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Just starting up 10 years 5 months ago #10369

  • peterromao
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Hello everyone,

I thought I was kind of moderatly knowledgeable in Joomla but I simply can't figure out how to start using King LMS.

I tried to set up a menu only to find out that none of the extensions have a general My Courses or Courses List window of sorts.

I then went through the modules available but they're giving me all sorts of errors upon using them in the frontend.

I have read the whole user's guide on the website but that's for the everyday usage of King LMS not the setting up of it. Rob Joyce was superb in helping me just installing the product as it was behaving very strangely but i am at loss.

Is there a kind soul that could at least guide me through the first few steps of setting the LMS up so that I would then go about using it?

Thanks in advance for any of the kind souls out there,
Peter
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Just starting up 10 years 5 months ago #10373

  • Squarepeg
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Hey Peter,

Here's what my project partner and I know so far [we just started using LMS King Pro a few days ago]...

1. Make sure your hosting provider has all the necessary functions to run LMS King properly. If you are on a free hosting, or mega cheap hosting plan, you may need to contact them to have certain functions enabled on your account.

2. Make sure any associated plugins are published.

3. We found out that you will need to create your first lesson/exam > course > certificate path before most of the links will work - To setup a test certificate path, go to LMS King and go through the Wizard to create a new lesson/course/certificate path. Then go through and make all the different LMS King menu items possible & you will see how they start to show correctly. When we finally figured it all out, we just ran through and made a test everything all the way through the end of the wizard so we could see every page, and see how it all works together. Once we had that in there, we could see so much more on the front end.

4. Not that this has anything to do with it, but you never know & I would ask Rob [mr awesome support!] before doing it ... But .... What are your mySql settings? On all my joomla 3.1+ sites I have been making sure that my table collation is set to utf8_general_ci - otherwise I end up getting all kinds of errors across joomla. --- PHPmy Admin > choose db > click Operations tab at top of page > table collation ---- WARNING - I ALWAYS DO THIS ON FRESH DB - If I try to change DB collation on existing DB > ERRORS. --- On existing site, I pull backup [akeeba] > create new DB > set table collation > reinstall from backup.

I hope some/any of this helps a little bit. There is a steep learning curve in the beginning, but once you start to 'get it' things move along much smoother [we just kinda 'got it' yesterday morning]. Add in the awesome support from Rob and the developers and you'll be all good.

Good luck on your build!
~ Squarepeg
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Just starting up 10 years 5 months ago #10374

  • Squarepeg
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BTW - I agree that it seems odd that there isn't an option on the menu items to select a specific certificate path or course. It would be very helpful feature to have.
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Just starting up 10 years 5 months ago #10376

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Hey Squarepeg,

Thanks for the heads up and for taking the time to sooth a lost soul :silly: . I'll go through some of your suggestions and see if I can get some of the things working.

I do remember though that yesterday evening I said to myself, hey let me try out just creating a course or lesson and I'll take it from there but when I started the create a lesson wizzard it immediately gave me this error:

1054 Unknown column 'form_name' in 'field list' SQL=SELECT id, form_name FROM j3xdb_feedback_form

I do have all the DB with utf8_general_ci. Being in Portugal I started using unicode way back in the transition from Joomla! 1.x to 1.5.

I have a very flexible hosting provider and I do not know what very special settings I must give KL to work but I am open to suggestions.

My only two questions are. The first two things I must create are a category and a course and only then lessons or what?

Do I need all of the plugins published? As you add plugins to the published state you end up having a slow site you know?

Cheers and thanks for the great help - even on a sunday :cheer:
Peter
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Just starting up 10 years 5 months ago #10379

  • Squarepeg
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Hey Peter,

Yes, the process of creating a new certification path in LMS King is directly opposite what you would expect after working with Joomla categorys, sub-categories and articles.

In Joomla you normally create your category, any related sub-category, then you add your content items. Build from the top down. You have to have a category before you can make an article to put in it.

In LMS King, you start with the wizard and you build the initial 'framework' from the bottom up. Create your first lesson - this can be a presentation [content only], or an exam/quiz [content/exam instructions and questions]. Next the wizard will ask you to create the course that your first lesson will be in, and then you finally create your certificate path to hold the course [that holds your first lesson].

Once you have created this 'framework' you can go back in and add all the additional lessons & courses that will ultimately be part of that certificate path, order everything the way you want, etc.

This build-backwards is definitely part of the 'learning curve' that caught us off-guard in the beginning. But, once you create that first framework string, you can go right back and add everything else to it that you want just like you would with any other LMS or Joomla content.

Then, when it's time to create a new certificate path, you just go back through the wizard, create the framework, then go back and fill it in.

