Moodle Community Sites

What we really need is a complete reorganisation and update of all pages in http://docs.moodle.org/20/en/Category:Installation so that newcomers to Moodle have easy to understand documentation on installing Moodle.

I've done a first pass through http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Category:Installation and deleted a bunch of pages which are not relevant to Moodle 2.x. Please find below my notes about the remaining pages after looking through them with Koen.

Key pages

i.e. pages which should be included in the TOC, though perhaps need the text rearranging over more or fewer pages

• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installing_Moodle
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installation_FAQ
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installation_Quickstart

Text from the original Installing Moodle page was rearranged over the following pages (some with rather weird page names). Perhaps it should be put back on one page?

• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/User_site_capacities - out-of-date
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/PHP_settings_by_Moodle_version
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Create_.htaccess_file
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Create_Moodle_site_database
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Creating_Moodle_site_data_directory
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Moodle_site_moodle_directory
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Install_Moodle_with_installer_script

Perhaps the content of the following pages could be rearranged over 3 pages about installing Moodle on Windows, Linux and Mac:

• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installation_for_Windows_2003_with_IIS
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installation_guide_for_Windows_using_EasyPHP
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installing_Moodle_on_Windows_Vista
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Windows_installation_using_XAMPP - perhaps combining with http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Complete_install_packages_for_Windows
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Windows_installation - needs updating
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/RedHat_Linux_installation
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Step_by_Step_Installation_on_a_Mac_OS_X_Server - perhaps combining with http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Complete_Install_Packages_for_Mac_OS_X

• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installing_plugins
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Moodle_migration
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Upgrading
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Upgrading_FAQ
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Upgrading_to_Moodle_2.1
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Verify_Database_Schema - useful info for when upgrading goes wrong, but the page needs to be more easily found

• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Cron

Text from the Cron page has recently been rearranged over the following pages as proposed in http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Talk:Cron Is this a sensible way of organising things, or is it better to keep all the info on one page?

• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Cron_with_MAC_OS_X
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Cron_with_UNIX
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Cron_with_Windows_OS
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Cron_with_web_hosting_services

Documentation about other software

Should this info be included in Moodle Docs or should we just include links to other sites where the info can be found?

• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installing_AMP
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Using_the_Microsoft_SQL_Server_Driver_for_PHP
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installing_APC_in_Windows
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installing_Apache_on_Windows
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installing_MSSQL_for_PHP
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installing_MySQL_on_Windows
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installing_Oracle_for_PHP
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installing_PHP_on_Windows
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installing_eAccelerator_In_Ubuntu_Server
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Upgrading_XAMPP

Less significant pages

i.e. pages with can be kept in the installation category but not included in the TOC or info moved to other pages and then deleted

• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/1and1_MySQL_installation
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Complete_install_packages - no point in general page, check info included in Mac and/or Windows pages then delete
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Cron_reports
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Cron_settings - content could be included in http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Cron
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Finding_and_Selecting_A_Web_Host
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Installation_guide_-_Moodle_for_Windows_on_a_USB_Memory_Stick - seems very out-of-date
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/SUSE_Linux_Server_10 - seems very out-of-date
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Step-by-step_Install_Guide_for_Solaris_10_with_Oracle_10 - seems very out-of-date
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Step-by-step_Install_Guide_for_Zenwalk-5.0 - seems very out-of-date
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Manual_installation_on_Ubuntu - seems very out-of-date
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Step-by-step_Guide_for_Installing_Moodle_on_Mac_OS_X_10.4_Client - check info included in http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Step_by_Step_Installation_on_a_Mac_OS_X_Server then delete (if mac is so easy, why the need for so many docs?)
  http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Manual_installation_of_Moodle_2.0_on_Mythbuntu_using_Git - Mythbuntu is irrelevant, but the page could be a good base for 'Manual installation on Ubuntu using Git'
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Unexpected_installation_halts - perhaps these be reviewed and then added to Installation FAQ to make them more easy to find
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/FreeTDS
• http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Masquerading

Please note that I'm certainly no expert in installing Moodle so some of the above notes may be totally wrong! Feedback and further comments would be much appreciated. Finally Howard, you should feel free to reorganise and improve the installation documentation as you see best!

Having been working on this for a few days now my driving policy is to make the information more succinct. I think the documentation has become spread over too many pages and some of it has become incredibly verbose (not in a good way).

I'm happy to be overruled but I believe that we can/should expect users to have at least a superficial understanding of the platform that they are attempting to install Moodle on. It just becomes an unwieldy nightmare otherwise!

+1 for making the information more succinct and expecting a basic understanding. Thanks Howard

Good luck! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Just came across a couple more key pages which I think should be included in the installation category:

http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/Git_for_Administrators
http://docs.moodle.org/21/en/CVS_for_Administrators

Yep - already attacked the Git one. The main install pages and those that link directly from them should be more or less done. I keep revisiting pages as I find other information I didn't know existed but you should get the spirit of it if you want to have a look.

Comments appreciated.

I'll try to keep a list of pages I have updated to make it easier to copy them to 2.2.

Many thanks for your docs work, Howard. Whilst the wikis will always be work-in-progress, I think it's time to mark this issue as resolved.

Thanks very much for your help Howard.