Moodle Video Plans

Installing and Starting Moodle

For those wanting to get started using Moodle, I offer the ideas below as some alternatives, in a somewhat "ease of getting going" order. Most of these involve a Linux-type server or environment. None of these are meant for larger schools. The focus is on smaller Moodle installations.

Free Moodle's, for Experimenting, Learning, and Hosting

Moodle's QA Site or Moodle Orange School

If you just want to "touch" Moodle and see some of its features, this is a good website to visit. You can jump in as different roles, providing you insight into different Moodle features. You will not be able to use this website to deliver any courses, it is purely there for experimentation. This is also a good website to go to when something isn't working in your own Moodle and you want to test on a "clean" Moodle installation.

Here is a short video showing how one could use this website.

MoodleCloud

This alternative is the easiest way to get started. You sign up for a free MoodleCloud account, and you can create courses, experiment, and even deliver a Moodle course on the Internet. This is "free!" And you do not have to worry about installing Moodle or any "server" issues. Of course, some limitations apply, such as being limited to 50 students and not being able to install plugins. However, there are some pay-for options available.

In this video, I show how to create a MoodleCloud account.

Experimental Moodles, for Experimenting and Learning

These methods provide a Moodle on your own computer. They do not work well to deliver actual courses on the Internet, however.

In this group, I will show you some of these common maintenance, or management typical tasks.

6) Upgrading Moodle on your VPS.

7) Backing up your VPS Moodle.

8) Moving (migrating) your local Moodle to your VPS.

9) Moving (migrating) your VPS Moodle to your local computer.

MoodleBox

MAMP (Macintosh Local Installation from Moodle.org)

XAMP (Macintosh Local Installation from Moodle.org)

At this point in time (Sept 2019,) I cannot get this to work.

The next two methods are interesting, and very educational. They allow you to learn some of the basics of what is required to run Moodle on a server. In these, you will learn about the three basic components of a Moodle: 1) the Moodle application, 2) the Moodle database, and 3) the moodledata folder. If you watch each video, you will see the basic setup being very similar for each.

MAMP from Scratch (Macintosh Local Installation)

XAMPP from Scratch (PC Local Installation)

Hosted Server

Many current hosted server plans (low-cost or free) do not meet Moodle's minimum requirements, which are currently php 7.1, MariaDB 5.5.31 or MySQL 5.6.

 

 

Production Servers

5) On a GoDaddy VPS from scratch.

Set up server. Install Moodle. Set CRON. SSL. ReCaptcha. Database config. php.ini config. Opcache.

 

Things (technical) that need to be addressed:

The database, its configuration, my.cnf.

The moodledata folder.

php settings.

Moodle settings.

Moodle's config.php file.

Plugin installation.

Server side email.