Re: Errors

Start by running your basic debug on the pages where you are getting the errors. The more extensions you are integrating with LMS King/Your Joomla Stack, the more opportunities for conflicts. There are already a few plugins that I have had to disable during our migration over to LMS King, and the additional extensions we are integrating.

In site configuration, just turn on debug, then also change debug level to 'maximum' or 'development', then reload the page that's throwing errors, and check what's causing the conflict. if you see a direct connection to a plugin, it could be ordering, or simply incompatibility ... try reordering, then disabling to see if it corrects the problem ... If there isn't any other specific extension identified in the debug info on your page, then you know it's time to send Rob a quick support email and ask them to double check the install and clean up any db issues. ....

Hope this helps.
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Just starting up 10 years 5 months ago #10380

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Hey Squarepeg,

I would love it to have helped but alas I can't run the wizzard. Worst than that the whole site went up in fumes yesterday when I was toying around with KL. I lost administrator access and had to inject a restore of an old September 15th backup.

Lost quite a bit of work. Not anymore though. Just made Akeeba Backup run a cron job everyday and configured it with quotas because storage is expensive (curious to see if the script can apply the quotas on the files transferred to dorpbox ).

I will later try to get a new install of KL on the site as soon as I have the last 20 days' work redone :blink:

Cheers,
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Just starting up 10 years 5 months ago #10382

  • kingadmin
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Hi Guys,
can you explain to me a bit more about the problem with menu creation please.
What type of menu items are you trying to create? I mean, pointing to what?

FYI, given comments, we are today starting a rework of the Wizard system to make it easier to follow.
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Just starting up 10 years 5 months ago #10384

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Hi All,
Just letting you know that we've released a new version of the LMS component with a completely new creation wizard. We've totally rewritten it.
Additionally we've fixed a small bug in the profilelms component and one of the JomSocial plugins. - My Certificates.
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Just starting up 10 years 5 months ago #10385

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Before I delve into the menus I am a bit at loss at organizing the learning materials for the students.

I understand (I think) the way the wizard creates the course content but I still have some problems to grasp the right process for creating courses. Please imagine this scenario:
  1. I have some introductory review materials I want my students to read. I will not ask them any questions about this I just want the to read this. Also I do not want to submit any pdf's, ppt's or any other type of files as I do not want them to have to install any additional programs on their computers to access content to be learned.
  2. I then have some more in depth content for which I'd like to ask one simple question in the end.

Now here is what I do not understand. For me, conceptually speaking the materials belonging to these two lessons (I would call them lessons because they have distinct detail to be learned. Also, conceptually speaking, these two lessons belong to the same course.

If we are in agreement then let me ask this?

How do I go about creating all of this? In KINGLMS language let me demonstrate the following reasoning:

The Course creation can only be done after the first lesson is made. No brainer there. So I create the first lesson. When I create that lesson it suddenly dawns on me that the only thing I am creating is a name or title for that lesson and some description text plus a definition or setting that sets the type of the lesson (presentation, exam, quiz or survey and the SCORM).

Well, I choose presentation for the first content I wish to convey. I think this is so because there are no questions to be asked. I just want to confirm the students have indeed read the material I want to provide them in this lesson. And this is where the first doubt is born. Where do I input this content? I only have 2 buttons to choose from. Either I Save and Go to Questions or I Save and Go to Lessons List.

After some testing I can only conclude that I need to save and go to questions in spite of not wanting to create any questions otherwise I get back to the lessons list (Titles and Descriptions).

After I do this I get to the Lesson Content Screen where I am able to add Questions. Ok, so I decide I create a Text type (no questions) question to insert into the questions list. Even the english of the previous phrase is confusing let alone trying to understand what's behind it.

You see, I think it's got to be a Text type content as I do not wish to ask any questions. And then that's it. Ok done. But if that is so then why did I choose the lesson type to be a Presentation Type of Lesson? This is confusing me.

For the second lesson in my previous list I create another Lesson? I want to present some new material so I presume this is another presentation type of lesson then, right? Then inside that Lesson I create as many types of Questions (even the Text - "no questions asked" type ones where applicable). And if I just want to ensure the students did indeed understand what they read I would choose another type of question not a text type one? How should I do this so that it is understandable for the students? Create a Text type first and put it in the list of questions and then another question with ie. a multiple choice type to ask the question(s) I want related to the Text type question?

Is this how It should be done?

In the end or in another occasion (let's say this would be the 3rd point in my previous list of content) if I want to have a Lesson where the whole thing is just an exam for certification I must NOT choose the Presetation type and should choose either the Quiz or Exam type of Lesson and the fill them out with the questions where for any introductory section of said exams I can again choose the Text type and all the other nice types?

