Admin tools
The following admin tools can be managed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Admin tools > Manage admin tools.
- dev:Acceptance testing
- Plugin installer
- Assignment upgrade helper
- Capability overview - in Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Capability report
- Convert to InnoDB
- Database transfer
- DB search and replace
- Health center - browse to the URL yourmoodlesite.com/admin/tool/health/
- Language customization in Administration > Site administration > Language> Language customization
- Language packs in Administration > Site administration > Language > Language packs
- Multilang upgrade
- PHPUnit tests
- Profiling runs
- Random course generator
- Spam cleaner in Administration > Site administration > Reports > Spam cleaner
- Timezones updater in Administration > Site administration > Location > Update timezones
- Unsupported role assignments in Administration > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Unsupported role assignments
- User upload in Administration > Site administration > Users > Accounts > Upload users
- Upload courses in Administration > Site administration > Courses > Upload courses
- XMLDB editor in Site administration > Development > XMLDB editor
What kind of technical skills do I need to take on Moodle Administration?
Reading and writing are handy skills, and probably the most useful. This is something of a loaded question, and the answer is actually, depends on what you want to do, and what skills you already have.
Do you have any HTML, CSS and PHP skills? Do you have any SQL database skills. If you do, then you have a good start, if you do not, then do not worry about it. If you need them, you will pick these skills up as you go, and if you already have any programming skills, it is going to be fairly easy to do so. If you have never done any programming before, it is a little more difficult, but once you have the idea, it becomes a lot easier. Unless you intend on developing your Moodle, e.g. build your own home made theme, alter code to reflect your own organization, then you can get away without any of these skills. What you need is a way of developing a quick understanding of how Moodle works. With the introduction of Moodle v2, the learning curve has steepened somewhat, but it is still not that difficult.
Installing and setting up a new Moodle is not as difficult as it used to be. Some servers and service providers do have problems, from time to time, but if you work with your ISP, and the Moodle Community, you will get your Moodle up and running. Once it is going, start looking at it. You won't break anything, unless you start deleting things. Your best bet would be to read the documents. Look at the page you are working on. Somewhere on that page is a link that points to "Moodle Docs for this page". That is your best, most readily available, clues on how to do things. Once familiar with the environment, and how to get around it, how to get information on it, then the major steps have been taken, the rest is a continual refinement of that.
As a newbie Administrator, it is easy to get overwhelmed with all the different things available, useful plugins and extra blocks and so on, but the majority of those things are third-party made, not Moodle.org in origin. Be aware that, as a general rule of thumb, the further you move away from the standard Moodle, the greater your risks of things going wrong. This does not mean the plugins are badly written, and some are really handy, just sometimes things go wrong. If you are going to use them, be deliberate in your choice, do not use them just because it might be a good idea.
Perhaps the best thing is that you create a Moodle on your desktop, or laptop, and you use that as a testbed. It should be the same version as your production site, to make things easy. Try things there first, if there is no problems, then you can replicate it on your production site.
