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= Second Life =
For nearly everything in Sloodle, you will need to have access to Second Life. You do not need expensive graphics cards or voice chat or any other fancy features -- just basic Second Life access. You should be fairly well-experienced in the world, being able to search and explore on your own, and edit objects. Communicating with other residents is crucial as well, whether it's by chat or IM.

== LSL scripting ==
If you want to help out by scripting in-world objects, then you will need to know about LSL. We would love to have people of all abilities, but unfortunately we do not have time to train LSL programmers. You will need to be very proficient with variables, states, and functions. You will probably also need to understand (or be able to learn quickly) how to use link messages and HTTP requests. Knowledge of parsing strings and handling XMLRPC would be useful as well, but those are not essential.

It is often recommended that you carry out your LSL programmer '''offline'''. That means you program in a regular text editor and save regularly. You can then paste the script into Second Life to test it.



= Moodle =
You do not need to get involved with the server-side (PHP) programming in Moodle at all if you don't want to. However, we do need some programmers to do this, and it is quite a lot harder than LSL. You should have access to a Moodle installation (preferably one which is not being used for anything else), and be able to edit the PHP files. You can run a webserver with Moodle on your own computer if you want to, although it is best on an externally hosted server, so that Second Life can communicate with it properly.

Some knowledge of the Moodle API would be very useful.


== Subversion ==
We store all the Sloodle code in a Subversion repository, hosted by Google. You will need a Subversion client to get it (I recommend the [http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/ TortoiseSVN] client if you run Windows). You can checkout an anonymous copy of the code and edit that, but if you want to contribute back to the repository, you will need to become a project contributor. Let use know on the [http://www.sloodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?f=61 Sloodle Development forums] if you are interested.

== PHP ==
You ''must'' have experience of PHP programming in order to contribute to the server-side programming. Some of the code is fairly complicated, and you need to be able to program cleanly and securely, as some Moodle sites are very big and important! You should be comfortable with lots of the PHP standard functions, language constructs, and classes. Good coding practices are essential as well.

(Note: you only need a simple text-editor in order to program with PHP)

== Databases ==
A lot of the server-side work on the Sloodle project requires you to access and edit the database. You can typically use Moodle functions to take the hassle out, but you should be somewhat familiar with database structure and interactions before trying things out.



= Getting More Help =
If you want more background information on the topics involved, then you can find some useful links here:
* [[Sloodle programming survival kit]]



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