Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v4

Tag: WebCT

  • Odd Tracking File Recording

    Every time a Vista 3 node is shut down without going through the initiated shut down process, there is a chance of incorrect data written to the tracking files (in NodeA/tracking/). Normally it leaves strange characters or partial lines at the end of the file. This is the first time I have seen it write…

  • VistaSWAT

    Do you run one of these versions of the former WebCT products? CE4.x CE6.x CE8.x Vista 3.x Vista 4.x Vista 8.x If so, then you should join us for the next Vista SWAT web conference call Thursday, May 14th (and every other Thursday). We help each other solve issues and better understand how to use / run the product.…

  • No Hiding From Blackboard

    Some former WebCT (bought by Blackboard) customers switched to ANGEL rather than move to Blackboard products. PDF Apr 14, 2009 Today, Blackboard announced it is buying ANGEL. You can run, but you cannot hide from Blackboard. Some light reading for you… Learning, Together ANGEL Learning and Blackboard® have decided to join forces. Blackboard Plans to Buy Another Rival, Angel Learning…

  • Session Oddities

    One of the clients we host complained about losing their session. Blackboard recommended we switch how our load balancer is handling the session persistence. Before agreeing to do that, we decided to use Blackboard’s script to determine if there is a problem before trying to fix something which may or may not exist. An acceptable…

  • LMS Security

    This morning there was a flurry of effort to locate an article called “Hacking WebCT.” My coworker was able to locate it. We were disappointed.  The main points of the article were: Lazy administrators make compromising user accounts easy. Lazy instructors make getting questions for assessments easy. These apply to any LMS. So, here is some…

  • Better CE/Vista Web Server Log

    Some support tickets are more easily solved by knowing both user behavior and environment. An often helpful piece of information is what web browser they used. To add this, shut down the cluster, edit /VISTA_HOME/config/config.xml to include the cs(User-Agent), and start the cluster. This line will need to appear for every node. At startup, the…

  • Mail From Address

    It appears CE/Vista has several locations for defining the email addresses it uses for SMTP. $WEBCTDOMAIN/config/config.xml: mail.from= From address for messages sent. $WEBCTDOMAIN/customconfig/startup.properties: WEBCT_ADMIN_EMAIL= Some internal errors have a mailto: prompt to contact the server administrator. $WEBCTDOMAIN/serverconfs/log4j.properties: log4j.appender.EMail.To= Report fatal errors. $WEBCTDOMAIN/serverconfs/log4jstartup.properties: log4j.appender.EMail.To= Report fatal errors. $WEBCTDOMAIN/webctInstalledServer.properties: WEBCT_ADMIN_EMAIL= Installer picks up this value for populating…

  • Bb Suggestions

    WebCT used a suggestion form to collect product improvement ideas from the various users (instructors, instructional technologists, administrators, etc.). I’m not sure if the switch to opening enhancement request support tickets under Blackboard was something new to improve the support model overall or just a change for former WebCT customers as support integrated. Interestingly, Blackboard…

  • How Not To Break a Frame

    Correct: <script language=”Javascript” type=”text/javascript”> if (top != self) { top.location = window.location; } </script> Incorrect: <script language=”Javascript” type=”text/javascript”> if (top != self) { top.location = “/webct/urw/lc18361011.tp0/logonDisplay.dowebct”; } </script> The problem with incorrect is the address used here is not the address in the location bar.  The one in the location bar has the values required…