Admin quick guide

Note: This page is a work-in-progress. Feedback and suggested improvements are welcome. Please join the discussion on moodle.org or use the page comments.

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.

Changing the look of your site

• 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.
• You may add a new course by clicking the 'Add a new course' button on the front page or via Site administration > Courses > Manage courses and categories.
• If you plan to have many courses, you can upload courses in bulk via CSV file.

See Courses for an overview of the various aspects of courses.

Adding users

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 account using Email-based self-registration, or add new users individually or bulk create accounts via CSV file or choose from a number of other authentication methods.

For more information, see Managing accounts and Authentication.

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 users have an account, they need to be enrolled in courses. (Now is the time to give them their student, teacher or other role.) You can allow them to self enrol, or you can enrol them manually yourself or choose from a number of other enrolment methods.

For more information, see Enrolments.

Note: You can create accounts and enrol users in courses at the same time if you wish by uploading users or you can explore Cohorts, site or category wide groups.

File management

• Explore the process of working with files in courses so you'll be able to advise others.
• See Managing repositories for information on allowing your users to use files from external sources (such as Google Drive, Dropbox and MS OneDrive) in their courses.
• If uploaded file size may be an issue for you, then you can add restrictions for both the user quota and the site as a whole from Administration > Site administration > Security > Site policies. See Site policies for more information.

Admin tips and tricks

• Go through each activity in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules and decide the most suitable default settings for your Moodle. Do the same for the gradebook, via Administration > Site administration > Grades > General settings.
• Go to Administration > Site administration > Advanced features and review whether you want to make use of additional features such as blogs, RSS feeds, completion tracking (for both Activity completion and Course completion), conditional access, portfolios or badges.
• Consider enabling your site for Mobile app access via Site administration > Plugins > Web services > Mobile.
• Provide the user interface in different languages by installing additional language packs via Site administration > Language > Language packs.
• Use wording more suitable to your users by changing Moodle's default terms in Administration > Site administration > Language > Language customisation.