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   7 <H2>Installing Moodle</H2>
   8 <P>This guide explains how to install Moodle for the first time.  It goes into some detail
   9    about some of the steps, in order to cover the wide variety of small differences between
  10    web server setups, so this document may look long and complicated.  Don't be put off by this
  11    - I usually set Moodle up in a few minutes!</P>
  12 <P>Take your time and work through this document carefully - it will save you time later on.</P>
  13 <P>Sections in this document:</P>
  14 <OL>
  15   <LI><A HREF="#requirements">Requirements</A></LI>
  16   <LI><A HREF="#downloading">Download</A></LI>
  17   <LI><A HREF="#site">Site structure</A></LI>
  18   <LI><A HREF="#data">Create a data directory</A></LI>
  19   <LI><A HREF="#database">Create a database</A></LI>
  20   <LI><A HREF="#webserver">Check web server settings</A></LI>
  21   <LI><A HREF="#config">Edit config.php</A></LI>
  22   <LI><A HREF="#admin">Go to the admin page</A></LI>
  23   <LI><A HREF="#cron">Set up cron</A></LI>
  24   <LI><A HREF="#course">Create a new course</A></LI>
  25 </OL>
  26 <H3><A NAME="requirements"></A>1. Requirements</H3>
  27 <blockquote>
  28   <p>Moodle is primarily developed in Linux using PHP, Apache and MySQL, and regularly
  29     tested with PostgreSQL and in Windows XP and Mac OS X environments.</p>
  30   <p>All you should need are:</p>
  31   <ol>
  32     <li>a working installation of <A HREF="http://www.php.net/">PHP</A> (version
  33       4.1.0 or later), with the following features enabled (most PHP installations
  34       these days will have all of these):
  35       <ul>
  36       <LI>JPEG and/or PNG image editing support via the <A HREF="http://www.boutell.com/gd/">GD library</A></li>
  37       <LI>Sessions support</LI>
  38       <LI>File uploading allowed</LI>
  39       </UL>
  40 </LI>
  41     <li>a working database server: <A HREF="http://www.mysql.com/">MySQL</A> or <A HREF="http://www.postgresql.org/">PostgreSQL</A> are recommended. (MSSQL, Oracle, Interbase, Foxpro, Access, ADO, Sybase, DB2 or ODBC are also theoretically supported but will require you to manually set up the database tables).</li>
  42   </ol>
  43   <p>On a Windows platform, the quickest way to satisfy these requirements is
  44     to download <A HREF="http://www.foxserv.net/">FoxServ</A>,
  45     or <A HREF="http://www.easyphp.org/">EasyPHP</A> which will install Apache,
  46     PHP, and MySQL for you. Make sure you enable the GD module so Moodle can process
  47     images - you may have to edit php.ini and remove the comment (;) from this
  48     line: 'extension=php_gd.dll'.</p>
  49
  50   <p>On Mac OS X I highly recommend the <a href="http://fink.sourceforge.net/">fink</a>
  51     project as a way to download easily-maintainable packages for all of this.</p>
  52
  53   <p>If you're on Linux or another Unix then I'll assume you can figure all this out for yourself! ;-) </p>
  54
  55 </blockquote>
  56 <P>&nbsp;</P>
  57 <H3><A NAME="downloading"></A>2. Download</H3>
  58 <blockquote>
  59   <p>There are two ways to get Moodle, as a compressed package and via CVS. These
  60     are explained in detail on the download page on <A HREF="http://moodle.com/">http://moodle.com/</A></p>
  61   <p>After downloading and unpacking the archive, or checking out the files via
  62     CVS, you will be left with a directory called &quot;moodle&quot;, containing
  63     a number of files and folders. </p>
  64   <p>You can either place the whole folder in your web server documents directory,
