Here is where I am now

I started work on this project in May 2011.  I know some web design, some graphic design, some media/marketing theory and I had been working for the company for about 8 months so I knew what they needed.  I had never used Moodle or done any training/online teaching before.

I should have started this blog back then... but I didn't.  C'est la vie.

The Moodle site looks like this at the moment.

The theme is a customised version of the Anomaly theme that is included in 2.0.  The images are stock images from the company's stash and the colours are their company colours.

If anyone finds this post and wants to know how I did something just leave a note in the comments and I'll help if I can. Part of the reason for this blog is that I forget how I did things so hopefully recording it will at least give me a clue when I inevitably have to change something.

The Portal (as we're calling it) is currently being tested by various people in the office so I can get some initial feedback on useability and design.  The project started as a vague idea to generate some more income so there was no design brief or real plan, I've just jumped in and got started.  This might not be the best way to work but I figured it was the quickest.

Marketing have decided that we do need some sort of plan, at least for how we're going to roll this portal out so one of the next stages will be to meet with them and discuss that.  This is a bit of an issue because the training department just want to get on with things and think marketing will try and throw a spanner in the works.  I previously worked with the marketing team so I will have to use my famous diplomacy skills to smooth the process over.  My current plan is to keep the two sides apart as much as possible.

I'm getting some initial feedback from this testing, most of it typos and little errors like that which are relatively easy to fix although I find the whole process to be quite annoying.  The lesson editing process in Moodle doesn't make things straight forward and I find it really easy to get distracted by some other thing I've spotted and forget what I was doing in the first place.

Some other points have been raised which I am working on meeting but I will write about these in their own posts.