Moodle in English: Best way to allow access to multiple unknown users without site guest access

Best way to allow access to multiple unknown users without site guest access

by Tine Stalmans - Wednesday, July 22, 2020, 7:25 AM

Hello Moodle Community!

Not sure if this is the right forum for my question, but here it goes...

We're developing a very simple course (some PDF files, web links and pages embedded in iframes) for about 150 users whose personal data (end users' names and email addresses) we don't have. I wonder what would be the best way to give them access to the course. Our Moodle site doesn't allow guest access, so what we're considering is to just create a single generic username and password for participants to log in to the campus and the course simultaneously with the same user data.

I understand that, by default, 'Moodle does not prohibit multiple logins from the same user account' but... would it allow up to 150 concurrent accesses with the same account? Could we run into trouble?

Has anyone faced a similar problem? Any ideas or thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

Best way to allow access to multiple unknown users without site guest access

by Acqua Alta - Saturday, August 1, 2020, 11:58 PM

Why don't you just create 150 users in bulk (using a CSV upload) with generic names like student01,student02 and etc.?

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Re: Best way to allow access to multiple unknown users without site guest access

by Tine Stalmans - Monday, August 3, 2020, 10:44 PM

Hi Acqua Alta!

Thanks for replying. I should have mentioned that this was my first reaction too, but the client doesn't want to hand out any 'personalized' (albeit generic) user data. They want to avoid any admin hassle and just have a single sign-in.

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Re: Best way to allow access to multiple unknown users without site guest access

by John Provasnik - Tuesday, August 4, 2020, 2:47 PM

Can you Just let the users register and enroll themselves?

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Re: Best way to allow access to multiple unknown users without site guest access

by Tine Stalmans - Monday, August 10, 2020, 11:41 PM

Hi John,

Thanks for your advice! It's a good idea, but my (governmental) client doesn't allow self-enrolment on their Moodle site... So a no-go too! 😐

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Re: Best way to allow access to multiple unknown users without site guest access

by Visvanath Ratnaweera - Thursday, August 6, 2020, 2:50 AM

How about https://docs.moodle.org/en/No_authentication ?

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Re: Best way to allow access to multiple unknown users without site guest access

by Tine Stalmans - Monday, August 10, 2020, 11:43 PM

Hello Visvanath,

Thank you for your suggestion! The thing is that my client is a government agency and owing to their strict security policies we're not allowed to enable non-authenticated access...

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Re: Best way to allow access to multiple unknown users without site guest access

by Dominique Bauer - Monday, August 10, 2020, 10:43 PM

Hello Tine,

Moodle demo sites work with a limited number of accounts. For example, the Moodle QA Testing Site works with teacher/test, student/test and a few other accounts. The same goes for Moodle sandbox demo and Mount Orange School. Since these sites are open to the whole world, I imagine that they can accommodate many simultaneous authentications. Although I don't really know, I would be surprised if special measures had to be taken. However, if many users are using the same account at the same time, the response from the server may be a little slower.

That said, I was asked, on another forum, how to automatically fill in the input fields for the username and password, for example as in the page below (moodleformulas.org):

Well, it's just a matter of putting the following script in "Site administration / Appearance / Additional HTML / When BODY is opened":

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.4.1/jquery.min.js">
</script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function() {
    if ($(location).attr('href') == "https://yourdomainname/login/index.php" ) {
        $("#username").val("yourgenericusername");
        $("#password").val("yourgenericpassword");
    }
});
</script>

where you will replace "yourdomainname", "yourgenericusername" and "yourgenericpassword" with the appropriate values. "yourgenericusername" could be, say, "student" and "yourgenericpassword" could be "Password.1" (see password policy).

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Re: Best way to allow access to multiple unknown users without site guest access

by Tine Stalmans - Monday, August 10, 2020, 11:49 PM

Hi Dominique,

This is really useful! To be honest, in view of the lack of any better or workable ideas, we had just gone ahead and provided a single username a password (with student role) to all participants. It is working fine so far, so, as you mention, apparently no special measures are needed. And we have very good server capacity...

Thanks so much for the script as well. I didn't know this was possible in such an easy and straightforward way! I'll save this code for possible later use!

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Re: Best way to allow access to multiple unknown users without site guest access

by Dominique Bauer - Tuesday, August 11, 2020, 12:28 AM

Hello Tine,

In fact, I just made the login even easier. I replaced everything with a "Enter site" button while loging in is done automatically in the background:

Here is the code: (Note that this is a user-side script and therefore may need to be modified depending on the version of Moodle or other settings.)

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.4.1/jquery.min.js">
</script>
<script>
$(document).ready(function() {
    if ($(location).attr('href') == "https://yourdomainname/login/index.php" ) {
        $("#username").val("yourgenericusername");
        $("#password").val("yourgenericpassword");
        $(".form-group").hide();
        $(".mt-2").replaceWith("<br><br><p onclick='admin()' style='color:#bbb;text-align:right;'>Administrator access</p>");
        $("button:contains(Log in)").html("<span style='font-size:200%;color:#FFF;'>Enter site</span>");
    }
});
function admin() {
    $(".form-group").show();
}
</script>

By adding a few lines to the script, the login page can probably be skipped automatically, by forcing the click on the login button, while the login would still be done in the background. So it could be even simpler for the users.

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Re: Best way to allow access to multiple unknown users without site guest access

by Dominique Bauer - Tuesday, August 11, 2020, 6:20 AM

Hello Tine,

Here is the code to skip the login page, while doing the login for students in the background:

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.4.1/jquery.min.js">
</script>
<script>
var role= localStorage.getItem("role"); 
$(document).ready(function() {
    if ($(location).attr('href') == "https://yourdomainname/login/index.php" ||  $(location).attr('href') == "https://yourdomainname/login" ||  $(location).attr('href') == "https://yourdomainname/login/index.php?") {
        if (role== "administrator") {
            $("#username").val("yourgenericusername");
            $("#password").val("yourgenericpassword");
        } else {
            $("body").css("display","none");
            localStorage.setItem("role", "student");
            $("#username").val("yourgenericusername");
            $("#password").val("yourgenericpassword");
            $("button#loginbtn").trigger("click");
        }
    }
});
</script>

To access the site as an administrator, place a label for example in an inconspicuous place on the front page, containing the following code. Make sure to prepare this label first, otherwise you may not be able to easily access the site other than as a student.

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.4.1/jquery.min.js">
</script>
<script>
localStorage.setItem("role", "student");
function admin0() {
    localStorage.setItem("role", "administrator");
    url = "https://yourdomainname/login/index.php";
    $(location).attr("href", url); 
} 
</script>
<p onclick="admin0()" style="color:#aaa;">Administrator access</p>

This may be too fast for some students who are used to having difficulty loging in. With this script, they are instantly logged in without even realizing it.

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Best way to allow access to multiple unknown users without site guest access