  65     in which case the site will be located at <B>http://yourwebserver.com/moodle</B>,
  66     or you can copy all the contents straight into the main web server documents
  67     directory, in which case the site will be simply <B>http://yourwebserver.com</B>.</p>
  68 </blockquote>
  69 <P>&nbsp;</P>
  70 <H3><A NAME="site"></A>3. Site structure</H3>
  71 <BLOCKQUOTE>
  72   <p>Here is a quick summary of the contents of the Moodle folder, to help get
  73     you oriented:</p>
  74   <blockquote>
  75     <p>config.php - the only file you need to edit to get started<br>
  76       version.php - defines the current version of Moodle code<BR>
  77       index.php - the front page of the site</p>
  78     <ul>
  79       <li>admin/ - code to administrate the whole server </li>
  80       <li>auth/ - plugin modules to authenticate users  </li>
  81       <li>course/ - code to display and manage courses </li>
  82       <li>doc/ - help documentation for Moodle (eg this page)</li>
  83       <li>files/ - code to display and manage uploaded files</li>
  84       <li>lang/ - texts in different languages, one directory per language </li>
  85       <li>lib/ - libraries of core Moodle code </li>
  86       <li>login/ - code to handle login and account creation </li>
  87       <li>mod/ - all Moodle course modules</li>
  88       <li>pix/ - generic site graphics</li>
  89       <li>theme/ - theme packs/skins to change the look of the site.</li>
  90       <li>user/ - code to display and manage users</li>
  91     </ul>
  92     <p>&nbsp;</p>
  93   </blockquote>
  94 </BLOCKQUOTE>
  95 <H3><A NAME="data"></A>4. Create a data directory</H3>
  96 <blockquote>
  97   <p>Moodle will also need some space on your hard disk to store uploaded files,
  98     such as course documents and user pictures.</p>
  99
 100   <p>Create a directory for this purpose somewhere.  For security, it's best that
 101      this directory is NOT accessible directly via the web.  The easiest way to do this
 102      is to simply locate it OUTSIDE the web directory, otherwise protect it
 103      by creating a file in the data directory called .htaccess, containing this line:
 104   <blockquote>
 105      <PRE>deny from all</PRE>
 106   </blockquote>
 107
 108   <p>To make sure that Moodle can save uploaded files in this directory, check that
 109      the web server software (eg Apache) has permission to write
 110     to this directory. On Unix machines, this means setting the owner of the directory
 111     to be something like &quot;nobody&quot; or &quot;apache&quot;.</p>
 112
 113   <p>On many shared hosting servers, you will probably need to restrict all file access
 114      to your "group" (to prevent other webhost customers from looking at or changing your files),
 115      but provide full read/write access to everyone else (which will allow the web server
 116      to access your files).  Speak to your server administrator if you are having
 117      trouble setting this up securely.</p>
 118
 119 </blockquote>
 120 <P>&nbsp;</P>
 121 <H3><A NAME="database"></A>5. Create a database</H3>
 122 <blockquote>
 123 <p>You need to create an empty database (eg "moodle") in your database system
 124     along with a special user (eg "moodleuser") that has access to that database
 125     (and that database only). You could use the "root" user if you wanted to, but
 126     this is not recommended for a production system: if hackers manage to discover
 127     the password then your whole database system would be at risk, rather than
 128     just one database.
