Try Moodle

This page is in draft mode and needs additional help. See these notes or feel free to add links.

There are many ways and places to try Moodle to see how it works.

• Demonstration sites- Moodle has at least 3 demonstrations sites.
  • demo.moodle.net - The oldest demonstration site that refreshes every hour, with many courses in many languages. Including the Moodle's Features Course. This is place to play, experiment and learn by doing.
  • school.demo.moodle.net - The Mt. (Moodle) Orange school which introduces educators to Moodle, an great resource.
  • qa.moodle.net - a testing site for the next version of Moodle beyond the latest stable version.

• Free Moodle -non Moodle.org sites that are set up to try Moodle. Usually have a limited capacity but do not refresh every hour like demo.moodle.net.

• Windows or MacOS complete install packages supplied free via Moodle.org as downloads. These include Apache, PHP, MySQL and other programs that will create a web server. Not recommended for production servers (ie heavy use) and probably best used on a small internal network with a small number of users, or a standalone computers for playing with Moodle by yourself.

• Obtaining a free copy of Apache Friends bundled software to create a web server for a Linux, Windows, Solaris or Mac operating system, then adding a standard Moodle package to that. This could be used on a production web server, on a computer serving a small network or on a standalone computer. Moodle.org uses a lite version for their Windows and Mac OS packages.

• Go to a Moodle Partner ask what they suggest.

• Go to your existing web host or a web hosting service. You will usually find they offer a versions of Moodle "free" with the push of a few buttons to install it. Or install a copy of the lastest and greatest Moodle on their server. The commercial low cost servers may install Moodle but they will not offer any support about Moodle (but you do have Moodle.org and Moodle Docs.

• Perhaps the least obvious way to try Moodle is to explore Moodle.org. It is a large, free Moodle site itself. For the most part you will be a student on the site but there are several areas where "students" can act as teachers. Of course, Moodle.org is all about learning about Moodle though interaction with others, not for experimenting (that is what demo.moodle.org is for).