Installing Moodle

This guide explains how to install Moodle for the first time. For some of these steps it goes into a lot of detail to try and cover the majority of possible web server setups, so this document may look long and complicated. Don't panic, once you know how to do it you can install Moodle in minutes!

If you have problems please read this document carefully – most common issues are answered in here. If you still have trouble, you can seek help from Moodle Help

Another option is to contact a web hosting company who can completely maintain Moodle for you, so that you can ignore all this and get straight into educating!

Sections in this document:

1. Requirements
2. Download and copy files into place
3. Site structure
4. Run the installer script to create config.php
   • Check web server settings
   • Creating a database
   • Creating a data directory
5. Go to the admin page to continue configuration
6. Set up cron
7. Create a new course

Moodle is primarily developed in Linux using Apache, MySQL and PHP (also sometimes known as the LAMP platform), but is also regularly tested with PostgreSQL and on Windows XP, Mac OS X and Netware 6 operating systems

The requirements for Moodle are as follows:

1. Web server software. Most people use Apache, but Moodle should work fine under any web server that supports PHP, such as IIS on Windows platforms.
2. PHP scripting language (version 4.1.0 or later). PHP 5 is supported as of Moodle 1.4.
3. a working database server: MySQL or PostgreSQL are completely supported and recommended for use with Moodle.

Most web hosts support all of this by default. If you are signed up with one of the few webhosts that does not support these features ask them why, and consider taking your business elsewhere.

If you want to run Moodle on your own computer and all this looks a bit daunting, then please take a look at the administrator documentation.

There are two ways to get Moodle, as a compressed package and via CVS. These are explained in detail on the download page: http://moodle.org/download/

After downloading and unpacking the archive, or checking out the files via CVS, you will be left with a directory called "moodle", containing a number of files and folders.

You can either place the whole folder in your web server documents directory, in which case the site will be located at http://yourwebserver.com/moodle, or you can copy all the contents straight into the main web server documents directory, in which case the site will be simply http://yourwebserver.com.

If you are downloading Moodle to your local computer and then uploading it to your web site, it is usually better to upload the whole archive as one file, and then do the unpacking on the server. Even web hosting interfaces like Cpanel allow you to uncompress archives in the "File Manager".

You can safely skip this section, but here is a quick summary of the contents of the Moodle folder, to help get you oriented:

To run the installer script (install.php), just try to access your Moodle main URL using a web browser, or access http://yourserver/install.php directly.

(The Installer will try to set a session cookie. If you get a popup warning in your browser make sure you accept that cookie!)

Moodle will detect that configuration is necessary and will lead you through some screens to help you create a new configuration file called config.php. At the end of the process Moodle will try and write the file into the right location, otherwise you can press a button to download it from the installer and then upload config.php into the main Moodle directory on the server.

Along the way the installer will test your server environment and give you suggestions about how to fix any problems. For most common issues these suggestions should be sufficient, but if you get stuck, look below for more information about some of common things that might be holding you up.

4.1 General web server settings

DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htm 

AcceptPathInfo on 

magic_quotes_gpc = 1    (preferred but not necessary)
magic_quotes_runtime = 0    (necessary)
file_uploads = 1
session.auto_start = 0
session.bug_compat_warn = 0

DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htm

<IfDefine APACHE2>
     AcceptPathInfo on
</IfDefine>

php_flag magic_quotes_gpc 1
php_flag magic_quotes_runtime 0
php_flag file_uploads 1
php_flag session.auto_start 0
php_flag session.bug_compat_warn 0

LimitRequestBody 0
php_value upload_max_filesize 2M
php_value post_max_size 2M

cp lib/htaccess .htaccess

4.2 Creating a database

# mysql -u root -p
> CREATE DATABASE moodle; 
> GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,DROP,INDEX,ALTER ON moodle.* 
        TO moodleuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'yourpassword'; 
> quit 
# mysqladmin -p reload

# su - postgres
> psql -c "create user moodleuser createdb;" template1
> psql -c "create database moodle;" -U moodleuser template1
> psql -c "alter user moodleuser nocreatedb;" template1

4.3 Creating a data directory

deny from all
AllowOverride None

Once the basic config.php has been correctly created in the previous step, trying to access the front page of your site will take you the "admin" page for the rest of the configuration.

The first time you access this admin page, you will be presented with a GPL "shrinkwrap" agreement with which you must agree before you can continue with the setup.

