I have had my hands full working on a Moodle an open source Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) site this is not the first time I have worked with Moodle but I never had to attempt to optimise a moodle site before merely administrate it.
We are spoilt
Most of my day job is based around Drupal, WordPress and static html both Drupal and WordPress are very good CMS (content management systems) and already well optimised though you might not believe it given the amount of coverage that both platforms get. Moodle on the other hand has never been lavished with attention by SEOs or indeed by PHP developers. This is not a moan at the Moodle team who work like incredibly hard and like many open source developers rarely get the praise they deserve, this is rather a call to action.
We use the tools we should be improving them!
Many of the readers of this blog develop WordPress plugins & or Drupal modules but how many other scripts do you use that have never been given the attention they deserve, that old gallery script you use, or download system that uses a dodgy javascript redirect.
If you are a user of open source have you though about contributing to the project, you don’t even need to be a programmer the biggest problem from my perspective with Moodle is not its lack of permalinks, its appalling plugin system or the horrific templates, it’s the lack of sensible and structured documentation. The irony I’m sure many can appreciate a system developed by educators that has no decent howto! That said how many times have you struggled without documentation but when you got it working did you ever write the answer for others?
So what are you going to do?
I’m not into memes but if your a blogger or developer why don’t you help an outcast project out here are just a few ideas;
- Highlight the great work the project does in a blog post
- Design some artwork for them
- Write a how to
- Help write their documentation, after all us programmers tend to forget not everyone speaks in binary
- 00110010010 011101010 0110010001 00001010100010010 01010101110001 01
- Submit not only bugs but patches
- Write SEO friendly themes and templates and give them away freely
- Educate users and the developers in the simple ways they could be more search and user friendly
- Write a song about them
- Consult for them
- Do a screencast
- Manage them
So what are we going to do?
Well for starters we will shortly be releasing two new themes for Moodle which while they won’t fix all the issues with headings and structure will get people on the right lines complete with documentation 
written for humans.
We will also be working on a plugin for permalinks with the intention to release it for free.
What are you going to do?
That’s up to you, but please even highlighting one project will make a difference we all love Drupal and WordPress but spare a thought to the outcasts the forgotten systems. Remember we as a community use the software it is important we give back and each of us have skills in fields needed by the open source community even search marketers can offer something, and yes even you!
Don’t forget to tell us to drop a link to tell us what your doing,
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October 21, 2007 at 9:10 am
Moodle seems to work fine with search engines … if you look at http://moodle.org you can see the main search on the home page is actually just a Google search. Most Moodle sites are not open to search engines anyway (courses are only for authenticated students).
For documentation see http://docs.moodle.org … it’s a wiki, so if the documentation isn’t good enough then you can help fix it there.
October 21, 2007 at 9:43 am
Sorry when talking about search engines in this context I’m talking about optimising the Moodle content (those areas of the site open to the public and search engines) for search engines using techniques that collectively are referred to as SEO or search engine optimisation.
Which you will be pleased to know we have been and will continue to do so