 129 </p>
 130   <p>Example command lines for MySQL: </p>
 131   <PRE>
 132    # mysql -u root -p
 133    > CREATE DATABASE moodle;
 134    > GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,DROP,INDEX,ALTER ON moodle.*
 135            TO moodleuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'yourpassword';
 136    > quit
 137    # mysqladmin -p reload
 138 </PRE>
 139   <p>Example command lines for PostgreSQL: </p>
 140   <PRE>
 141    # su - postgres
 142    > psql -c "create user moodleuser createdb;" template1
 143    > psql -c "create database moodle;" -U moodleuser template1
 144    > psql -c "alter user moodleuser nocreatedb;" template1
 145 </PRE>
 146   <p>(For MySQL I highly recommend the use of <a href="http://phpmyadmin.sourceforge.net/">phpMyAdmin</a>
 147     to manage your databases).</p>
 148 <p>As of version 1.0.8, Moodle now supports table prefixes, and so can safely share
 149    a database with tables from other applications.</p>
 150 </blockquote>
 151 <P>&nbsp;</P>
 152 <H3><A NAME="webserver" id="webserver"></A>6. Check your web server settings</H3>
 153 <blockquote>
 154   <p>Firstly, make sure that your web server is set up to use index.php as a default
 155     page (perhaps in addition to index.html, default.htm and so on).</p>
 156   <p>In Apache, this is done using a DirectoryIndex parameter in your httpd.conf
 157     file. Mine usually looks like this:</p>
 158   <blockquote>
 159     <pre><strong>DirectoryIndex</strong> index.php index.html index.htm </pre>
 160   </blockquote>
 161   <p>Just make sure index.php is in the list (and preferably towards the start
 162     of the list, for efficiency).</p>
 163   <p>Secondly, Moodle requires a number of PHP settings to be active for it to
 164      work.  <B>On most servers these will already be the default settings.</B>
 165      However, some PHP servers (and some of the more recent PHP versions) may
 166      have things set differently.  These are defined in PHP's configuration
 167      file (usually called php.ini):</p>
 168   <blockquote>
 169 <pre>file_uploads = 1
 170 magic_quotes_gpc = 1
 171 short_open_tag = 1
 172 session.auto_start = 0
 173 </pre>
 174   </blockquote>
 175   <p>If you don't have access to httpd.conf or php.ini on your server, or you
 176      have Moodle on a server with other applications that require different
 177      settings, then you can OVERRIDE all of the default settings.
 178
 179   <p>To do this, you need to create a file called <B>.htaccess</B> in Moodle's
 180      main directory that contains definitions for these settings.
 181      This only works on Apache servers and only when Overrides have been allowed.
 182      <BLOCKQUOTE><PRE>
 183 DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htm
 184 php_value magic_quotes_gpc 1
 185 php_value file_uploads 1
 186 php_value short_open_tag 1
 187 php_value session.auto_start 0</BLOCKQUOTE></PRE>
 188      <P>You can also do things like define the maximum size for uploaded files:
 189      <BLOCKQUOTE><PRE>
 190 php_value upload_max_filesize 2M
 191 php_value post_max_size 2M
 192      </BLOCKQUOTE></PRE>
 193
 194   <p>The easiest thing to do is just copy the sample file from lib/htaccess
 195      and edit it to suit your needs.  It contains further instructions.  For
 196      example, in a Unix shell:
 197   <blockquote>
 198     <pre>cp lib/htaccess .htaccess</pre>
 199   </blockquote>
 200
 201 </blockquote>
 202 <p>&nbsp;</p>
 203 <H3><A NAME="config"></A>7. Edit config.php</H3>
 204 <blockquote>
 205   <p>Now you can edit the configuration file, <strong>config.php</strong>, using a
 206      text editor. This file is used by all other files in Moodle.</p>
 207   <p>To start with, make a copy of config-dist.php and call it config.php. We
 208     do this so that your config.php won't be overwritten in case you upgrade Moodle
 209     later on. </p>
 210   <p>Edit config.php to specify the database details that you just defined (including
 211     a table prefix - notice this is REQUIRED for PostgreSQL), as
 212     well as the site address, file system directory and data directory.
 213     The config file has detailed directions.</p>
 214   <p>For the rest of this installation document we will assume your site is at:
 215     <u>http://example.com/moodle</u></p>
 216 </blockquote>
 217 <P>&nbsp;</P>
 218 <H3><A NAME="admin"></A>8. Go to the admin page</H3>
 219 <blockquote>
 220   <p>The admin page should now be working at: <u>http://example.com/moodle/admin</u>.
 221     If you try and access the front page of your site you'll be taken there automatically
 222     anyway. The first time you access this admin page, you will be presented with
 223     a GPL agreement with which you need to agree before you can continue with the setup.</p>
 224   <P>(Moodle will also try to set some cookies in your browser.  If you have
 225      your browser set up to let you choose to accept cookies, then you <B>must</B>
 226      accept the Moodle cookies, or Moodle won't work properly.)
 227   <p>Now Moodle will start setting up your database and creating tables to store data.
