Open source training & tutorials from experienced, passionate people
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Moodle is an Open Source Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It has become very popular among educators around the world as a tool for creating online dynamic web sites that delivers course material to and from their students.
Start with our moodle tutorial that explains what you can do with this powerful software, especially how easy it is to setup and use.
Move on to our moodle tutorial that tells you where you can obtain the latest version of moodle for download and how to install and configure moodle so that it begins to work for you right away.
Our moodle training is really all you will need to successfully install, setup and use moodle for all your learning management needs.
There is even a moodle tutorial that teaches you how to skin your moodle installation so that it has the individualistic look and feel that you want.
The way our tutorials are laid out within our moodle training material is designed for a teacher who will want to use moodle for students. We are confident that you’ll constantly return to our moodle training material which we regularly update and re-fresh.
Moodle is very easy to work with and it has a clean and simple graphical user interface.
Moodle does the following with great ease and simplicity:
Do hop onto our Open source tutorial forum for a quick look while you are here. There are a lot of people who use it regularly, its lively and almost all of your Moodle queries would get answered quickly.
Also, remember that every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, between 10:00am and 12:00am Indian Standard Time (i.e. GMT + 5.30) you can enter into live chat with Mr. Ivan Bayross a technical author who has written and published more than sixty seven books, and is still writing.
Moodle is an Open Source Course Management System (CMS), also known as a Learning Management System (LMS) or a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
Moodle has become very popular among educators around the world as a tool for creating online, dynamic, web sites for their students. To work, it needs to be installed on a web server.This can be a Web server running one of one of your own computers on the local network or a web server at a website hosting company.
Moodle is a software package for producing Internet-based courses. It is a global development project designed to support a social, constructionist framework, for education.
The focus of the Moodle project is always on giving educators (i.e. Teachers) the great tools to manage and promote learning, using a local network as the delivery framework or the Internet as the delivery framework.
Moodle has features that allow it to scale to very large deployments and hundreds of thousands of students, yet it can also be used for a primary school or an education hobbyist.
Many institutions use it as their platform to conduct fully online courses, while some use it simply to augment face-to-face courses ( an approach known as blended learning ).
Many of our users love to use the activity modules (such as forums, databases and wikis) to build richly collaborative communities of learning around their subject matter in the social constructionist tradition.
While others prefer to use Moodle as a way to deliver content to students and assess their learning using assignments or quizzes.
Moodle is primarily developed in Linux using Apache, MySQL and PHP.
Moodle can also be set up with Windows XP/2000/2003 (WAMP), Solaris 10 (Sparc and x64), Mac OS X and Netware 6 operating systems.
NOTE: If you want to learn how to install:
Apache on your local computer refer Lesson 3 - Apache Web Server (2.X.XX) Installation
PHP on your local computer refer Lesson 3 - PHP Installation
MySQL on your local computer refer Lesson 3 - MySQL Installation
Moodle is a product completely crafted out of PHP. It's built to dovetail into Apache2 perfectly.
It's install process is simplicity in itself.
The Moodle setup file downloaded from http://download.moodle.org is a zipped file. Extract the contents of the archive using Winzip or any other archiving tool. (Winrar will do just as well)
During extraction, all the files contained in the archive will be extracted to a folder, named moodle.
If the archive was downloaded and extracted to D:/, there will now be a folder called D:/moodle where the files extracted from the archive will be found.
You are now ready to install Moodle on your local computer.
Moodle is normally installed on your local computer within a folder that is controlled by Apache Web Server.
NOTE: The installation and configuration of Apache Web Server is given in another tutorial (http://www.opensourcevarsity.com/apachebasics/l3apachewebserverinstallation) on this website.
The parent folder in which Moodle is installed on an Internet based host server is normally public_html. Hence your local computer should have a folder like D:\public_html.
NOTE: Normally the folder public_html is at root level. Not within another folder.
You can create D:\public_html using Windows explorer.
Once D:\public_html is created, cut and paste the folder moodle which was earlier created under D:\moodle inside D:\public_html\moodle.
Now Apache Web server needs to be informed of the existence of D:\public_html\moodle.
This is done by a adding virtual domain to Apache´s httpd.conf file.
The technique for doing this is described in Moodle Virtual Domain tutorial, which is the next tutorial in this series.
Open a Browser window and enter http://www.google.com in the address bar and hit GO.
In the Google search window that opens search for moodle download as shown in Diagram 1.
Diagram 1
In the Search results window Click on the Moodle.org: Download standard packages as shown in Diagram 2.
Diagram 2
The Downloads tab of Moodle site opens in the Browser window as shown in Diagram 3. The download URL is http://download.moodle.org/
Diagram 3
Under "Current stable build" you will see two download link, one for .tgz and one for .zip.
When you click on the .zip icon, the download start page will be displayed as shown in diagram 4.
Diagram 4
A pop up window to SAVE the .zip file will be displayed as shown in diagram 5.
Diagram 5
The location of Apache´s httpd.conf file is normally at
C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\httpd.conf
NOTE: This is assuming that Apache was installed in C:\Program Files on your local computer.
Open httpd.conf file in any text (i.e. ASCII) editor of your choice. Notepad is excellent.
Locate the code block contained within
<Directory "C:/Program File/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs"> </Directory> entities as shown in Diagram 1.
Diagram 1
Select this code block. Copy and Paste this code block immediately below the original.
NOTE: Please ensure that both
<Directory . . . .> and the </Directory>tags exist.
Change <Directory "C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs" > </Directory>.
To
<Directory "D:/public_html/moodle"> as shown in Diagram 2
NOTE: Ensure the use of the forward slash as shown above.
Diagram 2
These entries within Apache´s httpd.conf file ensure that Apache knows that D:\public_html\moodle exists and that directory permissions are set.
Once Apache knows the existence and location of D:\public_html\moodle appropriate entries in the httpd-vhost.conf must be made.
httpd-vhost.conf is normally located at
C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf
Open the httpd-vhost.conf file in any text (i.e. ASCII) editor of your choice. Notepad is excellent.
Copy the <VistualHost *.80 > </VirtualHost> block of code and paste it immediately below the original code block.
Diagram 3
Make the following changes as shown in Diagram 4
ServerAdmin: <Email Id>
DocumentRoot: <Path where your virtual domain is located>
ServerName: <Name of the website>
ErrorLog: <Folder where all Apache errors logs will be stored>
NOTE: The folder named in the ErrorLog entry must be created in the d:\public_html\moodle as it does not exist. It must contain a zero byte file named errorlog.txt within it.
CustomLog: Comment out the CustomLog directive using a # as shown in diagram 4.
Diagram 4
After making all the above entries in both httpd.conf and httpd-vhost.conf
Please Restart Apache Web Server
NOTE: The Apache Web Server icon is normally visible in the status bar of the Window.
Look at the extreme right hand side of the status bar.
If Apache Web Server does not restart please check all the entries made in the httpd.conf and httpd-vhost.conf files.
NOTE: Look especially carefully for spelling mistakes.
Now it’s time to make entries in Windows HOSTS file as shown in Diagram 5
The HOSTS file contains mappings of IP addresses to host names.
There can only be a single IP address / host name pair on a single line in the HOSTS file.
NOTE: The IP address and the Host name must be separated by a TAB.
The HOSTS file is normally located at C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Diagram 5
Please wait...