How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by john Simpson -
Number of replies: 17

When I first started looking into installing my own moodle six months ago, I didn't realise what a daunting task it was going to be, and reading some of the posts here I am not the only one that gets confused especially if they happen to be individuals trying to set up their own moodles.

First step is obviously to check up the installation instructions in the moodle documentation. Unfortunately I do believe these instructions assume that you are already some education institute established with your own server, domain, website, and static internet connection.

So what does a newbie need?

A server. What is a server? A separate master computer loaded with a special server software, popular is linux or freebsd. Such as a Ubuntu 14.04 server.

Another computer to do all of your other work

A domain. for your website address.

An interesting link for the newbie  http://www.instructables.com/id/Making-Your-Own-Completely-Free-Website-And-Serve/?ALLSTEPS


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In reply to john Simpson

Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by john Simpson -

Another useful link in purchasing a server. I have seen other links including the link above that you can use an old spare computer rather than purchasing a special server.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/137617/article.html


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In reply to john Simpson

Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by Just H -

With all due respect, although the links etc. are fine for someone wishing to tinker, if you (that's a "you" in general not specific to the OP) intend running a business and find the installation docs here confusing or daunting I would suggest you do not try to set up your own server to host the live Moodle.

There are security and various legislation issues that I would suggest, would not be covered properly by such a person. For a small startup business shared managed hosting would be minimum IMHO. Thereby, the tech aspect of running a secure server is handled allowing you to concentrate more on your core business.

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Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by john Simpson -

Hello Just H. If you don't tinker, you will never learn anything that's new to you. And to be daunted doesn't necessarily mean that you will be permantly daunted or confused.

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Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Wonder if that PCWorld article shouldn't be entitled ... "How NOT to install a Web Server!"

Case in point:

"Go into the control panel and find the security options. Make sure you turn off Window's firewall and internet security features. These will block people from accessing the server, which means they can't see your website.  And if you have a firewall program or other virus program installed, which servers really don't need, turn it off or change settings. But really, you can just turn them off."

One will find plenty of how-2's via Internet.   Be very careful about advice one gets via a web page.

'spirit of sharing', Ken

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In reply to john Simpson

Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

If you wish to set up your own server, maybe some of the links that you provide can get you started.

If you wish to run Moodle, I suggest spending about $50 for one year, and contacting companies like GoDaddy for a "hosted server."  These companies will help you get your domain name and server up and running very quickly, and most offer a one-click install script for Moodle.  This (you will eventually learn) may not be the best environment of your growing Moodle, but for folks like you, it can be one of the best places to start your learning curve.  You can actually have your Moodle up and running in one day.  Some companies, like GoDaddy, will NOT give you Moodle support, but they will help you with your server, they offer phone support, and should be able to show you where the one-click install is.

If you make it through this initial setup, you will be doing fine.

Of course, there are many other ways to get started, for less money, but I think if you really want to learn, this "hosted server" approach could be a good choice.

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Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by john Simpson -

Response in general appears to be get a web host such as Godaddy, bluehost, hostgator, gogethosting etc. This Is what I did, and it certainly is the way to get to learn about using Moodle and writing your own courses. I also experimented in following instructions here https://docs.moodle.org/26/en/Step-by-step_Installation_Guide_for_Ubuntu which helped me have some understanding of moodle.

But, eventually there will come a time when your moodle will grow with participating students and will need to be functioning profitably as intended, with let's say 500 students, and perhaps even 1,000. Can a shared host cope with such a business, or should we then take another approach.

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Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by Usman Asar -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

John,

A shared host CAN meet the requirements for your start up needs, you better go through this article HERE. Understanding the needs of Moodle at start up. For upgrades, rather than jumping to VPS directly, it will be recommended to look out for other than standard shared packages a hosting company is offering, as some hosting company does offer Pro/Business/Enterprise accounts that have more resources allocated and they turn up equal to VPS and less than half the price of getting VPS server.

a typical shared hosting company would allow 50 concurrent connections, that doesn't means you can only have 50 accounts, you can have as many as 3000+ registered students, but how many of those actually access server resources at any given instance are considered concurrent connections. 

Regarding installation, I had created several videos on request for those asking for Moodle installation, cloning, up-gradations (using script installer and manual method), should you want to refer to them, ask me anytime I will give you links.

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Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by john Simpson -

Thanks for this confirmation and reassurance that a shared host is suitable for an individual building up of his education business. Depending on fees charged to students, once a business has gradually acheived 500 students per month (non concurrent) they are then in a financial position to afford an upgrade.

So far, I'm perfectly happy with my hosts Gogethosting and Hostgator with moodle 2.72, who have been extremely helpful, but I have had this worry about what will happen when I do have a larger amount of students.

Some regular members here have on other forums have stated that shared hosts are not the way to go, so I am pleased that on this forum so far the posts say the opposite, and using a shared host is the way to go for an individual.

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Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by Usman Asar -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

John, just keep track of hosting providers that have to offer, more than just standard shared packages (Like VPS, Hybrids, Dedicated) usually when you upgrade with them, they not only will offer you some discount but as well will transfer the site for you to upgraded servers and you wont even feel the shift other than faster performance of your website.

