Are you tired of Moodle’s clunky page editor? While Moodle is a powerful learning platform, its built-in HTML editor can be cumbersome, slowing down your content creation workflow. If you understand HTML, there’s a fantastic solution that will dramatically speed up your editing process: GhostText.

This post will demonstrate how GhostText, a browser plugin, integrates with a text editor like Sublime Text to provide a seamless, live editing experience for your Moodle pages.

What is GhostText and How Does It Work?

GhostText is a browser extension available for Chrome and Firefox that creates a live connection between your web browser and a local text editor (like Sublime Text). This means you can edit the HTML content of your Moodle page in a powerful text editor, and the changes are reflected instantly in Moodle.

Imagine this: you’re editing a Moodle page. You activate GhostText, and the page’s HTML content immediately appears in your preferred text editor. As you make changes in the editor, you see them update in real-time within the Moodle page. No more switching between HTML view and visual editor view, or constantly saving and refreshing to see your adjustments!

Step-by-Step Demonstration

Let’s walk through a quick example.

Open your Moodle page and navigate to “Edit settings.”
Activate GhostText: Click the GhostText icon in your browser’s extension bar. You’ll see the editable text areas on your Moodle page highlight.
Select the content area: Choose the specific Moodle text area you want to edit.
Live Connection: Your chosen text editor (e.g., Sublime Text) will open, displaying the raw HTML of that Moodle content.

Now, here’s the magic. If you have, for instance, a list item in your Moodle page:<li>List Item 4</li>

and you copy and paste it in Sublime Text to create <li>List Item 5</li>, you’ll see “List Item 5” instantly appear on your Moodle page! This dynamic, real-time update works both ways: if you bold text in Moodle’s visual editor, the <b> tags will immediately appear around that text in Sublime Text.

Why Use GhostText? The Benefits are Huge!

You might be thinking, “Why bother when I can just edit directly in Moodle?” The key lies in the advanced features offered by dedicated text editors like Sublime Text:

Find and Replace: Perform complex search and replace operations across your Moodle content with ease.
Code Cleanup and Formatting: Keep your HTML clean and well-structured, improving readability and maintainability.
Code Snippets: Insert frequently used HTML blocks with a few keystrokes, drastically accelerating content creation.
Efficiency: Overall, the ability to leverage a professional text editor’s power for Moodle content editing makes your workflow much faster and cleaner.

Once you’re done editing, simply save your Moodle page, and all your changes made via GhostText will be permanently applied.

How to Set Up GhostText and Sublime Text

Getting started with this powerful duo is straightforward:

1. Install Sublime Text

Go to sublimetext.com.
Download and install the version compatible with your operating system (Windows, macOS, Linux).
Open Sublime Text to ensure it’s installed correctly. (An unregistered version is perfectly fine for this purpose).

2. Install the GhostText Chrome Extension

Open Google Chrome.
Go to the Chrome Web Store (or search for “Chrome Web Store”).
Search for “GhostText.”
Click “Add to Chrome” and then “Add extension.”
For easy access, “pin” the GhostText extension to your Chrome toolbar.

3. Complete GhostText Installation in Sublime Text

This step involves installing a package in Sublime Text that allows it to communicate with the GhostText browser extension.

Open Sublime Text.
Go to Tools > Command Palette (or press Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows/Linux, Cmd+Shift+P on Mac).
Install Package Control: If this is your first time using Package Control, type Package Control: Install Package Control and select it. Follow any prompts.
Install GhostText Package: Once Package Control is installed, go back to the Command Palette.
Type Package Control: Install Package and select it.
Wait for the list of packages to load, then type GhostText and select it from the list.

That’s it! GhostText is now successfully installed and configured in Sublime Text.

Start Live Editing Your Moodle Content!

Now that everything is set up, you can start experiencing the speed and efficiency of live HTML editing in Moodle.

Open any Moodle page that allows content editing.
Click the GhostText icon in your browser toolbar.
Select the content area you wish to edit.
Your Sublime Text editor will open with the HTML for that section.
Edit away! Your changes will dynamically update in Moodle.
Once finished, save your Moodle page.

This powerful combination will undoubtedly revolutionize how you develop and maintain content within Moodle, saving you significant time and effort. Give it a try – you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it!