 228     Firstly, the main database tables are created. You should see a number of SQL statements followed by
 229     status messages (in green or red) that look like this:</p>
 230   <blockquote>
 231     <p>CREATE TABLE course ( id int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment, category
 232       int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0', password varchar(50) NOT NULL default
 233       '', fullname varchar(254) NOT NULL default '', shortname varchar(15) NOT
 234       NULL default '', summary text NOT NULL, format tinyint(4) NOT NULL default
 235       '1', teacher varchar(100) NOT NULL default 'Teacher', startdate int(10)
 236       unsigned NOT NULL default '0', enddate int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default
 237       '0', timemodified int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0', PRIMARY KEY (id))
 238       TYPE=MyISAM</p>
 239     <p><FONT COLOR="#006600">SUCCESS</FONT></p>
 240     <p>...and so on, followed by: <FONT COLOR="#FF0000">Main databases set up
 241       successfully</FONT>. </p>
 242   </blockquote>
 243   <p>If you don't see these, then there must have been some problem with the database
 244     or the configuration settings you defined in config.php. Check that PHP isn't
 245     in a restricted "safe mode" (commercial web hosts often have safe mode turned
 246     on). You can check PHP variables by creating a little file containing &lt?
 247     phpinfo() ?&gt and looking at it through a browser. Check all these and try
 248     this page again.</p>
 249   <p>Scroll down the very bottom of the page and press the &quot;Continue&quot;
 250     link.</p>
 251   <p>Next you will see a similar page that sets up all the tables required by
 252     each Moodle module. As before, they should all be green.</p>
 253
 254   <p>Scroll down the very bottom of the page and press the &quot;Continue&quot;
 255     link.</p>
 256
 257   <p>You should now see a form where you can define more configuration variables
 258      for your installation, such as the default language, SMTP hosts and so on.
 259      Don't worry too much about getting everything right just now - you can always
 260      come back and edit these later on using the admin interface.  Scroll down
 261      to the bottom and click &quot;Save changes&quot;.</p>
 262
 263   <p>If (and only if) you find yourself getting stuck on this page or the next
 264      page, unable to continue, then your server  probably has what I call the
 265      "buggy referrer" problem.  This is easy to fix: just edit
 266      your config.php and set the variable buggy_referrer to <i>true</i>, then
 267      try the page again.</p>
 268
 269   <p>The next page is a form where you can define parameters for your Moodle site and the
 270      front page, such as the name, format, description and so on.
 271
 272     Fill this out (you can always go back and change these later) and then press
 273     &quot;Save changes&quot;.</p>
 274
 275   <p>Finally, you will then be asked to create a top-level administration user
 276     for future access to the admin pages. Fill out the details with your own name,
 277     email etc and then click &quot;Save changes&quot;. Not all the fields are
 278     required, but if you miss any important fields you'll be re-prompted for them.
 279   </p>
 280   <blockquote>
 281     <blockquote>
 282       <blockquote>
 283         <blockquote>
 284           <blockquote>
 285             <p><strong>Make sure you remember the username and password you chose
 286               for the administration user account, as they will be necessary to
 287               access the administration page in future.</strong></p>
 288           </blockquote>
 289         </blockquote>
 290       </blockquote>
 291     </blockquote>
 292   </blockquote>
 293   <p>Once successful, you will be returned to the main admin page, which contain
 294     a number of links arranged in a menu (these items also appear on the home
 295     page when you are logged in as the admin user). All your further administration
 296     of Moodle can now be done using this menu, such as:</p>
 297   <ul>
 298     <li>creating and deleting courses</li>
 299     <li>creating and editing user accounts</li>
 300     <li>administering teacher accounts</li>
 301     <li>changing site-wide settings like themes etc</li>
 302   </ul>
 303 </blockquote>
 304 <P>&nbsp;</P>
 305 <H3><A NAME="cron"></A>9. Set up cron</H3>
 306 <blockquote>
