How to move Moodle to a new folder on the same server

How to move Moodle to a new folder on the same server

by Rowan Wittels -
Number of replies: 4

Hi. I unpacked Moodle (MoodleWindowsInstaller-latest-403.zip) in my user profile on a Windows server (C:\Users\[username]\Downloads\MoodleWindowsInstaller-latest-403).

The site is now fully functional, in a dev state, and I need to move it out of my user profile onto the C drive. I know it was a terrible idea but at the time I was just testing if I could get the site working and one thing led to another...
The site is running on XAMPP which came with the package.

Is there any advice or a link to a good article on how to do this?
My thoughts are perhaps I just backup and shutdown the current site and do a fresh install/unpack on C and restore the database and Moodledata folder? 
I believe that there may be some links to the document root written in the database which will need to be changed. Is this correct?

Any advice will be appreciated.

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In reply to Rowan Wittels

Re: How to move Moodle to a new folder on the same server

by Jon Witts -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
The Windows Installer version is not intended for production use.

If you have a Windows Server you should look at manually installing Moodle onto your server. TBH there's not a huge amount of people around here running on a Windows Server, as we all tend to be using Linux, Apache, MySQL / MariaDB aand PHP (LAMP) for our servers...

Jon
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Re: How to move Moodle to a new folder on the same server

by Rowan Wittels -
Thanks for the response.
Sorry, I don't know what "manually installing Moodle" means. I thought that is what I have done. Is there a different download somewhere?
If I set up a Linux server, will I be able to migrate the current site to the Linux installation? Any good resources for this?
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In reply to Rowan Wittels

Re: How to move Moodle to a new folder on the same server

by Jon Witts -
Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Hi there,

To "manually install Moodle" you need to go here https://download.moodle.org/releases/latest/ and download the standard Moodle package in zip format (not the Windows or Mac installer packages). This will give you a download of the files required to install and run Moodle on your own web server. 
 
Before you can do this you will need to have configured a web and database server (they can be on the same physical machine) that meets the requirements to host Moodle. This page in the documentation is a good starting point Installation_quick_guide. It is worth bearing in mind that running your web server correctly is a tricky task which requires time and knowledge. 
 
If you do not have the resources available already or time in which to learn how to run a web server then I would suggest that self-hosting Moodle is not the right route for you...
 
You have the following routes available to get Moodle hosted ready for production use:
  • Self host - Use your own server (either internal or purchased hosting / server) - The caveats mentioned above all relevant here!
  • Employ a Moodle Partner to either host your Moodle for you or to manage your Moodle install on your own server
  • Purchase a course through Moodle Cloud 

The installer packages are really only any good for local development and testing.

HTH
Jon

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In reply to Rowan Wittels

Re: How to move Moodle to a new folder on the same server

by Rick Jerz -
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I'll try to add a few thoughts to what Jon has provided.

The "MoodleWindowsInstaller-latest-403.zip" includes XAMPP, so if you installed everything in your Downloads folder, you might have two problems: 1) Moving Moodle, and 2) Moving XAMPP. #1 might be easier than #2. I have never succeeded with #2, but I don't tend to run my XAMPP experimental Moodle much.

And as I recall, the installer might default to installing XAMPP in c:\XAMPP. So I am not sure what you did.

However, having said this, I have had success working with MAMP on my Mac, and then moving Moodle (and developed courses) to a production server. But this is more involved than simply dragging and dropping Moodle to another location. To migrate your Moodle to a Linux server, see the Moodle docs "Moodle migration."
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