Guest access

The Guest access plugin allows users with the Guest role to view the contents of a course. This might be used, for example, if a Moodle site serves as a website where certain courses contain publicly available information, or else with a commercial Moodle site where courses with guest access can offers a "taster" of the kind of courses which may be purchased. (Note that the guest cannot participate in any activities; they can only view content.)

Course settings for guest access

• In Administration > Course administration > Users > Enrolment methods, first ensure that you have added "guest access" as an enrollment method, and that it has its eye open.
• In Administration > Course administration > Edit settings, scroll to "Guest access"
• Set the drop down to "Yes"
• If you wish guests to use a password to access the course then add it here.

Admin settings for guest access

• In Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Enrolments > Manage enrol plugins,ensure Guest access is enabled (has its eye open.) This enables Guest access.
• In Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Manage authentication set the Guest login button to Show if you want the button on the Frontpage.
• Also Guest accounts can be logged - check the Administration> Site administration > Server > Cleanup > Log guest access setting

Default settings for guest access

• Clicking on Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Enrolments > Guest access brings up the screen where admin can set defaults for guest access in courses.
  • Clicking the 'Advanced' button next to 'Allow guest access' will hide this setting in a course and will instead display a 'Show more' link to click on to access the setting.
  • Guest access can be turned on by default in all new courses and you can also:
  • require each course with guest access to have a password for guests. (Note: this can confuse teachers who are not aware of the requirement.)
  • use or ignore your Moodle's standard password policy for guest access passwords
  • offer if needed the first letter of the password as a hint.

Auto-login guests

• In Administration > Site administration > Users > Permissions > User policies, you can tick the box so that visitors are automatically logged in as guests when accessing a course with guest access (i.e. they don't have to click the "login as guest button".
• In Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Authentication > Manage Authentication, you must have "Guest login button" set to "Show".
• In Administration > Site administration > Security > Site policies you can check "Open to Google" setting so that the Google search robot will be allowed to enter your site as a Guest. In addition, people coming in to your site via a Google search will automatically be logged in as a Guest.

See also

• Guest role