Who customizes the frontpage at your institution? It seems like a no-brainer that it would be the Moodle administrator, but our Communications & Marketing Department has expressed a strong desire to get involved. If you all could take this poll, it would really help make my case stronger when it comes to what the standard is out there. Thanks!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHVlaXcxa080UTkwZjV0SmJ4bmZhYlE6MQ
I disagree that this is a no-brainer Erica.
While at school, I was moodle admin and webmaster and therefore did content as well as techie side, in a bigger institution such as the university I am now working at, those roles are split.
There is a marketing/communications department who approve the look of the site in the first place and also approve that significant messages going out on the external website are all 'on message', and a slightly lesser degree of active interest in the intranet (more of an overview to ensure everything is ok, but they don't necessarily approve every single posting that goes up through the web-team) but they take very little notice of most of what goes on our moodle as that is entirely inward facing and the content is teaching and learning focussed. As the moodle developer, I am setting up the moodle 2 system that we are moving to and I anticipate having very little responsibility for the actual content on the front page once it goes live - beyond having constructed the theme and the look and feel of the page.
Richard
I would not expect the adminstrator to decide what the front page should look like (except in a very small organisation). They may do the technical implementation of what is needed, or they might help someone else to do it themselves.
Also, you really don't want to be the one dealing with the politics of who gets space for 'their' link on the front page. On the other hand, you do want to make sure about technical things, like ensuring that the CSS used in the theme is maintainable and works on all browsers, and that the choice of blocks does not cause performance problems.
There's an implication in your question and Tim and Richard's responses that your Moodle has a "public face." Ours does not. Only the login page can be reached by the unwashed, er, by people not enrolled in a course.
In our circumstance, a bunch of educational admins decided what we wanted on our front page, which was a list of courses in which the user is enrolled.
In the case of a public face, I'd say the admin's job is as T & R described, except also to remind the hucksters that user access is the primary purpose.
We also do not have our students use the official Moodle front page. They arrive from our other website, and are immediately directed either to the "My Courses" page or to their specific course.