Installing Moodle 

The next page is a form (Fig. 88) where 

you can define parameters for your 

Moodle site and the front page, such as 

the name, format, description and so on. 

Fill this out (you can always come back 

and change these later) and then press 

"Save changes". 

Finally, you will be asked to create a top 

level or primary administration user for 

future access to the admin pages. Fill out 

the details (Fig. 89) with your own name, 

email etc and then click "Save changes". 

Not all the fields are  required, but if you 

miss  any  important  fields  you ll  be         

re prompted for them.  

Fig. 88 

If for any reason your install is interrupted, or there is 

a system error of some kind that prevents you from 

logging in using the admin account, you can usually 

log in using the default username of "admin", with 

password "admin".  

Once successful, you will be returned to the home 

page of your new site (Fig. 90). From this point on you 

will administer Moodle as described on pages 44 48. 

Make sure you remember the username and  

password you chose for the administration  

Fig. 89 

user account, as they will be necessary to  

access the administration page in future. 

Step 5: Set up Cron 

(important) 

Some of Moodle s modules require 

continual checks to perform tasks. 

For example, Moodle needs to 

check the discussion forums so it 

can mail out copies of posts to  

people who have subscribed. 

The  script  that  does  all  this  is           

located in the admin directory, and 

is called cron.php. However, it can 

not run itself, so you need to set up 

Fig. 90 

a mechanism where this script is 

run regularly (e.g. every five or ten 

minutes). This provides a "heartbeat" so that the script can perform functions at periods 

defined by each module. This kind of regular mechanism is known as a cron service.  

Note that the machine performing the cron does not need to be the same machine that is 

running Moodle. For example, if you have a limited web hosting service that does not 

have a cron service, then you can might choose to run cron on another server or on your 

home computer. All that matters is that the cron.php file is called regularly.  

The load of this script is not very high, so 5 minutes is usually reasonable, but if you re 

worried about it you can reduce the time period to something like 15 minutes or even 30 

minutes. It s best not to make the time period too long, as delaying mail outs can slow 

down activity within the course. 

53 

http://moodle.org