How to Speed Up Moodle™ Customization With Custom Moodle™ Blocks

Kiran

You are in the right place if you have been looking for a way to effortlessly customize your Moodle™ as you deliver the best learner experience with uniquely designed custom pages.

We’re here to help you with tips for better Moodle™ customization via flexible page creation and design. 

Now, the options available are not very convenient for most Moodlers.  It either involves you spending time to learn programming skills or spending money contracting someone to do it for you.

Moodle™ doesn’t have a dedicated page builder. The closest option offered by Moodle™ is the Static Pages plugin which offers limited flexibility to create custom pages as you can see here. 

That been said, how then do you build intuitive, modern, and professional-looking pages from scratch?

Well, wonder no more. I am about to lead you through a gold mine

Be a Page Building Master with these Custom Moodle™ Blocks

The time has arrived for us to look at different Moodle™ Blocks and how you can easily get them up without writing any code (maybe even faster than Pancakes… lol). 

The Blocks in Moodle™ that we would be looking at includes Features, Contact Us, Grid view, Hero section, HTML, Media text and Meet the team.

• Now, let’s get to it…

Show Your Competitive Course Pricing With Ease 

The pricing section of any website enables the organization to display competitive prices at a glance. This is very useful as it makes it easier for users to see the prices and make a choice without stress 

For your Pricing Block, you can add and show your pricing or offer options effortlessly for individual courses or course packages that you are selling from your Moodle™ site by placing them side by side like in the image below:

• See how the prices are well pronounced under the features! 
• Users will not find it difficult to compare prices and decide which package to go for. It can even be better when you decide to give it your own touch of design 

Display Your Courses In Style 

The Moodle™ Block we are discussing now enables you to display all the courses you are offering the students. With this block, it is easy to show the different packages you have in store for those who want to learn from you and what they stand to miss if they don’t. It is the Features Block.

In your own Moodle™ Features Block, see how you can showcase all your interesting course features or additional perks for your learners if they join your e-learning program. You can even create a similar section displaying the features or benefits you want to highlight. 

You can achieve all of this without any coding. The next image is a sample of the result you can get if you customize this block in Moodle™ properly.

• Do you notice how each feature is laid side by side? 
• Nothing will be overlooked or missed with this kind of design. Now imagine what it will look like when you even design it to your own taste

Enable Learners To Contact You With Ease

Have you ever tried contacting the site owner or admin and got frustrated because you weren’t properly guided on the page? It has happened to many of us.

This could be avoided with a good layout of buttons, texts, and so on. 

The Contact Us Block of your Moodle™ site can be well customized such that you don’t just abandon your learners! Provide them a way for them to quickly connect with you. 

As the name suggests, it lets you effortlessly add and display all the required contact details upfront such as your mobile/phone number, email address, address of the organization, and so on. See the sample below:

• Can you imagine yourself getting lost with such a simple but interactive Contact Us Block? 
• Definitely Not. All information you need is right there. Plus you can even personalize it further.

Hold On To Your Users Attention Through Grid View Block

Having a grid view of items help keep the eyes of our users busy or focused because they have more images. And users’ attention is spread more evenly throughout the items. With this method, your students can easily interact with multiple items at a time hereby improving learning engagement

The Moodle™ Grid View Block provides such advantages in displaying multiple images or links. You can even add links to your course categories in these grids. This way your learners can quickly navigate to different categories in your courses. It can also have various use cases depending on your requirement. The image below demonstrates exactly what we are discussing:

• Notice that you can display not just images but can have links or other information attached to your display.
• The possibilities are limited to your creativity. Once you can think of it, then you can find a way to do it.

Make The Best First Impression On Learners During Their First Visit

Like you must have learned, there is only one chance to make the best first impression. If users lose interest the first time they visit your Moodle™ site, then they will have no reason to continue to other parts of the site. 

Since the first part of the site encountered by learners is the Hero Section, it is important that the Moodle™ customization done here is such that they will want to click on other links on the page. 

The Hero Section Block in Moodle™ is the topmost part of the homepage. It could contain image(s), text(s), video, and so on. So, make sure yours is grabbing instant attention. This can also go a long way in creating a lasting brand impression of your e-learning program.

Imagine having your e-learning brand boldly represented on your hero section with a little introduction to your site and a call-to-action button beneath. All these will be laid on a captivating background like the image below:

• Can you see how captivating the Hero Section is?
• How inviting those well-placed buttons are!
• Your users will definitely click those buttons to find out more
• Again, you can make this design your own. Just imagine and build with no code

Take Control Of Your Page Building Via The HTML Block

Just in case you feel like being completely in charge of your own design from scratch, there is a provision for you to write your HTML code. This will give you all the flexibility you need.

Moodle™ HTML Block gives you all the liberty you can ever imagine as someone with a background in programming. 

There is no limit to what you can design with this block. If you’re a developer and have enough coding, HTML & CSS knowledge.  Go ahead and feel free to explore this block for building advanced custom Moodle™pages with next-level design.

Pass More Messages Using Media Text Block

It is said that a picture speaks a thousand words. No doubt, the messages you can decode from a piece of the image can be endless. It is also long-lasting than spoken words.

This makes images a handy resource in imparting knowledge that will last.

Moodle™ Media Text Block enables you to use this combination of image and text sections to enrich your Moodle page by adding images, text, buttons, social icons, etc. 

You can create a gallery featuring your excellent performers/overachievers, great testimonials, and also a list of teachers, managers, or users. 

In order to take your credibility and trust score a few notches higher, you can even display a teacher’s profile in detail for the students to know. Because transparency and the right to information go hand in hand! And open communication presented well, is the key to it

• See how catchy it is when you combine images, text, buttons and so on. It retains attention and passes the message.
• When it’s your turn, just think of how you can combine all these for your users and create something unique.

Make Learners Feel At Home With Your Team

Since learning happens remotely these days, it is important to make the students feel like they know who is teaching them. To do this, you can put up a picture of each of the instructors and few details about each of them. You can even add their social media handles so that they know that this person lives a normal life like them.

When students can have an imaginary person on their minds, it affects how they respond to lessons. It is important to upload images with smiling faces and cool backgrounds to put students’ minds at ease.

‘This can easily be achieved using the Moodle™ Meet the Team’ Block. You can introduce your team to your students. Share some details about them along with their designation. And even link them to their profiles for your learners to explore them later. That’s how you build long-term trust with your students. 

• From each of the images in the team above, you can easily say something about the person. Gradually, you can gain the trust of your students.

Conclusion

I can confidently tell you that it will save you more time, energy, and money to use a dedicated drag and drop tool than writing codes from the ground up. All the Moodle™ blocks demonstrated in this article can be achieved using the custom page builder in the Edwiser RemUI theme

Pro tip:  All you need do is get to know your target audience, outline all your findings and come up with a design of your choice. Then use a drag and drop tool like the Edwiser Custom Page Builder to bring your design to life. 

The benefits of a page builder packaged in a theme are numerous. It lets you craft pages from the top, no matter what your degree of expertise is. You also get the Demo Importer that you can use to import ready-made homepage & course page templates from the theme demo with just one click and build from there like a PRO designer.

So, check out the Edwiser Custom Page Builder and see for yourself how to achieve all that we have discussed in this article. A good place to start is here 🙂