress in the platform as a whole Moodle is a great product, I do however think that it needs a good kick in the seat to catch back up with today's generation/technology and where electronic education is heading. I did some work on initiatives such as mobile moodle and the like, but with the current architecture there are limitations as to how far we could go. That being said, I'm finding myself in the same boat with aMember and shifting more of my community development efforts towards integration plugins for open source e-commerce platform Magento, so perhaps I'm just naturally attracted to new shiny things (albeit stable, open source and feature rich shiny things!)
Yeah, but I finally came to the conclusion to just roll up my sleeves and do it myself outside the Moodle community. Luckily I had used aMember with a bulletin board site and knew it was a good membership script. I was able to get Alex to write the initial plug-in and it has continued to be a viable solution with the help and input of many in the aMember community including you. Based on the posted Roadmap (http://docs.moodle.org/en/Roadmap) it looks like they will be adding a lot of needed features in 2.0 I am also prone to use Moodle in my elearning projects since it is the program used at the community college where I teach. This year we switched over from Blackboard to Moodle. Since I am receiving training in Moodle (at work) and any online course or hybrid course that I want to deliver at school will be using Moodle it was a "no-brainer" for me. One learning curve! SB, Thanks for your support in making aMember work. Hopefully Alex will be revealing a new upgrade to aMember soon and it will be new and shiny enough to keep your interest
amember - moodle plugin installation/ setup Hola I am writing you as I have a problem with installing/ setting up Moodle and Amember. In step 4-E of the installation/ setup pdf when I press save I get this error message: Moodle Plugin error. Not all settings loaded. Check config.php What do I do? Have the best day of your life Morten
Moodle Integration Instructions The "Integration Instructions" link to puchemistry.org isn't working. Anyone have an active URL for this pdf?
.pdf file Hi Chemistry2004, neither of the links above work for this .pdf file. From the posts I have read many people have found this document to be helpful. Will you re-post, or let me know how to retreive?
Almost there -- still trouble w/Moodle integration Hi Chemistry2004 (and anyone else who can help). The instructions have been great, and I am almost there, but am experiencing one problem. When a user logs in via aMember, they are automatically logged into Moodle fine (including the Moodle header indicating that they are logged in as the correct user), but as soon as the user clicks on something (to enter a course or click on their profile if the link in aMember took them directly into a course) they are logged out of Moodle (Moodle takes them to a Moodle login page and the header says they are not logged in). An interesting tidbit, if the user then backs up to the members area of aMember (where aMember still has them logged in) and they logout from there (so they are completely logged out of both), they can successfully login via aMember, go to a course in Moodle, and navigate w/out a problem. In other words, the problem situation only exists if they are in a fresh browser session. Every time I close the browser and login via aMember, the problem happens. If I backup to my members area, logout and log back in (w/out closing the browser) all is fine. From that point logging out from either Moodle or aMember properly logs me out of both systems. Any ideas? Thanks in advance for your help! Andy McClure