Topics

• How we planned for the move• Upgrade or fresh install?• Issues that needed an early decision• What technical problems we faced

• How we handled them

• Organisational planning • Involved curriculum teams

• Reflection

How we planned for the move

• Key things to consider:• Installed modules and services

• Are they still needed?• Are these available for Moodle 2?

• Type of usage and level of usage• Age/type of courses• Quality of courses

• Staff skills with Moodle• What are your objectives?

B&SD College

• Before the project:• Well established but unmanaged• Few plugins or modules being used• Mostly old courses

• Some not used at all• Others needed a restart

• Good usage in few areas• Confusion around student enrolment

• Windows Server• http://moodle2.bsdc.ac.uk/vle/

Sandwell College

• Before the project:• Well managed Moodle 1.9

• Courses maintained on an annual basis

• Fractured/Stagnated• Mostly file storage

• Considered difficult to use by some

• Good selection of plugins & modules installed

• SLES 10 Server• http://svc.sandwell.ac.uk/student/

Possible Objectives

• Simplified usage for all users• Improved integration w/ infrastructure• Relaunch, rejuvenation, reinvention• Preparation for future development• Encourage resource sharing• Make use of improved theming

• Ensure support from moodle.org

Upgrade or Fresh Install?

• Depends greatly on objectives• What content you have to bring across• A fresh start will be a more stable base

• But after 18 months this isn't such a problem• Moodle 2.1 and onwards can import individual

backups

• Also consider the spin for users• Do you want this to be a fresh start?

Issues needing an early decision

• How to host• Internal / External

• Operating System

• Hosting Software

• Database Options

• Whether to link to infrastructure• Information Systems

• Domains

• Staff engagement required

Hosting: Internal or External?

• Probably know this already if running Moodle 1.9

• Internal requires certain skills and will probably cost more

• But it also makes it easier to:• Integrate Moodle with other services• Customise Moodle to meet specific needs• Test and debug problems

Hosting: Operating System

• Windows Server• Skills are more widely available• Easier support for other MS systems• Can't handle large amounts of processes• Prefers threading work within one process

• Linux Server• Apache/PHP on Linux is native software• Support dependant on "flavour" of Linux

Hosting: Hosting Software

• HTTP Hosting:• Apache

• Best established, plenty of guides

• IIS (Windows Only)

• Microsoft support, about 10 to 20% slower

• Lighttp• Designed to handle modern web usage

• Really quick if well configured

• Little support online

Hosting: Hosting Software - PHP

• PHP 5.2 for Moodle 2.0, PHP 5.3 for 2.1

• For Windows Server download from here• What is VC6 and VC9?

• Compiler used, should match http host

• What about TS or NTS?• Use a NTS install with a FCGI connector

• For Linux depends on type used• Pre-compiled or Compile from source

• PHP Extensions• Moodle requirements are all common and easily

obtainable

Hosting: Database

• A few choices:• MySQL (5.0.25 or later)

• Standard, & best supported by Moodle

• MS-SQL (2005 or later)• Microsoft's, good software

• Should be fine but has had unique bugs in the past

• Oracle (10.2 or later)

• PostgreSQL (8.3)

Technical Problems we Faced

• Updating Moodle 1.9 to 2.X• Database differences• Developing plug-ins • Creating a new theme

• IE Compatibility

• Stress testing• Streamlining configurations

Updating from 1.9 to 2.X

• File storage completely changed• No folders on server per course id!

• Update essentially the same as usual• Backup everything! Moodle, Files & Database• Replace / Moodle contents• Log in as Admin to start process

• Lots of processing required• Modifying Databases• Restructure File Storage• Rebuild Questions/Quizzes

Database Differences

• For MySQL, Moodle uses InnoDB storage engine.• Should be more reliable

• Transaction safe, capable of row locking

• A little bit slower & uses more resources• Different operations available

• no repair, just check

• Issue w/ mdl_backup_controllers (MDL-29262)

• Gets massive when backing up and restoring.• Not important, so no need to backup

• Use --ignore-table option with mysqldump

Developing Plugins

• Many new types of plug-ins possible• Enrolment Methods, Repositories, Plagiarism

Detectors, Sub-Activities, Question-types

• Get around poor documentation• Dissected other plugins to understand them• Found Moodle XREF sites very useful• Comments found in lib & locallib files

• Such as lib/enrollib.php and enrol/locallib.php

• Familiarise yourself with Moodle coding guidelines if intend to publish

Creating a new theme

• Lots of guides and docs for this• Inherit as few themes as possible

• Fastest themes inherit from Base

• config.php holds a lot of functionality• Javascripts for header or footer

• Exclude inherited styles

• Apply custom renderer

• Check through other themes, • particularly "Afterburner" from 2.1 onwards

• Be aware of standard folders• Such as "pix_core" and "pix_plugins"

B&SD College Themes

Sandwell College Themes

IE Compatibility

• Targeting specific browsers with• Body classes (.ie .ie7)

• Check out CSS3PIE• IE6 woes? Two main choices:

• Eliminate IE6 and update to IE8• Try and make Moodle 2 support IE6

• Support will always be clonky for IE6• Can improve support with a few tweaks

to CSS.

Stress Testing

• Useful free tools like Apache JMeter• Allows you to "record" a test session• Includes logging in and out• Test can then be scaled up to include:

• Variable amount of test users• Variable time between user page loads.

• Also check intensive activities• Like language check-in/out for customisation• Course backups and importing• Bulk user avatar importing

Streamlining Configurations

• Be aware Apache/PHP has different settings/recommendations for Linux/Windows

• Caching• PHP - eAccelerator, APC• Database

• Bigger caches can reduce execution times• Giant caches misbehave, issues with recovery

Organisational Planning

• How will usage differ across the organisation?• Will you be able to meet these needs?

• Is there an opportunity for improvement?• New ways of working maybe?

• Are people aware of what will change?• Offer to attend meetings to discuss

these things

On Reflection - What we learnt

• Migration is an opportunity for change• Not just changes in Moodle itself • But also for organisations using it

• Some big changes have been made• But each of them for a good reason• Repositories sound scary but are important

• They're really just a source for getting files

• Keep an eye on what's ahead• A new version every 6 months