View source for User:Aa/EduBlog/EduBlog analysis

= Moodle Theming =

== Goals ==
Provide a streamlined interface matching the Sugar experience. A secondary goal is to reduce network traffic and rendering costs on the laptop. 

== Comments ==
The current theme included in EduBlog's moodle is lacking. Hiding the trace only makes it harder to navigate for administrators and future usage. UI cleanness should be achieved by proper configuration. 
Themes are kept in folders in moodle/theme and are picked up automatically by the system.

See more information on [http://docs.moodle.org/en/Themes themes] and a [http://docs.moodle.org/en/Creating_a_custom_theme couple] of [http://docs.moodle.org/en/Make_your_own_theme tutorials].

Suggestion: Modify one of the existing themes at: [http://moodle.org/mod/data/view.php?d=26] (keep it lightweight)

= Authentication =
== Goals ==
Implement an easy to deploy, secure, and transparent authentication system (In that priority order) for Moodle running on school servers. 

== A basic Threat Model ==
Below is a list of threats to the blogging system I can think of. A "user" is a kid (student) or a teacher but not an administrator. 

1) An unauthorized attacker accessing the system with administrative privileges compromising the Moodle installation. 
2) An unauthorized attacker accessing the system with a kid's account for spamming and/or possibly further social engineering. 
3) A authorized user accessing with another user's account. 

== Comments ==
Speak to server-devel about planned password-less XS Moodle authentication system. Giving kids passwords is not a good idea...
A public key authentication system using the XOs and Moodle's keys would be ideal. 

More down-to-earth, though highly insecure, is the possibility of using MAC addresses for authentication (run a lookup of the IP's MAC address in the server's ARP cache and validate it against a list of allowed addresses). This is especially insecure in the case of teacher's machines that have higher permissions. 


= Course management, permissions =
== Goals ==
Maintain an intuitive blogging and administrative workflow inside Moodle. 

== Comments ==
Users can be uploaded en masse through the "Upload Users" option in the administrative interface. This should be the method of manually adding kids and their authentication information to the database. The required input is a file in CSV format described here: [http://moodle.org/help.php?file=uploadusers.html]. 

Currently, the blog menu in the course context has the following links: 

  View my entries
  Blog preferences
  View course entries
  View site entries

Which are probably best laid out as: 

  View my blog
  View my class blog
  View my school blog
  Blog preferences

The code for the blog block is in moodle/blocks/blog_menu/block_blog_menu.php and could be used to make a similar block for oublogs. 

Currently OUBlog doesn't support blogs based on context (user, course, moodle installation). This should be added, as it enables usage of EduBlog alongside standard Moodle in a more intuitive fashion. 

= Wordpress theming =

= Write modifications =