Its always good to plan ahead a little. People saying Moodle is not for shared hosting, I deny that as I have personally experienced shared host on Moodle and it ran perfectly, spending a hefty amount of getting a dedicated server just to start moodle where you aren't even sure how much time it would take to gather users that will break even the server investments doesn't makes sense to most of the individuals who are privately setting up moodle sites.

but again, a bit of caution, though many shared hosting companies does offer Moodle installation, not everyone will be able to handle that. Once you open your site(s) to public you'll start getting idea of server performance.

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Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers
John, on some hosted sever accounts, you might hit a maximum database size limit before you run out of bandwidth or response time.  This is what happened to me with my GoDaddy hosted server.  This, of course, depends upon what you are doing with your moodle.

I ended up moving to a VPS, and have been very pleased.

You are making very good progress.

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Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by Usman Asar -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Rick, how much was database size limited to? its just for information so I can keep track of which hosting company has limitations in terms of what. normally shared hosting accounts are limited to 1000 table limits, whilst moodle takes up near to 350 +/-, as well unless one has log files for unlimited time, database size should not increase to GB's, it hardly touches 100MB even on 20+ courses (on 35 days log files).

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In reply to Usman Asar

Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

Good questions, Usman.

Here is part of the message that I got from GoDaddy about 12/2010.

"And to clarify, the hosting service I recommended you to upgrade to is called 'Virtual Dedicated Server', not Grid hosting. The reason is because Grid Hosting is still shared-hosting service, similar to what you've using, in which MySQL databases are limited to 200 MB in size."

I am not sure what the current limit is.

Just the other week, I got an email from my Bluehost hosted server, complaining that I was using too much of their "unlimited" hosted server.  Here are the specs that Bluehost gave me.

   One Free Domain for First Year 
   Emails sends per hour = 750 (18,000 emails per day) 
   Total mySQL databases = Unlimited 
   Single Database Size = 2GB 
   Total Database Tables = 1000 
   Total File Count Limit = 200,000 
   Bandwidth Speed = 15Mbs 

You and I (and others) know that nothing is "unlimited", right?  By the way, Bluehost's complaint was that I had exceeded my total database tables limit (well, I had three moodle installations, a WordPress, and a Magento installation.  Not really all that much.


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Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by Usman Asar -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Cheers for the info, I was aware of the BlueHost/HostMonster's limit on database tables as I had used them for over a decade and 2 Moodle's are considered normal as third one will touch their limit of database tables. But there PRO accounts gives 3000 tables.

Thats true in terms of Unlimited, every hosting has some form of limitation (Database size, database tables etc), so far I have used Arvixe and they dont have any limit apart from your files kept on server must be linked to your website (no file hosting).

For john being EFL teacher and starting up, nothing would be better to recommend than shared hosting in start and Moodle will run perfectly well as I have ran Moodle on HostMonster with 300+ students with no less than 60 logged in any time uploading assignments and their servers never took a hiccup.
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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by Padriaag Fitz -

Rick, 

I have Moodle successfully installed on my hosting account, but in order to carry out everything for the courses I want to run I also need to have Magento and Wordpress installed. 

It looks like you have already conquered this. Were you able to get all of the applications on one domain? 

I'd like to have something like:

www.example.com - Wordpress

www.example.com/orders - Magento

www.example.com/course - Moodle


Any advice?

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Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

You should be able to do everything that you want to do.  I am not a WordPress or Magento expert.  For these two applications, I have used the one-click installation method, which I do not ever do with Moodle.  But I have seen the one-click installs for WordPress and Magento, and they always ask me where I want them installed.  If you want WordPress to be your main domain, don't put it into a folder during the install script.  Likewise for Magento, make sure to put this into its own folder.

As for Moodle, you can put it into any folder too.  I do my Moodle installs from scratch.  Usually, many people will let their moodle default to www.example.com/moodle, but you don't have to put it their.  So you idea to put it at www.example.com/course will work fine.  When you start moodle's install, moodle will ask you where your folders are.  If you plan to have more than one course, you might want to use the plural "courses."

I would prefer to put Wordpress down one level, such as www.example.com/main (or something like that).  Then, I would design my homepage and provide links to my Wordpress, Moodle, and Magento.  This way, updating each application could be easier.  But this is really your choice.

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Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by john Simpson -

Quote from Rick " This of course, depends upon what you are doing with your Moodle". At the moment I'm not doing very much, and I'm still mainly a fulltime face to face efl teacher in my own classroom. But my aim is to introduce say my current 40 students into blended learning and for this number to gradually increase to 150+ students. It is through this process that I guess I might experience problems, I don't know because I haven't experienced it yet. I don't mind the costs of upgrading, providing that the students revenue will cover the costs.

Such experiences I will share with the forum as it happens, and hence I love to hear from those have such experience.

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Re: How to install my own moodle for my own online education business

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

John, just so that you know, your situation is exactly my own situation.  I too was interested in starting Moodle for my own classes.  I knew nothing about Moodle, or how to host it.  I did have my webpages on a GoDaddy hosted server, and while inquiring about products like Wordpress, GoDaddy pointed me to the one-click install for Moodle, which I did.  I still needed to set up CRON, but found help here.  I bought a book about Moodle to learn, and read the many help pages.  It's been some work, but also a lot of fun.  Most important, I am able to give my students a better educational experience using Moodle than I can with Blackboard or Desire2Learn.

I started with one summer course using Moodle.  It worked.  Then, in the Fall semester, I did four courses with Moodle.  They worked too.

I have now been using Moodle for since the summer of 2008.

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