This workshop is aimed at Moodle admins who already have done some Moodle admin before and want to understand the changes that Moodle 2 brings to the Admin, and how also how to help optimise their Moodle site. This will be structured as two distinct sessions. Moodle 2 Admin Workshop 1 (morning session) The first will be focusing on the new aspects of Moodle 2 covering:  User Management  Enrolment management  Course management  Plugin Management  Backups management  Security

1. Jonathan Moore
CTO and Vice President RL-UK

2. Koen Roggernans
IT Manager Sint-Ritacollege

3. RL Background and Context
●
Over 3000 hosted Moodle sites
●
Over 12 million registered Moodle
accounts
●
Over 2,000,000 Moodle courses
●
Hosting Moodle sites since 2004
●
Virtualized Infrastructure

4. Sint-Ritacollege Background
and Context
● 1,500 pupils
● Age 12 – 18
● Dedicated server
● Early adopter

5. Getting to Know You
● How many new admins?
● How many running Moodle 2.x in
production?
● How many running Moodle 2.4?
● Are you a 'geeky admin'?

6. Format
● New high points in each area
● Group input
● Give some best practices
● Hands-on

7. User Management
● What's New
– Cohorts
● Plan ahead Moodle sites grow fast!
● Measure twice cut once
● Automate

8. Hands-on
Setup a cohort

9. Roles
● Avoid changing built in roles
● Remember reset defaults option
● Know what level to apply roles at
– Admin: global
– Course Creator: global, or category
– Student, Teacher: course
● Know what level capabilities work at
● Make new roles by copying most similar existing
role

10. Just-in-Case Model
● Automate user creation, course creation and
enrollments
● Use LDAP auth + external DB enrolment
● Get higher adoption rates from instructors
● Instructor can focus more time on teacher less on
the technology

11. Enrolment Management
● Enrolments vs course role
assignments
● Enrolments using cohorts

12. Hands-on
● Enrol a cohort into a course
● Assign user role in course without
enrolment

13. Course Management
● Enrolment methods
● Completion tracking
● Conditional activities
● Workshop

14. Hands-on
Enable completion tracking,
conditional activities, and workshop

15. Consider automated course
creation
● Just-in-Case model
● Course request system

16. Hands-on
Enable course request system

17. Plug-in Management
● Enforce change management
● Avoid kid-in-candy-store syndrome
● Many plug-ins are poorly written or
abandoned
● Many plug-ins are excellent

18. Common Plug-in Types
● Blocks
● Activity modules
● Filters
● Auth
● Enrollment

19. Hands-on
Install the certificate module

20. Backups Management
● Course backups not a full backup!
● Disable automated course backups?
● Yesterday instance
● Backup Elements
– Moodle code
– Moodledata
– Database

21. Hands-on
Create a backup of your test site

22. Security
● Security report
● Use password salts
● User passwords – less secure then
ever
● Don't give web server user write
permissions to Moodle source

23. General Security
● Select Enterprise class OS with long term update
support.
● Automate updates / have set release schedule
● Moodledata outside of web root
● Try mod_sec
● Consider using weekly stable git for Moodle auto
updates
● Consider forced logins
● HTTPS logins

24. More Security
● Consider turning off self registration
● Set the Mysql root user password
● See Moodle Docs Security Page
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Security

25. Hands-on
● Run security report
● Enable force logins
● Show secure logins setting
● Show kpass/last pass password
manager
● Go to Moodle Docs security FAQ

26. Questions?
Email:
jonathan@remote-learner.net
Twitter:
moorejon