Guest role

The guest account

Moodle has a built-in "Guest account". Visitors can log in as guests using the "Login as a guest" button on the login screen and enter any courses which allow guest access. In addition, logged-in users can enter any courses which allow guest access without being required to enrol.

Guests ALWAYS have "read-only" access - meaning they can't leave any posts or otherwise mess up the course for real students.

They cannot:

• Post in forums
• Edit wiki pages
• Participate in a chat
• Take quizzes
• Submit assignments
• Add glossary or database activity entries or comments
• Receive any scores or grades (because of the read-only access)

This feature can be handy when you want to let a colleague in to look around at your work, or to let students see a course before they have decided to enrol.

If you want guests to be able to take quizzes, or any of the other activities listed above, and have considered the security implications, you can create a visitor account, say with username = password = visitor, for everyone to share.

Enabling guest access

To allow guests into courses on your Moodle, see Guest access.

Skip login page for guest account

All users will be automatically logged in as guests if you enable Auto-login guests in Settings > Site administration > Users > Permissions > User policies. The standard login page is displayed after users visit page that requires real user login.

See also

Using Moodle forum discussions:

• Allowing guests to post in forum?