Administering+Moodle

=Administering Moodle=

Before rolling out your new Moodle server to your staff, you should take the time to look over the "//Site Administration//" block. There are some very important decisions to make about your server setup. The key aspects will be touched on here.



Clicking this link, you may be greeted with a warning that your maintenance script has not run in some time. Don't panic. You can always run it manually by coming back to the Notifications page and clicking the link to do so. However, you can also have the server automatically run the script. Follow these instructions -- Setup the cron Maintenance Script.
 * 1. Notifications**

Once you have your server setup, you also might want to register your site with Moodle.org. They like to see who is using their software

Users will be addressed by going here.
 * 2. Users**

Creating courses will be addressed here.
 * 3. Courses**

This next section can be almost left alone. However, if you want to update the timezones available to the server, go right ahead. There are almost 2000 timezone settings! In addition, if you have people taking a course using Moodle from all over the country, you might want to allow them to set their own timezone and not be tied to the server's time. You can make that adjustment by going into "//Location Settings//."
 * 4. Location**

You might or might not have found that English (en_us) took during the installation. From here you can easily download the language pack for a variety of languages. That is not to say installing a different language will translate your entire Moodle site, but will allow you to display certain characters and change default text into that language. After changing the language, give the server a reboot just to make sure all the changes take.
 * 5. Language**

In the Site Administration block you can actually make changes to different modules. Here you can turn on and off the various modules allowing you to test what is available. Uploading new modules can be done via Webmin by logging into the server, selecting "//Others//" and then "//Upload and Download//." What is nice about using Webmin to upload files is that you can upload a zip or tar file and it will handle doing all the decompressing for you. Just make sure you upload your module folders (which will have in it a folder named 'db' and various module files) to ///var/www/moodle/mod//. If the module includes a lang file (and possibly help files), then you will need to copy those to the 'moodle > lang > en' folder (or, if other languages are available, copy them to the appropriate language folder). Once the files are uploaded, please login to your site as admin, then click on the 'Administration' link. This will install the module, and you will then get a message that the module was successfully installed and the database tables were created.
 * 6. Modules**

Major site rules can be set here. Depending on how private you wish to make your server, you can check the box that forces everyone to login before they can see or do ANYTHING on the site. In my district our server is setup in just such a way. There are other settings that you may or may not want to allow. They are explicitly explained at each choice.
 * 7. Security**

You can also install ClamAV, and open source antivirus program that will scan all files uploaded to the server. To install ClamAV follow these steps (do them seperately):

code apt-get install clamav apt-get install clamav-data apt-get install clamav-freshclam

code Once ClamAV is installed, you will need to set the anti-virus settings to point to /usr/bin/clamscan and I recommend using ClamAV on all uploaded files.

Changing the theme can help or hinder a site. If you are using Moodle with younger students, you may want larger images and big buttons. Older students may want something a little more professional or clean. There are a series of default themes, but you can easily add your own. Find your theme and download it to your local computer. Using Webmin, upload the theme and unzip it to the //themes// folder under the //moodle// folder. Using your Site Administration block, choose your new theme as default. That's it!
 * 8. Appearance**

[|Moodle Themes] [|Theme Basics -- MoodleDocs]

The main purpose of this part of the block is to set the available roles of users, and to change the default front page settings of the site.
 * 9. Front Page**

In this part of the block you can set some fairly important and powerful features. You can setup eMail notification from your server. You can turn on the RSS functionality of the server. More importantly, if you had to run maintenance on the server, you can put it into Maintenance Mode, which lets the users know you are working on your server without you having to completely disconnect it from the network.
 * 10. Server**

In System Paths, you will want to tell the server where it can find zip, unzip, du and aspell. However, you also need to make sure those things are installed. The following commands will install these programs: code apt-get install unzip zip aspell-en aspell-fr aspell-de aspell-es code Once installed, set the locations of the programs as follows: zip -- /usr/bin/zip unzip -- /usr/bin/unzip du -- /usr/bin/du aspell -- /usr/bin/aspell

This part is out of the scope of this training since it is very customizable to the network.
 * 11. Networking**

You want reports? This is the section to generate those reports.
 * 12. Reports**

This part is out of the scope of this training since it is very customizable.
 * 13. Miscellaneous**

Consider Additional Software

[|Moodle Administration Documentation - MoodleDocs]

[|Moodle Administration FAQ - MoodleDocs]