16.1. Configuration The configuration settings in Moodle affect the basic functionality of the site. There are eight areas in the configuration menu: variables, settings, themes, module settings, blocks, filters, backup, and editor settings. Each of these areas affects the functioning of your Moodle site in different ways. 16.1.1. Site Variables Site variables are settings that determine how your entire Moodle site functions. The site variables are the most technical settings. The variables fall into seven clusters. 16.1.1.1. Language/location variables
Lang Sets the default language for the site. This setting can be overridden by users using the language menu or the setting in their personal profile.
Langmenu Sets whether the language menu is displayed on the login page and the home page. If this is turned off, the only places where a user can change the language setting is in her user profile or in the course settings if she is a teacher.
Langlist If you want to limit the number of languages students and teachers can select from, enter that list here.
Locale Determines date format and language. You need to have the locale set on your operating system for this to work.
Timezone Sets the default time zone for date display. This can be overridden by the user's profile setting.
Country Sets a default country for user profiles. 16.1.1.2. Mail settings
SMTPhosts SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. The SMTP host is an email relay that will take the email from Moodle and send it to users. You will need to set this only if your server does not allow mail relay. Otherwise, PHP will send out the mail using its built-in mail server. All the email sent by forums and other modules will be sent through this host.
SMTPuser If you set an SMTP server and it requires authentication, enter the username for the account that will be relaying the email from Moodle.
SMTPpass Enter the password for the SMTP user you set earlier.
Noreplyaddress Email sent from Moodle needs to have a return address or many servers will reject it as spam. Some users also want to keep their email private, so Moodle sends all of its email using the noreply address you set here. 16.1.1.3. Graphics library
Gdversion GD is a graphics library that manipulates graphics. It's used to create thumbnail images from uploaded files and other graphics on the fly. If you don't know what version is installed, leave this on the original setting. 16.1.1.4. Timing settings
Maxeditingtime Sets the editing time for the forums and other feedback. The editing time is the amount of time users have to change forum postings before they are mailed to subscribers.
Longtimenosee To help keep course rosters organized, you can tell Moodle to unenroll any student who hasn't logged in for a certain amount of time. Be sure to keep this time long enough so students aren't unenrolled accidentally while they still need access to the course.
Deleteunconfirmed If you're using email account confirmation (see the section "User management"), users must confirm their account within a certain timeframe. Once the time set here has passed, any account that hasn't been confirmed will be deleted.
Loglifetime Moodle keeps extensive logs of user activity. Eventually, however, the logs will become so large that they begin to clog your server. Although the instructions on the screen suggest that you don't delete the logs, I recommend keeping the logs only as long as you need them. Usually, a year is enough time. 16.1.1.5. Security and login settings
Displayloginfailures The logs display login failures. This is probably necessary only if people are attempting to steal student or teacher logins.
Notifyloginfailures If you're concerned about login failures, you can also have email sent to system administrators.
Notifyloginthreshold Sets the number of failed logins for a given user from a single computer that will trigger notification.
Sessiontimeout Once someone logs in to your Moodle server, the server starts a session. The session data allows the server to track users as they access different pages. If users don't load a new page during the amount of time set here, Moodle will end their session and log them out. Be sure this time frame is long enough to cover the longest test your teachers may offer. If a student is logged out while he is are taking a test, his responses to the test questions may be lost.
Sessioncookie Most of the time, you can leave this blank, unless you are running more than one copy of Moodle on the same server. In this case, you will want to customize the name of the cookie each copy of Moodle uses to track the session. That way, if you're logged in to one copy of Moodle, you won't also be logged in to the other copy. 16.1.1.6. File and picture handling
Zip and unzip If you are running Moodle on a Unix or Unix-like server (Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X), you may need to specify where the zip program is located. Zip and unzip are used to compress and decompress zip archives such as the backup folder.
Slasharguments You will need to change this setting only if you are having trouble viewing files or images. Most of the time, Moodle will display files and pictures with no problem using the slash arguments. If you get errors when you try to view pictures or files from within Moodle, your PHP server doesn't allow the slash argument method and you will need to use the file argument method instead.
Proxyhost and proxyport Your Moodle server may need to access the Internet through a proxy server, depending on your network configuration. If you're not sure about whether you need a proxy server, contact your network administrator or ISP.
Debug Setting debug to Yes turns on PHP warnings and messages to help developers debug new modules. Unless you are actively writing new code, leave this turned off.
Framename If you've developed a web wrapper for Moodle and you want to include Moodle in a larger frame, set the name for the Moodle frame here.
Secureforms Whenever a user sends form data to Moodle, the browser also sends a piece of data called HTTP_REFERER. This data contains the sending computer's IP address. If you turn on this setting, the referrer data will be compared to the IP address of the machine sending the request. If they match, then the data is being sent from the machine that originated the request. If they don't match, someone may be trying to spoof the user's IP address and initiate a man-in-the-middle attack to compromise her Moodle data. This security check may cause problems with some firewalls. IP spoofing is rare, so you'll need to choose between locking out people with their firewalls on or risking an IP spoof attack.
Loginhttps HTTPS encrypts the user's login data, so it's difficult to sniff out a user's username and password on the network. You will need to enable HTTPS on your server before you turn on this setting, or else you will be locked out of your site. Every web server has a different method for enabling HTTPS, so you should check the documentation for your web server. Most versions of Moodle won't let you set this to Yes unless HTTPS is enabled on the server.
