Share your feedback about the H5P community!

Submitted by kchoi on Mon, 06/23/2025 - 14:25
kchoi's picture
Forums: 
General discussion

Hi everyone,

We at H5P know the importance of open source and the community that makes it so special. We're on a mission to empower everyone to learn using interactive content.

With any community, there are always areas for improvement, and we want to hear your feedback! 

  • What's important to you?
  • What do you love about the H5P community?
  • What can we improve on?

Let us know in the thread below! 

Kelly

Community Manager

Summary: 
Share your feedback about the H5P community!

bluetomh5p

Tue, 06/24/2025 - 10:25

Hi,

H5P in/with Moodle: users love it, Moodle sysadmins are not that happy.

1) As Moodle sysadmin at least I want to 
- have the possibility to upgrade each h5p library at every time to the lib version I would like to
- know where the lib is stored, in the best case all libraries at the same spot in the file area
- be untroubled by compatibility issues between libraries or lib collections
- have the possibility to intervene when problems occur though, for example with externally manufactured h5p-files

2) As user and sysadmin I want to have JUST ONE h5p acitivity in Moodle!!

We at the University Münster would like to help to improve h5p in Moodle but we can't handle it on our own.

I wonder if others in the community have the same thoughts and if we could join our forces to make it a "Moodle style" community project...

Best Regards,
Thomas Niedermaier

papi Jo's picture

papi Jo

Tue, 06/24/2025 - 23:11

Hi Thomas,

I'm afraid you are "barking up the wrong tree". I suggest re-posting your post to the Moodle relevant H5P forum here: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=8603

kchoi's picture

kchoi

Wed, 06/25/2025 - 17:38

Hey Thomas,

Thanks for your feedback. We are considering multiple items internally and how to ensure the open source community benefits from features, but also how we can make contributions easier for all users and admins. 

Unfortunately, I don't have a specific answer for you right now. I will, however, factor in your feedback.

 

Realia

Mon, 07/07/2025 - 18:18

Hi Kelly,

I speak here as an early H5P adopter (member of this forum since 9 years), an early contributor (I was the first to completely translate H5P from english to french back in 2016), a "free" user (using H5P Wordpress plugin, because H5P.com doesn't offer single user licences), a regular attendant of H5P webinars and a recent winner of an H5P Award - so quite involved with H5P ;)

Let me share with you my feedback first. I have to confess that I was quite worried when I learned that H5P had been acquired by D2L because I was afraid that this would change the dynamic here, among the community. I also had my doubts about the way the non-premium users would be handled : I feared that they would be left aside, deep in the backlog, and that 2 types of users would emerge : the premium ones from H5P.com who would get all the attention and the rest of us, getting the crumbles.

If, at first, I felt reassured because there seemed to be a vibe of "business as usual" here, I feel quite the opposite today. I am very disappointed to learn that the H5P new layout, which has been announced a long time ago, before the D2L acquisition (I had a sneak peek during a past webinar), as a much needed feature for everyone will in fact only happen for the H5P.com users. My understanding is that the others will get a less user-friendly and not-completely-responsive version of H5P. But maybe I misunderstood ?

I get that premium users should have access to exclusive and advanced contents (as The Chase, H5P Poll... ) or to the powerful H5P Smart Import or getting better and faster support and benefit from other improvements : H5P needs fundings and premium users should get "rewards" for the funding they provide.

But this improved layout is different : it is kind of a "core feature" as it makes H5P contents more responsive and the UI more user-friendly. So I don't understand why all H5P content creators could not benefit from a better user interface to create contents that are more accessible and responsive ? After all, H5P's goal is to empower every educators to "create and share". This announcement reads to me as if the goal was shifting towards empowering H5P premium users to create accessible / responsive contents with the comfort of an user-friendly interface and the other H5P users to create less accessible / responsive contents in a less user-friendly interface - which is precisely what I was worried about in the first place.

So, I guess that my question is : what are the short and long term plans for the H5P non-premium users (who are using H5P plugins like Wordpress or Moodle) and who are part of the H5P community ? I think it's fair to let us know what lies in the future for us ;) 

Greetings,

Isabelle

 

otacke's picture

otacke

Tue, 07/08/2025 - 23:19

Hi Isabelle! 

Regarding the layout builder: I think it falls in the category "inline editing". It's true that is has been announced before the D2L takeover, but was it ever said to be free? I don't know, but the old roadmap page (https://h5p.test.schulcloud-thueringen.de/roadmap) lists "inline editing" under H5P.com only.

That's the one thing. The other is: I think that the editing experience of Column will become worse without the layout builder. I never understood why it the form based editor was not given the vertical tabs widget that we know from other content types with "pages", for example Question Set. Now, having "Rows", complex layouts will be possible in theory, but a pain in the *beep* to create in practice.

Do I like this? No. Not at all. But I also agree with Dylan Beattie: "People who share their open source code do not owe you anything." (https://www.olivertacke.de/labs/2025/06/20/people-who-share-their-source...). It's easier said than done, but it's possible to close gaps, amend code, add extras.

There's Lumi for instance, giving you offline editing and viewing - and I know a project that's working on a mobile solition, too, open source.

There's a solution to host your own H5P content type server allowing you to offer your own content types. It is compatible to the original one and even mirrors its contents, so you can choose that other one instead. More on that soon :-)

There are WordPress plugins to amend the functionality of the H5P integration which has in fact not seen much love for quite a while. More on that soon as well. :-D

There are multiple alternatives to Smart Import.

There's a lot. And the H5P community could add more to that list - including a widget that replicates what the layout builder is about to do. Should be possible. Even though it won't work right here, right now, right here, right now, ... It's gonna take time, a whole lot of precious time, it's gonna take patience and time, ... 

Is that ideal? In particular for those who want features for nothing and the code free or just move on to the next thing (I am not thinking of you here!)? No. But I think it will be Kelly's job to find a balance between corporate needs and community wishes - not that easy, so I am interested to learn how things turn out.

Best,

Oliver

papi Jo's picture

papi Jo

Tue, 07/08/2025 - 16:17

As an early adopter of H5P, contributor and active forum member I share Isabelle's feelings.