Now Moodle will start setting up your database and creating tables to store data. Firstly, the main database tables are created. You should see a number of SQL statements followed by status messages (in green or red) that look like this:

...and so on, followed by: Main databases set up successfully.

If you don't see these, then there must have been some problem with the database or the configuration settings you defined in config.php. Check that PHP isn't in a restricted "Safe Mode" (commercial web hosts sometimes have safe mode turned on). You can check PHP variables by creating a little file containing <?php phpinfo() ?> and looking at it through a browser. Check all these and try this page again.

Scroll down the very bottom of the page and press the "Continue" link.

You should now see a form where you can define more configuration variables for your installation, such as the default language, SMTP hosts and so on. Don't worry too much about getting everything right just now - you can always come back and edit these later on using the admin interface. The defaults are designed to be useful and secure for most sites. Scroll down to the bottom and click "Save changes".

If (and only if) you find yourself getting stuck on this page, unable to continue, then your server probably has what I call the "buggy referrer" problem. This is easy to fix: just turn off the "secureforms" setting, then try to continue again.

Next you will see more pages that print lots of status messages as they set up all the tables required by the various Moodle module. As before, they should all be green.

Scroll down the very bottom of the page and press the "Continue" link.

The next page is a form where you can define parameters for your Moodle site and the front page, such as the name, format, description and so on. Fill this out (you can always come back and change these later) and then press "Save changes".

Finally, you will then be asked to create a top-level administration user for future access to the admin pages. Fill out the details with your own name, email etc and then click "Save changes". Not all the fields are required, but if you miss any important fields you'll be re-prompted for them.

Once successful, you will be returned to the home page of your new site! Note the administration links that appear down the left hand side of the page (these items also appear on a separate Admin page) - these items are only visible to you because you are logged in as the admin user. All your further administration of Moodle can now be done using this menu, such as:

• creating and deleting courses
• creating and editing user accounts
• administering teacher accounts
• changing site-wide settings like themes etc

But you are not done installing yet! There is one very important thing still to do (see the next section on cron).

Some of Moodle's modules require continual checks to perform tasks. For example, Moodle needs to check the discussion forums so it can mail out copies of posts to people who have subscribed.

The script that does all this is located in the admin directory, and is called cron.php. However, it can not run itself, so you need to set up a mechanism where this script is run regularly (eg every five or ten minutes). This provides a "heartbeat" so that the script can perform functions at periods defined by each module. This kind of regular mechanism is known as a cron service.

Note that the machine performing the cron does not need to be the same machine that is running Moodle. For example, if you have a limited web hosting service that does not have a cron service, then you can might choose to run cron on another server or on your home computer. All that matters is that the cron.php file is called regularly.

The load of this script is not very high, so 5 minutes is usually reasonable, but if you're worried about it you can reduce the time period to something like 15 minutes or even 30 minutes. It's best not to make the time period too long, as delaying mail-outs can slow down activity within the course.

First, test that the script works by running it directly from your browser:

http://example.com/moodle/admin/cron.php

Now, you need to set up some of way of running the script automatically and regularly.

On Windows systems

The simplest way is to use this little package moodle-cron-for-windows.zip which makes this whole thing very easy by installing a small Windows service. Run it and forget about it!

On web hosting services

Your web-based control panel may have a web page that allows you to set up this cron process. For example, on Cpanel system, look for a button called "Cron jobs". In there you can put the same sort of Unix commands as listed below.

Using the command line on Unix

wget -q -O /dev/null http://example.com/moodle/admin/cron.php

lynx -dump http://example.com/moodle/admin/cron.php > /dev/null

/opt/bin/php /web/moodle/admin/cron.php

Using the crontab program on Unix

crontab -e

*/5 * * * * wget -q -O /dev/null http://example.com/moodle/admin/cron.php

Now that Moodle is running properly, you can try creating a new course to play with.

Select "Create a new course" from the Admin page (or the admin links on the home page).

Fill out the form, paying special attention to the course format. You don't have to worry about the details too much at this stage, as everything can be changed later by the teacher. Note that the yellow help icons are everywhere to provide contextual help on any aspect.

Press "Save changes", and you will be taken to a new form where you can assign teachers to the course. You can only add existing user accounts from this form - if you want to create a new teacher account then either ask the teacher to create one for themselves (see the login page), or create one for them using the "Add a new user" on the Admin page.

Once done, the course is ready to customise, and is accessible via the "Courses" link on the home page.

See the "Teacher Documentation" for more details on course-building.

Happy exploring and happy Moodling!

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