Extend the functionality of OUWiki in Moodle 1.9.x by adding links to its interface

The BEST thing about Moodle is that it is Open Source and written in PHP. That means absolute heaven for the programmer within the Teacher or Educator. Ah! To be able to modify code to suit your needs. Pure joy indeed.

Figure 1. The OUWiki - A great collaboration tool!

One of the BEST collaboration tools in Moodle is the Wiki. In fact, the standard Moodle Wiki has been enhanced by the boffins at the Open University, United Kingdom and we are blessed with the OUWiki.  With the OUWiki, we have a Moodle resource that allows students to not only build a webpage asynchronously, but also to annotate their work for others to read. As Sam Marhall pointed out in this Moodle.org post:

"The big new feature is annotation which is intended to replace comments. Comments were a nice idea but didn't work with students - they put things in comments instead of editing the page as they should (either too timid or just didn't know which was appropriate), and it was also too complicated for them. So if you choose, you can get rid of 'em. Instead you can have annotation. Annotation lets the teacher add 'red pen' notes to a wiki page and lock it, so as to give feedback when marking a wiki page."

Lesson Objective
In this post, I want to show you how you can add more links into OUWiki's interface. Clicking on a link will bring you to your intended URL or open a new tab for the destination webpage. It's actually pretty easy.

Learning Outcomes
At the end of this post, you will be able to customise your OUWiki so that more hyperlinks can be added to it. You will be able to extend the functionality of your Wiki. You will be able to take your OUWiki from here:

Figure 2. The OUWiki menu items 

to here:

Figure 3. Adding a new menu hyperlink to the menu list - done!