First installation of Moodle

First installation of Moodle

by Robert Sheppard -
Number of replies: 4

I wish to begin my first installation of Moodle. I read in the docs. that it 

requires several PHP extensions I was wondering what these might be 

exactly? Would Moodle install ok on a shared hosting platform or does it require 

the administrative privileges of a dedicated server to run? 


Thanks for your assistance.

Robert, web designer.

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In reply to Robert Sheppard

Re: First installation of Moodle

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

See - PHP

The second part is harder to answer. It's true that it's getting harder and harder to run Moodle on shared hosting. You also need to read the release notes (probably, https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Moodle_3.3_release_notes) and also have a read of MySQL. Make sure, in particular, that your host's MySQL will support that character set (utf8mb4) and collation (utf8mb4_unicode_ci) because you're going no place if they don't. 

...or use PostgreSQL but that's rare on shared hosting. 

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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: First installation of Moodle

by James Steerpike -

I tried shared hosting for my first semester and although successful, I had a few problems and got a few messages when the class to log in. Now running a VPS with 4 CPU Cores + 4GB Ram + 60GB SSD Disk + 4TB BW at under $5 a month. There are good deal out there. Can install my OS of choice now and benchmarks are very good.

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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: First installation of Moodle

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

Howard, I hate to ask this but I will because I am starting to get a little confused about our most recent moodle versions requirements, and this OP makes me think more about this.

At what version does moodle absolutely require:

1) utf8mb4_unicode_ci

2) Barracuda (if running MySQL)

3) php7 (I think that I know this answer, Moodle 3.4, in November).

I sometimes wonder whether the "Requires:" line on the Moodle download webpage should indicate these requirements, if absolutely required.  Also, I wonder if there should be a "php extensions required" line.  Yep, all of this is in the installation docs, but I am just wondering if they should be repeated on the Latest Release Download webpage.

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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: First installation of Moodle

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

From what I can gather (copy and paste)...

  • Fresh installs of Moodle 3.1.5 and 3.2.2 onwards will use utf8mb4 by default, if the database server is configured appropriately (see below).
  • Sites upgrading to Moodle 3.1.5 or 3.2.2 can use the script to update to utf8mb4. In Moodle 3.3 a warning will show that the database isn't using full UTF-8 support and suggest moving to 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci', but you may choose to keep using 'utf8_*'.

I'm struggling to find any documentation but the barracuda checks came in with Moodle 2.8 (https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-46235). I do not know that it is required. 

PHP 7.0 will be required from 3.4 (https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-57432)



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