Moodle

[ellsandell]

Has anybody successfully exported the User Data and course data from the CLEO backups to a newer version of Moodle?

 

Reason I ask is we are due to bring Moodle onsite, since we are planning to move away from BTSLS/ it becoming a chargeable addon. and I have heard its a pain to do because of the way LUNS customized it?

 

 

Elliot

[mrverrall]

Hi Elliot,

 

The answer depends of what 'CLEO backups' you mean which will impact how you migrate your data.

 

The simple option:

 

BT Lancashire services can provide a file and database dump of your existing site which can be used to replicate a Moodle 1.9 install locally which can then be upgraded to the latest 2.x version quite easily. There are no LUNS customisations to overcome specifically, but there can be a few issues with the database structure due simply to the number of upgrades and patches the CLEO deployment has been through in the past.

You will also want to have all the modules that were used in CLEO, again nothing bespoke, it's just a case of finding them online.

Other glitches can occur, but are variable on a site by site basis but are generally simple to debug and resolve if you have a little php/mysql experience (I assume so if you are doing this in-house), most likely it will be fine.

The only thing you will miss on Moodle two is the MIS imports tool which isn't openly available on Moodle 2 (but is still an option on LUNS hosting).

 

The painful option:

You can download backups of each of your courses through the Moodle interface and import into your own moodle along with a matching export of users. The target site will also *NEED* to be a 1.9 release of Moodle, but this can be upgraded later once the data is migrated. I wouldn't recommend this route as it is hugely labour intensive. I'm not saying it's not possible, and I have clients who have done this (for whatever reason).

 

Alternatively you can look at getting this migrated upgraded and hosted by another provider, I know that LUNS are happy to take back hosting of CLEO moodles

 

Paul

[RichCowell]

We got Virtue to do ours, we've had it hosted locally for about 16 months now and it's working well... it was a nightmare to undo all CLEO's adaptations...

[ellsandell]

Hi Elliot,

 

The answer depends of what 'CLEO backups' you mean which will impact how you migrate your data.

 

The simple option:

 

BT Lancashire services can provide a file and database dump of your existing site which can be used to replicate a Moodle 1.9 install locally which can then be upgraded to the latest 2.x version quite easily. There are no LUNS customisations to overcome specifically, but there can be a few issues with the database structure due simply to the number of upgrades and patches the CLEO deployment has been through in the past.

You will also want to have all the modules that were used in CLEO, again nothing bespoke, it's just a case of finding them online.

Other glitches can occur, but are variable on a site by site basis but are generally simple to debug and resolve if you have a little php/mysql experience (I assume so if you are doing this in-house), most likely it will be fine.

The only thing you will miss on Moodle two is the MIS imports tool which isn't openly available on Moodle 2 (but is still an option on LUNS hosting).

 

The painful option:

You can download backups of each of your courses through the Moodle interface and import into your own moodle along with a matching export of users. The target site will also *NEED* to be a 1.9 release of Moodle, but this can be upgraded later once the data is migrated. I wouldn't recommend this route as it is hugely labour intensive. I'm not saying it's not possible, and I have clients who have done this (for whatever reason).

 

Alternatively you can look at getting this migrated upgraded and hosted by another provider, I know that LUNS are happy to take back hosting of CLEO moodles

 

Paul

 

Thanks for that Paul.

 

Yeah we are looking at in house due to the cost of hosting our site externally (100+ Gb of storage currently). Would prefer to clear off the old data/courses/users at the same time.

 

 

 

We got Virtue to do ours, we've had it hosted locally for about 16 months now and it's working well... it was a nightmare to undo all CLEO's adaptations...

 

Any estimations on costs? Will Give Phil an email see what he says.

[RichCowell]

Thanks for that Paul.

 

Yeah we are looking at in house due to the cost of hosting our site externally (100+ Gb of storage currently). Would prefer to clear off the old data/courses/users at the same time.

 

 

 

 

 

Any estimations on costs? Will Give Phil an email see what he says.

 

It was too long ago to remember even a ballpark figure, far cheaper than other places we looked at though...

[mrverrall]

it was a nightmare to undo all CLEO's adaptations...

 

Let's kill this fallacy here. There weren't any 'CLEO's adaptations', zero customisations, nada code changes, CLEO runs on a stock 1.9 Moodle code base. Sure there are plugins on top of this, but that will always be the case with any old deployment, and again these (with the exception of MIS tools) are all standard and freely downloadable.

 

I guess my point is, if you are happy with PHP/MySQL applications, do not be scared to take your Moodle back from County. It is totally achievable to take their dumps, and using the standard Moodle downloads upgrade this to a modern Moodle. If you have 'nightmare' issues with 'adaptations' you are probably doing something wrong. If you've hired a professional to do this and they have issues you should probably start to question your choices, especially if they try to use this as an excuse to bill you more!

 

The only gottchas I can think of are,

* you'll need to via via Moodle 2.2 to upgrade to anything newer

* the lack of MIS import tools for 2.x (Do people use these still?)

* the nanogong audio assignment plugin is not 2.x compatable (again this was only ever lightly used by some schools),

* there is DB entry in the config table setting a 'alternative login url', just null this.

* themes in 1.9 are not compatible with 2.x. that said Moodle 2.7 comes with a theme called 'More' that is super easy to brand as your school, you can see some examples in North West Moodle User Group forums (North West Moodle Users Group)

 

Other than those it should be plain sailing.

 

At LUNS we migrate and upgrade CLEO Moodles onto our hosting platform, but I'm also I'm thinking now that there could be a use in us offering a migration service, i.e. we take your CLEO 1.9 Dump and pass you back a Moodle 2.x dump back. I have no idea what people would pay for this (it's about a mornings work at a guess).

Edited December 11, 2014 by mrverrall