Moodle hosting
Your Moodle, installed, hosted and looked after.
We run Moodle on our servers for schools, training centres and companies, and keep it fast, backed up and up to date so your teachers only have to teach.
Moodle
PHP
NGINX
MariaDB
Redis
A learning site your students simply use
Courses, lessons, quizzes and grades on your own address with your own logo, quick on a phone and there at eight in the morning when the first class starts.
Schools
Lessons, homework and exams for every class and grade, in one place.
Training centres
Courses you run or sell, with enrolment, attendance and a certificate at the end.
Companies
Onboarding and required training your staff can take from anywhere.
Ready for the morning of the exam
Most days a school site is quiet. Then a whole year logs in at nine for the same quiz. We set Moodle up for that morning, not for an average day.
Caching that carries the load
Course pages and settings are served from memory, so the database is not asked the same question again and again.
Room for everyone at once
Sessions and server workers are sized for the students you expect together, which we ask you before the exam, not after.
Tell us the dates
Give us your exam timetable and we check the site ahead of each exam day, and keep upgrades and heavy jobs away from it.
Everything the job includes
One team does all of it, on servers we run ourselves. You do not need a system administrator on staff.
- Installation
- The current stable Moodle, installed on our servers and set up for your language, time zone and grading scheme.
- Domain and SSL
- Your own address, such as learn.yourschool.com, with an SSL certificate that renews itself.
- Email that arrives
- Enrolment, password and forum emails sent through a properly configured mail service, so they reach the inbox and not the spam folder.
- Cron and caching
- Scheduled tasks running every minute and caching switched on, the two settings a slow Moodle is usually missing.
- Plugins and themes
- The plugins you need and a theme in your colours, installed and checked against your Moodle version.
- Daily backups
- A backup every day, kept away from the server, and a restore of the whole site or a single course when you ask.
- Upgrades
- Moodle and plugin updates tried on a copy first, then applied to your site at a time that does not clash with exams.
- People to ask
- When a teacher is stuck or something looks wrong, you write to the people who set your site up.
How much server your students need
Moodle's own documentation sizes a site by how many people it is serving at the same moment, not by how many accounts exist. Find your row, then tell us your busiest hour.
| Active at once | Memory, worst case | What to run on | What to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to 40 | 2 to 4 GB | One server for web, PHP and database, with OPcache and caching switched on and cron every minute. | Nothing unusual, as long as cron runs every minute. |
| Around 100 | 5 to 10 GB | One server with generous memory, Redis for caches and sessions, and a database tuned to keep its busy tables in memory. | The minute a quiz opens and everyone starts an attempt together. |
| Around 300 | 15 to 30 GB | The database on its own server, away from the web server, so the two stop competing for memory. | The database: the Quiz activity is known to stretch it. |
| 1,000 or more | 50 to 100 GB, over several servers | More than one web server behind a load balancer, all using the same database, file store and cache. Moodle advises expert help for a database cluster. | Storage speed: a slow shared disk hurts the default caches. |
What your Moodle can do, item by item
Open an item to see what Moodle itself gives you and what we do about it. An item marked Ask us is settled with you before we quote.
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CoursesPart of the job
- Moodle itself
- Courses in topics or weeks, enrolment by hand, by self-enrolment or by cohort, groups, completion tracking and a gradebook.
- What we do
- Moodle set up for your language, time zone and grading scheme, with your courses and users brought in during the first week.
-
Quizzes and examsPart of the job
- Moodle itself
- Question banks, random questions, timed attempts and automatic marking. Quiz is also the activity known to stretch the database.
- What we do
- Sessions and server workers sized for the students you expect together, a check ahead of each exam day, and upgrades and heavy jobs kept away from it.
-
Plugins and themesPart of the job
- Moodle itself
- The Moodle plugins directory lists every plugin with the Moodle versions it supports, so a plugin can be checked before it is installed.
- What we do
- The plugins you need and a theme in your colours, installed and checked against your Moodle version, and only from the directory or sources you trust.
-
CronPart of the job
- Moodle itself
- Moodle asks for its cron to run every minute. Scheduled tasks, queued jobs and forum emails all wait on it, and the site does not work properly without it.
- What we do
- Scheduled tasks running every minute, with heavy jobs kept away from exam days.
-
BackupsPart of the job
- Moodle itself
- A copy of the whole site needs the database and the data folder. A single course can also be backed up and restored as a file.
- What we do
- A backup every day, kept away from the server, and a restore of the whole site or a single course when you ask.
-
UpgradesPart of the job
- Moodle itself
- A new major version comes out every six months, in April and October. Long-term-support versions get security fixes for 36 months, the others for 18.
- What we do
- Moodle and plugin updates tried on a copy first, then applied at a time that does not clash with exams.
-
Single sign-onAsk us
- Moodle itself
- Moodle signs people in through an external server (LDAP, CAS or Shibboleth) or an OAuth 2 service, and more methods arrive as plugins.
- What we do
- Tell us in the first conversation which accounts your people already use to sign in. It is decided there, before we quote.
Moodle facts from its own documentation: Performance FAQ · Performance recommendations · Cron · Authentication · Releases
Your first week with us
From the first call to teachers adding their own courses.
- Server, domain and SSL - Day 1
- Moodle installed and configured - Days 1 to 2
- Email, cron and caching - Day 2
- Theme, logo and plugins - Days 3 to 4
- Courses and users brought in - Days 3 to 5
- Backups running, site handed over - Day 5
Already on Moodle? We move it for you
If your site lives somewhere slow or costly, we copy it across, check it with you, and switch the address over when you are ready.
What comes across
- Courses and their content
- Users and enrolments
- Grades and quiz attempts
- Uploaded files
- Plugins and theme
- We take a full copy of your site.
- You check the copy on a test address.
- We switch your domain over, at a quiet hour.
Tell us who will be learning
How many courses, how many students at the busiest hour, and whether you already have a Moodle. Every site is quoted after a short conversation.