Hi there,
I am strating an online training school for those who want specialized training in mission work and would want to use moodle as my LMS. I am familiar with moodle because the college I worked with before used it. However I want to know what I need to do so I can create a customized moodle for the online missionary school I am starting. Can you point me to the right direction? Thanks.
Elsie
You haven't made it clear what you are wanting to customise, so it's very hard to give any specific advice.
If you want to write custom plugins, then start at: https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Main_Page
If you want to add custom plugins that have already been developed, then take a look at those listed at: https://moodle.org/plugins/
If you're wanting to customise the theme, then: https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Themes
Hello Elsie. In addition to what Davo says, are you a developer or an educator wishing to set up a Moodle site? Because if so then one easy way to do this without coding skills is to sign up for a MoodleCloud site where the site is made for you - and you can concentrate on the training. MoodleCloud is a hosting package run by Moodle HQ and requires no prior technical skills.
Apologies if this is not what you meant, and you meant that you want to develop a customised site yourself.
And I would interpret your question as saying "How can I brand my site to look like my own?" I am covering a number of possibilities here too. You haven't said what you current position actually is, so I am assuming that you are planning this to be opening soon.
Use a theme you can easily modify. Well, most themes are easily modified now, you can change colours, change banners, change the appearance by changing the settings of the theme. Depending on how far you want to go, you might want to start with one of the basic themes, and modify that to something approximating what you want. Documentation for doing that starts here. Later, as you become more confident with what you are doing, you may want to switch your theme to something more sophisticated, like the Fordson Theme, there are lots of them.
There is a couple of other things you may want to think about first though. As Mary suggested, use the MoodleCloud to become familiar with using Moodle, that is an excellent place to start. Understand though, MoodleCloud is, of necessity, somewhat limited and it may very well be that you will outgrow it fairly quickly.
I would suggest you use your desktop or laptop to set up a Moodle for yourself. This is your test site, no-one else has access. You will need Apache, MySQL or MariaDB or PostGreSQL, and PHP, (preferred v7). Also, include phpMyAdmin or phpPGAdmin to manage your database externally. Obviously we don't know what your tech skills are, but if you have good skills you should be able to do this all yourself, or likely you will know some whiz-kid who could help you set it all up. Or you could download and install the XAMPP Moodle, but don't expect it will last too long, it is inflexible and when it starts to go wrong, it is better to delete the whole lot and start again. Test everything here before you introduce any change on your production site, it will save you a lot of heartache if it goes wrong.
You may, eventually, need to have your own domain with your own Moodle, in which case, you may require a good service provider. There are lots of them, all over the world, just realise you may be facing some unknown issues with regard to usage if you are using someone like GoDaddy or similar. You may want to use a Moodle Partner, they will help you a great deal. This is your production site and should never be used to test stuff, that is what your private Moodle is for.
Moodle is useful in a whole range of areas, and I would suggest you go to this post and read it carefully. There is a lot of really good ideas here about Moodle, what can be done, what is achievable. It is aimed at a school district setting, but the attitudes behind the post are what you may want to look at in some depth. Welcome to the rabbit hole, Elsie, enjoy the ride..
Thank you for your input. I have used Moodle before as teacher and manager of a course. However at that time someone else created the actual college Moodle site and faculty created courses as admin approves their request. In my case I want to try being an admin as well this time around since I am building the missionary training school online by myself. I did try the free Moodle cloud and I think I am familiar with Moodle enough to build a course from there. In your words to test it. I do want to learn to have my own domain but not sure if I am techy enough to be able to do that. Any suggestions?
Elsie
No such thing as "being techy enough" or not. It's all good learning, and that is part of the reason for setting up your own private Moodle inside your own server, on your laptop or desktop. You will learn a lot about running your Moodle so that when you do develop your own domain, if you do, then you will have the experience gained by building and wrecking your site, then rebuilding it, then killing it, rebuild it again. You come to learn why the cron is your best friend, the permission set can be a boon or a nightmare and so on.
BTW, this forum is about Moodle development, and is a great place to start learning how to build components for enhancing Moodle. I suspect what you might need is more general advice on what to do, where to go and such, which you will find in the General Help Forum.
Hello Elsie. I'm going to move your post to the General help forum as Colin suggests. I would definitely recommend you start with MoodleCloud. (Also take a look at our Learn Moodle MOOC if you haven't already)
Thanks Mary. Will take a look at learn Moodle MOOC.
Elsie
I would echo Mary's recommendation for MoodleCloud, and it has the ability to move from free hosting to larger paid provisions for the whole school if you want to.
Another possible route if you really do want to host your own (although consider Moodle Partners for support too), might be to get some hosting from someone like ReclaimHosting who specialise in hosting for educators (There are many other hosting solutions out there too)
