Announcements

Today we are pleased to reveal the first stage of Moodle's longer term Plugins directory project - a fresh new and user-friendly front page.

Plugins are important and flexible tool set, allowing users to extend the features of their sites. At moodle.org, our plugins directory contains hundreds of plugins, each of them capable of extending the features of Moodle's core functionality.

With more and more plugins being submitted on a regular basis, Moodle community members and users have asked for particular features that would allow them to find and easily access the plugins that they really need.

Moodle HQ has been working with community members to do some best practice research and comparisons, analysing recommended patterns of UI development, through to building and testing a number of prototypes resulting in this new interface.

Advanced search options, more accurate and relevant search results and an easier way to research plugins are some of the new things you’ll see in the new plugins directory interface.

Try out the Moodle plugins directory today, or for more details, see the discussion Try out the new Moodle plugins directory interface in the Plugins traffic forum.

Moodle 3.1.3, 3.0.7, 2.9.9 and 2.7.17 are now available via the usual open download channels: https://download.moodle.org or Git.

• Moodle 3.1.3 release notes
• Moodle 3.0.7 release notes
  
• Moodle 2.9.9 release notes
  
• Moodle 2.7.17 release notes

Moodle 3.2 is scheduled to be released in four weeks time, and so once again we’re running a Quality Assurance (QA) testing cycle.

QA testing involves participating users trying each feature in Moodle and testing that it works in Moodle 3.2 - using the Clean theme and also the new Boost theme. Moodle's QA list of over 500 tests includes ones covering new features in Moodle 3.2.

If you can spare some time and are interested in helping out, please see the discussion Help needed with Moodle 3.2 QA testing for details on how to get involved.

Thanks in advance for your help with our next version of Moodle!

I'm happy to announce the release of Moodle Mobile 3.1.3 for Android and iOS. The app is available now on Google Play and App store: see download.moodle.org/mobile.

Even more features work offline in this latest release - creating a message, completing a survey or choice, creating a new forum post or wiki page, adding a course note, and even completing an assignment. The app will synchronise data when the user is online again.

Other features in Moodle Mobile 3.1.3 include:

• Performance improvements to the app so that courses load faster.
• The option to display forum threads with the oldest or newest posts first.

Please see the Moodle Mobile 3.1.3 release notes for the full list of features, improvements and fixes in this release.

Moodle HQ invites community members to be part of the Fix-a-Moodle-bug project in November 2016.

The Fix-a-Moodle-bug project aims to highlight the important contribution that the Moodle community continues to make to our open source project, and to bring attention to our development tracker.

Developers who fix a bug this November will get a specially designed "Moodle contributor" T-shirt and a moodle.org badge.

This project is part of the development process for Moodle.

Find out more, and get involved - Fix-a-Moodle-bug project.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our previous usability testing. We're running further tests this month and would again appreciate your help.

We are also looking for volunteers to sign up for future moderated usability test sessions.

For further details, please see the discussion Participate In Moodle Usability Testing (Round 2).

We're planning on making major navigation improvements in the next version of Moodle. To help us figure out the best possible solution, we're doing some usability testing and we'd love your help!

To participate, please see the discussion Participate In Moodle Usability Testing for details.

The more people who can participate in our usability testing the better, so please forward this invite to your colleagues and others who might be interested in providing feedback.

Thanks in advance for your help with our next version of Moodle!

MoodleMoot Australia 2016 is being held in September in Perth, Australia - Moodle's birth city.

A three day conference packed with keynote addresses, presentations from global education innovators, masterclasses and a dev jam have been organised.

If you're interested in openness and education then come and join us and help this global project improve.

You can view the full program and register for MoodleMoot Australia 2016 at mootau.moodlemoot.org.

Moodle 3.1.2, 3.0.6, 2.9.8 and 2.7.16 are now available via the usual open download channels: https://download.moodle.org or Git.

• Moodle 3.1.2 release notes
• Moodle 3.0.6 release notes
  
• Moodle 2.9.8 release notes
  
• Moodle 2.7.16 release notes

If you'd like to meet up with other Moodlers in person, here's a list of Moodle conferences coming up in the next three months:

• MoodleMoot Romania 2016 - Timisoara, Romania, 22-27 August
• MoodleMoot Colombia 2016 - Bogota, Columbia, 29-30 August (#mootco16)
• MoodleMoot Paraguay 2016 - San Lorenzo, Paraguay, 14-15 September
• MoodleMoot Australia 2016 - Perth, WA, Australia, 27-29 September (#mootau16)
• MoodleMoot NZX - Whangarei, New Zealand, 5-7 October (#mootnzx)
• Serbian Moodle Moot 2016 - Novi Sad, Serbia, 15 October
• MoodleMoot CZ - Olomouc, Czech Republic, 17-19 October

Note: Events listed in bold are official MoodleMoots, supported or organised by Moodle HQ, as listed on the MoodleMoots site.

If you're organising a Moodle event and would like it added to the moodle.org calendar, please get in touch.