Moodle Auto-Linking

The Moodle course management system has a feature called “Glossary Auto-Linking†which as its name indicates, allows Moodle to automatically recognize and create links between site resources. That is, if a user creates a web page titled “Moodle Feature Set†and then in another Moodle web page has a sentence reading, “There are many options in the Moodle feature set,†the system will automatically highlight the common text with a surrounding light-gray box and create a hyperlink between the two documents.

Sometimes, however, due to a server-side caching mechanism, users may find confusing behavior, especially with hidden items.

• If an item is hidden prior to the creation of the linking text, the text will not be auto-linked.

• If, however, an item is visible prior to the creation of the linking text, the text is auto-linked.

• If the item is subsequently hidden, the text remains auto-linked, but (properly) displays a message saying the item is not available.

Note that if a link to a previously-hidden item does not immediately work correctly, it should self-correct and with time the links to accessible content will appear. Moodle keeps a cache of pages in order to deliver content faster, so sometimes a number of requests need to go to a page before it refreshes and the links become active. Refreshing the browser a half-dozen times or trying a different browser should trigger the cache to refresh, but in actual use, as students access the page, this should clear up very quickly.