There is now a new field in forum_discussions which has the userid
of the author in it. This saves a lookup every time to forum_posts.
There is also some caching and rearrangement of the logic.
It seems to work OK, I'm about to do some speed tests on moodle.org
those posts in recent activity that one should see.
It's temporary.
I have a more efficient solution in mind but it will take
at least one new database field - I'll tackle it later.
Still needs plenty of testing. There is no GUI yet for turning on
the groupmode just for the forum (this will be on the course page)
but you can put a 1 (visible) or 2 (separate) in the course_modules table.
1) There is a new site-wide configuration variable called maxbytes,
which provides an upper filesize limit for all (student) uploads.
2) There is a new course-level variable called maxbytes, which further
limits uploads within a course.
3) There is a new maxbytes field for forums, which further restricts
the size allowed in a particular forum. There is also a new config
variable in the module configuration to specify a default size
to use when defining a new forum.
4) Assignments already had a limit, but this is now aware of the other
limits, and like forums there is now a settable default value.
5) Finally, the sizes of files (Gb, Mb, Kb, bytes) is now translatable
in the language packs.
OK, this is a big check-in with some big changes, and needs work still.
It seems relatively stable, but I need help identifying the rough patches.
1) First grading scales support. There is a now a new table called "scale"
that contains grading scales. There can be site scales (course=0) and
custom course scales. These can be used in modules - I've only done
forums for now but that was the hard one. Scales can be edited via
the new item in the course admin menu.
There is one default scale - the connected/separate knowing one that used
to be in forum. To build this I pull data from the language packs
to create one during the upgrade, or anytime a scales menu is called
and no scales are found.
2) New roles for course creator and teachers. I've fixed up the course
menus and some other things but there's a lot left to do on this to
make it all smooth. The idea is that teachers no longer can edit courses
unless they are also course creators. The interface for this needs to
be smoothed out a fair bit and I need help with this.
The upgrade will upgrade all teachers to be creators, but will default
the new site config "creatornewcourses" to "no", so that effectively
these new teachers have the same privileges.
3) Simplified teacher management. There is no longer an "assign teachers"
and a "teacher roles" page - it's all on one page in course/teacher.html.
Phew ... time for a shower and then back into it.
