Admin quick guide

This page is an introduction to Moodle administration. You have a new, empty Moodle site installed. What to do next?

Setting up the front (home) page

1. In the Administration block, click 'Edit settings'.
2. Change the full name and short name if needed. (The short name shows in the navigation bar.)
3. Decide what should be shown on the front page - news items, courses, course categories or none of these things? The same or different for logged in and non-logged in users? As for other settings, they can always be changed later.

For more information, see Front page settings.

To add text and/or images to the central area of the front page

1. In the Administration block, click 'Turn editing on'.
2. Click the configuration icon (cogwheel) near the top of the screen.
3. Add text and/or images to the summary box.

Note: If you don't want to use your front page for displaying courses or information about your organisation, you can display the log in page only by checking "force login" in Site administration > Security > Site policies.

Customising the appearance

• Moodle comes with two standard themes, called 'Clean' and 'More'. Both work well on mobile devices as well as desktops, and the 'More' theme is designed to be easily customisable from Site administration > Appearance > Themes > More.
• Drop down menus may be added from Site administration > Appearance > Themes > Theme settings > Custom menu items, and you can also personalise the user menu from here.
• You can add custom headers, footers or Google Analytics from Site administration > Appearance > Additional HTML.
• If your installation and organisation allow it, you can install a custom theme. See Installing plugins for details.

Adding courses

• Courses are Moodle's learning areas, where teachers and students work together. See the documentation Courses for full information on setting up courses.
• You may add a new course by clicking the 'Add a new course' button on the front page, or (if you don't see it) by going to Site administration>Courses>Manage courses and categories.
• If you plan to have many courses, you can upload courses with a CSV file.

Adding teachers and students

This is a two-step process, although it can be streamlined.

Step 1: Authentication

• Everyone using your site must have an account. You can allow people to create their own accounts; you can add new users individually, or you can bulk create accounts with a CSV file (and more).
• See the documentation on Authentication for ways to create new accounts on your site.
• Note: You do not yet decide who will be a teacher, student or other type of participant. If you're wondering why, read the documentation on Assigning roles.

Step 2: Enrolment

• Once they have accounts, your users must be enrolled in courses. (Now is the time to give them their student, teacher or other role.) You can allow them to self enrol; you can enrol them manually yourself; you can make them enrol via Paypal and more.
• See the documentation on Enrolment for ways to enrol participants into your courses. You may create the accounts and enrol them into their courses at the same time if you wish by following the instructions on the Upload users documentation or you can explore Cohorts, site or category wide groups.