Best practice forum (Archived)

Anyone using other open-source CMS with Totara?

Hi all, thanks for reading this thread.

Just wondering whether anyone here is using other open-source CMS (such as WordPress, Drupal, etc.) in front of Totara? Would that work well with Google OAuth2 authentication?

The whole idea is for us to expand the site not just for training, but also as a content portal (possibly with some optional enrichment materials with static pages complete with Moodle/Totara navigation and theme). Currently we are testing a Moodle 3rd party plugin called "Static Pages," but would like to reach out to the community to see if others have other solutions. Thanks!

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I have done this several times, simplesamlphp is an open source tool to enable SSO via OAuth/OpenID between different applications and there are integrations with both Drupal and Moodle. It's a bit fiddly to set up but the documentation is all out there.

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Hi Wen,

We've done this a number of times at Paradiso. We also do it with eCommerce systems like Magento. Our integration includes:

SSO - Single Sign On
Login directs to:
- To be determined.
Logout sync
Logout direct:
- To be determined.
Auto Enrollment

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Thanks Jake and Andrew!

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Hi,

Apologies for the delay in the reply.

Yes, Drupal/Moodle integrations is something that we at Catalyst - especially in Australia - have had a lot of experience with and have found it a great way to support a "separation of concerns" business paradigm.

In a recent experience with an Australian university MOOC, Drupal and Moodle have been set up on top of a SimpleSAMLphp application which allows users to "log in" using their Google account, then seamlessly jump between Drupal and Moodle (you can tell by the URL structure "learn." or "www." as to whether you are in Drupal or Moodle).

This approach allows us to connect to any external authentication provider (Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo) and then use this as a provider for the Moodle + CMS solution - true SSO.

It also makes it trivial to add another application into the mix (i.e. Mahara) if you wanted to piggy-back on the existing authentication session.

I hope this helps.

Cristiano

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Hi There,

Sorry for the delay in response here. As cristiano says above - we have quite a bit of experience with Moodle + CMS. For the purpose of integration with CMS (Drupal/Wordpress), Moodle and Totara are very similar.

In the solutions that we have been involved in delivering that support OAuth and 3rd party authentication (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc) we have preferred to put Drupal + Moodle in front of SimpleSAMLphp (another open source solution) and this has worked really well. And means that if we wanted to add another application instance (CRM, repo, ERP system) we would be able to do this.

Great example of this it http://www.open2study.com - this is a MOOC platform by Open Universities Australia (we were the core technical partner). The system is free and open, so you can log in and try it out. You can tell by the URL when you are changing between Moodle and Drupal.

My email is andrew.boag@catalsyt-au.net if you would like to talk more.

Cheers

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