 307   <p>Some of Moodle's modules require continual checks to perform tasks. For example,
 308     Moodle needs to check the discussion forums so it can mail out copies of posts
 309     to people who have subscribed.</p>
 310   <p>The script that does all this is located in the admin directory, and is called
 311     cron.php. However, it can not run itself, so you need to set up a mechanism
 312     where this script is run regularly (eg every five minutes). This provides
 313     a &quot;heartbeat&quot; so that the script can perform functions at periods
 314     defined by each module.</p>
 315   <P>Note that the machine performing the cron <B>does not need to be the same
 316      machine that is running Moodle</B>.  For example, if you have a limited web hosting
 317      service that does not have cron, then you can might choose to run cron on another
 318      server or on your home computer.  All that matters is that the cron.php file is
 319      called every five minutes or so.</p>
 320   <p>First, test that the script works by running it directly from your browser:</p>
 321   <blockquote>
 322     <PRE>http://example.com/moodle/admin/cron.php</PRE>
 323   </blockquote>
 324   <p>Now, you need to set up some of way of running the script automatically and
 325     regularly. </p>
 326   <H4> Running the script from a command line</H4>
 327   <p>You can call the page from the command line just as you did in the example
 328     above. For example, you can use a Unix utility like 'wget':</p>
 329   <blockquote>
 330     <PRE>wget -q -O /dev/null http://example.com/moodle/admin/cron.php</PRE>
 331   </blockquote>
 332   <p>Note in this example that the output is thrown away (to /dev/null).</p>
 333   <p>The same thing using lynx:</p>
 334   <blockquote>
 335     <pre>lynx -dump http://example.com/moodle/admin/cron.php &gt; /dev/null</pre>
 336   </blockquote>
 337   <p>Alternatively you could use a standalone version of PHP, compiled to be run
 338     on the command line. The advantage with doing this is that your web server
 339     logs aren't filled with constant requests to cron.php. The disadvantage is
 340     that you need to have access to a command-line version of php.</p>
 341   <blockquote>
 342     <PRE>/opt/bin/php /web/moodle/admin/cron.php
 343
 344
 345 (Windows) C:\apache\php\php.exe C:\apache\htdocs\moodle\admin\cron.php
 346
 347 </PRE>
 348   </blockquote>
 349   <h4>Automatically running the script every 5 minutes</h4>
 350   <p>On Unix systems: Use <B>cron</B>. Edit your cron settings from the commandline
 351     using &quot;crontab -e&quot; and add a line like:</p>
 352   <blockquote>
 353     <PRE>*/5 * * * * wget -q -O /dev/null http://example.com/moodle/admin/cron.php</PRE>
 354   </blockquote>
 355   <p>On Windows systems: The simplest way is to use my package <A TITLE="Click to download this package (150k)" HREF="http://moodle.com/download/moodle-cron-for-windows.zip">moodle-cron-for-windows.zip</A>
 356     which makes this whole thing very easy.  You can also explore using the built-in
 357     Windows feature for "Scheduled Tasks".</p>
 358   </p>
 359 </blockquote>
 360 <H3><A NAME="course"></A>10. Create a new course</H3>
 361 <blockquote>
 362   <p>Now that Moodle is running properly, you can create a course. </p>
 363   <p>Select &quot;Create a new course&quot; from the Admin page (or the admin
 364     links on the home page).</p>
 365   <p>Fill out the form, paying special attention to the course format. You don't
 366     have to worry about the details too much at this stage, as everything can
 367     be changed later by the teacher.</p>
 368   <p>Press &quot;Save changes&quot;, and you will be taken to a new form where
 369     you can assign teachers to the course. You can only add existing user accounts
 370     from this form - if you want to create a new teacher account then either ask
 371     the teacher to create one for themselves (see the login page), or create one
 372     for them using the &quot;Add a new user&quot; on the Admin page.</p>
 373   <p>Once done, the course is ready to customise, and is accessible via the &quot;Courses&quot;
 374     link on the home page.</p>
 375   <p>See the &quot;<A HREF="teacher.html">Teacher Manual</A>&quot; for more details
 376     on course-building.</p>
 377 </blockquote>
 378 <P>&nbsp;</P>
 379 <P ALIGN="CENTER"><FONT SIZE="1"><A HREF="." TARGET="_top">Moodle Documentation</A></FONT></P>
 380 <P ALIGN="CENTER"><FONT SIZE="1">Version: $Id$</FONT></P>
 381
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