Installing AMP

AMP or AMPPlite stands for Apache, MySQL & PHP. Moodle is written in a scripting language called PHP and stores most of its data in a database. The recommended database is MySQL. Before installing Moodle you must have a working PHP installation and a working database to turn your computer into a functional web server platform. XAMP is a Windows and MAMP is a Mac OS version. Moodle does have Complete install packages in the download section as well as the Moodle only package.

The AMP individual applications can be tricky to set up for average computer users. This page has been written to try to make this process as simple as possible for different platforms.

Hosting Service

Unfortunately hosting services vary quite a lot in the way they work. Some will even install Moodle for you.

Most will offer a web-based control panel to control your site, create databases and set up cron. Some may also offer terminal access via ssh, so that you can use the command shell to do things.

You should work your way through the Installation guide and take each step at a time. Ask your hosting provider if you get stuck.

Mac OS X

The easiest way to do this is use the Apache server that Apple provides, and add PHP and MySQL using Marc Liyanage's packages. Both of the pages below come with good instructions that we won't duplicate here:

PHP: Download from here: http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/php/
MySQL: Download here: http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/mysql/

Once these are installed the standard Installation guide should be fairly straightforward.

Go here for a Step-by-step Guide for Installing Moodle on Mac OS X 10.4 Client (not server) Mac.

Red Hat Linux

You should install all available RPM packages for Apache, PHP and MySQL. One package that people frequently forget is the php-mysql package which is necessary for PHP to talk to MySQL.

Once these are installed the standard Installation guide should be fairly straightforward.

A more detailed walkthrough is here: RedHat Linux installation

Windows

Installing Moodle for the first time on a Localhost (a stand alone computer) is easy and can be a very useful tool even if a web based production Moodle Server is available for use. These instructions work on a Windows XP computer.

On the Windows packages download page, choose the version you would like. Click on the download link in the rightmost column. This will download a large zip file.
Unzip the downloaded file at c: and keep the path structure for all the files.
Move the whole folder to its final location (eg c:\moodle or something)
Run Start Moodle.exe to start the server
Visit http://localhost/ http://127.0.0.1/or to see the Moodle site and continue the installation via your web browser.
In your favorite Web browser, go to the address bar and type "localhost" or "127.0.0.1" and press enter or click go.
This will start the Moodle Install process, which the Installing Moodle MoodleDoc page section describes in a little bit more detail. This can take some time for a new user. Don't panic, you can change things later and the install process will tell you what you absolutely have to fill in or correct. Normally you can accept all the defaults!

Easier Moodle restarts

There are lots of ways to start a Moodle after an install. Most Moodlers will have one or more "localhost" links on their computer installed in "Favorites" or even as a browser's default opening screen. But first a web server has to be started. Here are two ways to start them.

Automatic Windows services startup

In order to make starting Moodle more convenient in the future you could install the web and database servers as Windows services that are started automatically. To do this go to Start -> Run... and type the command "c:/moodle/server/service.exe -install" into Open box. Then click OK.

Start Moodle by typing localhost in the web browser and/or adding localhost as a favorite site.

Single button service startups

Sometimes there are more than one localhost installed on a computer. Create a shortcut on the start menu, favorites or desktop that points to each specific file like c:\xampplite\restart_xampp.bat . Label each shortcut to a localhost differently, for example C_MoodleXampp, or Moodle16 or Moodle17 or whatever.

Start Moodle by placing localhost in the web browser or adding it as a favorite site. Whichever localhost you restarted, that is the Moodle your web browser will find.

Other install options

Instead of using this package you can also install XAMPP and Moodle separately as explained on the page Windows_installation_using_XAMPP.

As an alternative to the above package you could use a package like EasyPHP that bundles all the software you need into a single Windows application. Note that the EasyPHP 1.8 uses older versions of the software that are too old for Moodle 1.6. Also many menus for EasyPHP are still in French. EasyPHP may be a good option again once its version 2.0 is released.

Here you can find steps for an IIS: Windows installation for XAMPP or Windows 2003 .

Note, however, that such packages while excellent for evaluation or small pilots are rarely suitable for production services.

Testing PHP

Once you have installed your web server and PHP you should be able to create a file (for example phpinfo.php in the document root) with the following in it:

  <?php phpinfo()?>

You should be able to open this file in a web browser by going to to the URL localhost/phpinfo and see a web page that has PHP status information in it such as this.

Documentation