Keep you Moodle site Upgraded
Moodle is an excellent learning content delivery and management tool and with an international development community the platform is continuously evolving to enhance user experience, ease of delivery of content and security enhancements.
With this in mind, it is essential that you keep your Moodle updated. Unless you have a good support staff at your disposal this essential task is generally delayed for various good untill we run into issues.
Here are a few essential reasons why we should upgrade to the latest version, where your infrastructure allow;
Ensure your site is Secure
Every time a minor or major upgrade is released it includes patches for bugs and potential security vulnerabilities. So the reality is that while your site may functionality you could be allowing for your user information and your content to be at risk.
Developer Support
Each upgrade has support. Remember that Moodle developers will focus on threats and bugs that may be prevalent in the later versions. So it is logic that support for older version will expire. Moodle HQ will release the dates and therefor it is prudent to keep an eye on them.
New Features for User Experience
With each upgrade Moodle HQ has always released new features that will enhance your user experiences for both learners and administration staff. This simply means that if you are not upgrading you are loosing out on improved features.
Upgrading
You will need to have administrator permission to upgrade your Moodle site.
Step 1: Maintenance Mode
It is essential to place your site in maintenance mode. You may also want to add a custom notification on the login page which will help your user navigate when they attempt to login while you are in the process of upgrading the site version.
Step 2: Check your System Requirements
You should check your system requirements for the version you want to install. Check the requirements in the site administration menu; administrator > server > environment.
Step 3: Backup your Site
This step is very important if you are doing a major upgrade. In order to backup your entire site, you need to backup these three areas;
- the software (e.g. everything in server/htdocs/moodle)
- the uploaded files (e.g. server/moodledata)
- the database (e.g. the SQL or postgres database)
NB. Do not simply overwrite you old code. It is good practice create a different folder and to copy the existing code to it. However, copy the config.php file back to your new Moodle directory.
Step 3: Install
- Download the selected upgrade from the Moodle.org site.
- If you have custom plugins and themes, you should add these to the code, but make sure that you do not overwrite any new code.
- Login to the site and use the notification link in the site administration menu to start the upgrade.
- Monitor the progress once the process starts and action the prompts.
- You will be notified of the success of the upgrade.
- Once the upgrade is completed change the maintenance mode status of the site, this will allow user to access the site.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, you can, but not in all cases. You can only upgrade to Moodle 4.4 from Moodle 4.1.2 or later. If upgrading from earlier versions, you must upgrade to 4.1.2 as a first step.
Something may always go wrong, so be prepared. Be sure to make a backup. You could also make a copy of your site and test the upgrade on the copied site first.
The latest release can easily be downloaded from https://download.moodle.org/
Moodle developers release major upgrade every 6 months. Minor upgrades are regularly available. You should receive notification when this happens.
The site administrator should enable the update notification in Site Administration > Server > Update notification. When updates for the plugins are available, then an “install this update now’ button will appear on the plugins overview page. You can then initiate the plugin upgrade.
Most themes developers upgraded their code to Moodle 4; however not all theme developers chose to do so, and have developed different theme solutions to Moodle 4. It would be good to check the theme release information before you upgrade.