Title: Moodle download and install
Course: Establish and maintain an LMS > Section: 05 - Moodle download and install

This document will walk you through basic windows configurations that you might need to check before you start actually setting up web services.

Introduction

This document will walk you through basic windows configurations that you might need to check before you start actually setting up web services.

Prerequisites

- Have a Windows computer with:
  - IIS installed, configured and running.
  - 64-bit PHP installed, configured and running.
  - 64-bit MariaDB  installed, configured and running.
  - A database in MariaDB configured according to the Moodle specifications.
- Hardware:
  - Physical network connection to the internet.

Best practices

This computer will be a production webserver. This means that we should avoid using it for anything other than its task of serving webpages. Any other task or any software installed alongside the webserver can interfere with the performance of the machine. Please follow the best practices below to ensure the system continues to work properly:

- Do not install software in the server unless specified in the guides.
- Do not install Anti-Virus or Anti-Malware software (Windows 10 has its own built-in security).
- Document any change you make to the computer.
- Write down or save digitally any password used during the guides and store this information safely whether it’s digital or physical.
- Do not use the computer for any other task rather than serving Moodle (do not browse websites, configure personal emails, etc).

Downloading Moodle

Open your browser and go to https://download.moodle.org or search the internet for “download moodle” like in the image below.

At the download website, click the link in the page to go to the download links.

Now You should look for the line with that says STABLE (like in the picture below) and click in button “Download ZIP”.

You will be presented with a dialog asking you what do you want to do with the file. You can click in Save.

Once the download is finished, you should click in “View Downloads” or navigate using Windows Explorer to the Downloads folder in the computer.

In the downloads folder, you will see a file with moodle in it.
Double click this file.

Enter the “moodle” folder by double clicking it.

Select all the files with the shortcut “CTRL-A” on your keyboard. Then copy the files to the clipboard either by pressing “CTRL-C” on the keyboard or by right clicking in the blue area and clicking in copy.

Now you can open a new Windows Explorer window (you can do that by pressing the Windows button and “e” on your keyboard).

Navigate to c:\inetpub\wwwroot This is where your website is.

You can select the two files names “iisstart” and delete them.

Right-click on the empty space in the folder and select paste (or alternatively, just use the “CTRL-V” shortcut).

You will be asked to grant administrative access to the folder. You can check the box where it says “do it for all current items” and then click “Continue”.

This should take a few minutes, so maybe it’s a good time to go get yourself a coffee!

Once the copy is finished, you will see all the files necessary to run Moodle inside that folder.

Now it’s time to create Moodle’s “data” folder. This is the folder where Moodle will store any file that users upload to the system.

Right-click on the empty space in the c:\inetpub folder. Select New -> Folder.

This will create a new folder and give you the chance to give it a name. Type “moodledata”.

Now it’s time to change the permissions to the folder. That means we are going to authorize programs (in this case Moodle) to write to that folder, or else it will be unable to write to files.

Right-click on the moodledata folder, select “Properties”.

Click on the “Security” tab, select the line where it says “Users” and click the button “Edit”.

Now select “use4rs” again, and mark the checkboxes where it says “Modify” and “Write” link in the picture below. Then press OK.

You’ll be sent back to the previous window where you can see that “Users” can modify and write to that folder.

Now let’s do the same to the wwwroot folder.

Right-click the wwroot folder and select Properties.

Click in the Security tab in the top of the window and then Edit

Now in select “Users” and mark the “modify” and “Write” checkboxes. Then press OK.

After that press the OK button, and then press it again in the next window.