Teacherassignteachers If you want teachers to be able to assign other teachers to their courses, set this to Yes.
Allusersaresitestudents The front page of your Moodle site is actually a Moodle course. If you want everyone who has an account on the server to be able to participate in the front page forum and news, set this to Yes. If the users should be associated with another class before they can participate, set this to No. 16.1.1.7. User management
Showsiteparticipantlist Determines who can view the site participants list. For privacy reasons, you will probably want to set this to Site Teachers.
Allowunenroll Students may need to be able to unenroll themselves from courses, especially old versions of courses that are still visible.
Maxbytes Determines the site-wide absolute maximum for file uploads. Any file upload sizes in the modules must be set lower than this number.
Fullnamedisplay Determines how full names will be displayed.
Extenededusernamechars Leaving this set to No restricts students' login names to alphanumeric characters. If you enable this setting, they can use extended characters such as (!@#$%^&*) in their username. This does not limit their first or surname settings.
Autologinguests If a visitor goes to a course that allows guest access without first logging in as a guest, this setting will log them in automatically.
Forcelogin By default, anyone who visits your Moodle site can see the front-page news and course listings. If you want users to log in before they see this page, set this to Yes.
Forceloginforprofiles Forces users to log in before they can view other users' profiles. I usually leave this enabled for privacy reasons.
Opentogoogle Enabling this setting allows Google's search spiders guest access to your site. Any part of the site that allows guest access will then be searchable on Google.
Enablerssfeeds Individual modules can send RSS feeds to users' news readers. RSS feeds are headlines that let a user know when there is new content on the Moodle site. If you enable RSS here, you will also need to enable RSS in each RSS-enabled module.
Digestmailtime Moodle now allows mail digests from the forums, so users get only one email per day instead of an individual message for every posting. This setting specifies when digests are emailed to users. 16.1.2. Site Settings Site settings determine how the site's front page looks. Compared to the site variables, these are simpler to work with. The site settings include:
Full site name The name for your entire site, which appears at the top of every screen above the breadcrumbs navigation.
Short name for site The short name appears at the beginning of the breadcrumb navigation as a link back to the main site page.
Front page description A short message to your users on the right side of the front page.
Front page format The central block on the front page can display one of three things: news items, a list of the users' courses, or a list of course categories. This setting determines which of the three your site displays.
Include a topic section Adds a full-course topic section with an Add Resource menu or activity menu. The topic section appears at the top of the central block.
Name for administrator and teachers You can customize the label for people with administrator and teacher roles. The teacher-name setting can be overridden in the course settings. 16.1.3. Themes Themes set the background color, font types, and font color for your entire Moodle site. Moodle comes with a number of prepackaged themes. To select a new theme for your site: Click on Themes in the administration area. Click on a theme. Once you have a theme you like, click Save Changes. If you don't click Save Changes, the theme will revert to the last saved theme when you leave the Themes page.
16.1.4. Module Settings The modules settings area allows you to control access to the Moodle modules. Each activity module can be made available for teachers or turned off. If the modules are turned off, instructors won't be able to add them to their courses. In addition to adjusting the site settings, you can adjust settings in many of the modules. Fortunately, the Moodle developers have done an excellent job documenting each of the variables you can adjust for each of the modules. To change any of the module settings, select Modules from the administration area. Then select the settings for the module you want to adjust. 16.1.5. Blocks The settings for administration blocks determine which blocks available to all Moodle users. Just like the module settings, you can show, hide, and delete blocks. Two blocks have settings that can be changed: the courses block and the online users block. 16.1.6. Filters Moodle filters are text filters that help Moodle analyze the text in a course. Each of the 10 filters has a specific function.
Glossary Auto-linking Enables the Glossary module to highlight glossary entries in the forums and resources.
Resource Names Auto-linking Works a bit like the glossary text filter. If you use the name of a resource (text files, uploaded file, or other resource) anywhere in a Moodle course, the word will be linked to back to the definition.
Wiki Page Auto-linking Links the names of wiki pages back to the original wiki page.
Activity Names Auto-linking If you use the name of an activity elsewhere in the Moodle course, it will be linked back to the activity.
Algebra Notation Converts text mathematics notation into mathematics notation. See http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=5402 for some good examples.
Word Censorship Automatically deletes profanity in forum postings or other data from users.
Email Protection Scrambles user emails in user profiles. Once the emails are scrambled, outside search engines and guests won't be able to see users' email addresses. This will protect your users from spammers and other attackers.
Multimedia Plugins Associates uploaded multimedia files with the correct media players.
Multi-Language Content Allows you to print characters in different languages. It recognizes different character sets and displays them appropriately.
TeX Notation Another mathematics markup tool that allows you to use export TeX notation and display it correctly in Moodle. The text filters also have two settings that will affect how the filters and your server work:
Text cache lifetime Text filters can take a lot of processor power to analyze. If you have a large number of courses, the filters may slow your system. The text cache lifetime determines how often the filters run. If you set them to run too frequently, your system may slow down. If you set them to run too infrequently, analyzing new content will take too long and users will notice. You should experiment to find the correct amount of time for your server.
Filter uploaded files Moodle can also apply filters to uploaded HTML and text files as, well as content entered directly into Moodle itself. Again, you will need to balance the increased load imposed by filtering more files against the added usefulness of applying filters more widely. |