Couldn't I make an Exam with the Presentation type of Lesson? Why the Lesson Type? It kind of seems to be a bit redundant to me.

Or am I just looking at this whole process with some binoculars turned the other way around?

I'd appreciate some input from any kind soul!

Thanks in advance.

By the way the questions list is throwing me this error on top of the list:
Warning: Illegal offset type in isset or empty in /home/mydomain/public_html/libraries/joomla/input/input.php on line 159
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Just starting up 10 years 5 months ago #10386

  • peterromao
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Dang, it took me more than 42 minutes to write my post. LOL. Only now did I see that you've launchged a new version.

Should I risk this installation myself, Rob?

Cheers!
Last Edit: 10 years 5 months ago by peterromao.
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Just starting up 10 years 5 months ago #10387

  • kingadmin
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ok so that was a pretty long post :)
So, let me try to break it down into bits.

Firstly, you don't have to use the wizard.
Everything that can be done by the wizard can also be done on the Manage tab.
Anything created in the wizard can be edited in the Manage tab.

If you have a whole lesson that you only need the students to view once, but you included it in 2 courses, the system will display completed for that lesson in BOTH courses that include it if the student views the lesson in one of them.
However. if you are only reusing some of the questions, then you use the wizard to create a new lesson and on the last step, you import the questions from the old lesson.
This way, you have two lessons that contain some of the same questions.

If you have a lesson that contains only presentation material, then create it as a Presentation type.
Then create a new lesson of type exam which actually contains the test questions. and set the Presentation question as a per-requisite for it. Means that the student can't do the exam without first going through all of the questions in the presentation lesson.

When you create a lesson, you are basically creating a container that has configuration options for how the lesson will be displayed and when.

You can however create an exam type lesson and it contain text only questions. It's up to you.
You can add as many text type questions as you want and then at the end add your questions.

I hope that the new wizard will help you to understand the structure a but better.

On the intro page when you first open the component, there is a link in the text to a powerpoint presentation that explains the structure a bit. See if it will help you get your mind around it.

Now, if you are ok with this, your comments on the menus?
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Just starting up 10 years 4 months ago #10388

  • racmitch
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ok, i am pulling what's left of my hair out!!!!...is this lms really this hard to understand? Holy cow.....I can't get a the text content of a lesson to show up no matter how many times i read the "guide"!!!!!...i uploaded the the word doc that is my lesson content, I checked on my server to see it was where it was supposed to be, it was there, I can see the certification path>course>lesson, but the lesson isn't clickable...I have no idea what or how to make this system work...the guide is pretty useless...does any one know if they give your money back? cause I have a tight deadline to make a lms for this company and this is going to take me to long to just learn it...
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Just starting up 10 years 4 months ago #10390

  • kingadmin
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I am really trying hard to understand what is it that is so difficult.
Firstly, anyone that has worked with Joomla for any length of time, knows NEVER to copy content from work into articles. Word copies in a lot of crap and styling that we browsers just can't support and the built in styling breaks web pages.
Can you please contact me directly via our contact forms so that I can walk through this with you to help identify the problem and remove it.
The creation wizard has been totally rewritten from scratch to assist with further understanding.
I am in the process of writing a PDF user guide too.
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Just starting up 10 years 4 months ago #10391

  • racmitch
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KingAdmin
thank you for your reply, I have been building on the joomla platform for quite some time, and I DO know to NOT c/p word into articles because it brings in junk code and causes issues with an articles styling, I didn't say I did that, I said I imported word docs through your file uploader because I couldn 't figure out for the life of me how to get the content to populate, not the questions, the content. Do i need to create content in the form of articles in joomla? Your guide doesn't say that, and my uploading a word doc was an attempt at trying to get any kind of content to show up on the live site. If your creation wizard has a place to assign an article, or place the actual content for the lesson it isn't defined at all. My post was in frustration as i spent 8 hours trying to get one lesson to populate with no success. i really want this lms to work as it looks exactly what my company is looking for, but i have learned and at least gotten results showing on sites using jomsoc, CB and virtumart 1st time out within an hour or 2, this was just frustrating that 8 hours later I had nothing to show my bosses.
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Just starting up 10 years 4 months ago #10392

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The file uploader isn't for importing.
It's for atttaching so that students can download and view the files.

After you create the lesson. You have to go to the menage content tab and create the questions that will be in the lesson.

What I suggest is this...
use the wizard to create the CP, Cat and Lesson.
Then add a Text type question with some content.
Login as a new user and purchase it using the module link Purchase Certification Path.
Then you can progress through the structure and start the lesson to see your text question.
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