Create Your Own Online Courses Platform for Free Using Moodle and Openshift

Moodle is an open source learning management system (LMS), to simplify it for you; think of Moodle as a WordPress for teachers and instructors. Moodle helps teachers and instructors who have no prior knowledge to programming (if you can use a web browser then you can use Moodle) build a website that contains the course material (Videos, animations, books, etc.), quizzes, allow students submit their homework, wiki and many other things that teachers/instructors need in order do their job more effectively. This tip will present a step by step tutorial on how to setup your online courses platform for free using Moodle and Openshift, the only skill you’ll need during the tutorial is your ability to use a web browser.

Requirements

1. A free Openshift account, just go to Openshift website and register using your email, no credit card is required.

 Steps

1. After registering; go to Openshift home page and click on the “MY APPS” on the top of the screen.
2. You’ll be directed to your log-in window and enter your credentials, you’ll be directed to a new window click on the blue “Create your first application now” link.
3. You’ll be directed to a window, select the “PHP 5.4” tab from the “PHP” menu.
4. You’ll be directed to a new window, in the public URL; type the name of the project/application name (e.g. Moodle, MoodleCourse, etc.) in the first space and the domain name (it’s not your real domain name, just any identification name e.g. AwesomeGuy/AwesomeGal) in the second space.
5. Under the public URL, there’s the source code slot, just copy and paste the following  link “https://github.com/moodle/moodle” and it should look like the screenshot below (it’;s worth noting that this link will install an Alpha release of Moodle, if you want to install a stable release then use the following link “https://github.com/burningTyger/openshift_moodle.git”) :
6. Leave everything as it’s and click on “Create Application” tab at the end of the page.
7. It will take a while then you’ll be directed to a new window, just click on the blue “Not now continue” link.
8. You’ll be directed to a new window where you should add MySQL just by clicking the blue “Add MySQL” link.
9. You’ll be directed to a new window, just click on the “Add Cartridge” tab.
10. You shall be directed to anew window where you shall find all of your “MySQL” credentials.
11. Now you’ll need to add phpMyAdmin; click on the blue “Add phpMyAdmin” located at the bottom of the same window.
12. You’ll then be directed to a new window to confirm the addition of phpMyAdmin, just click on the “Add Cartridge” tab.
13. You’ll be directed to the main window again and it’s time to go to your “Moodle website” and start the installation process, to do that simply click on the blue link at the top of the screen (that’s your URL).
14. You’ll be directed to the “Moodle” installation window, just click on the blue “Next” tab.
15. you’ll be directed to a new window to select the website address and other options, just click on the blue “Next” tab.
16. You’ll then be directed to a new window to select the database driver just click on the blue “Next” tab.
17. You’ll be directed to a new window, where you should enter your credentials “name, email, password, database username, database password”, you can get this information from step “10”, leave the last three fields as default.
18. In that window,  you should provide your database credentials, there’s a small trick here which is getting your database server IP, the easiest way to do so is to return to your application and click on the small arrow at the phpMyAdmin tab.
19. A new window will popup just copy the number shown in the below screenshot.
20. Paste that number in the database server slot in the Moodle installation, then fill in the rest of the  information from your database credentials that you can find in your application, then click next.
21. You’ll then be directed to the license of agreement window, just click on the “continue” tab”.
22. You might them be prompted by a warning message informing you that what you’re about to install is an alpha release of Moodle, just click on the “continue” tab at the bottom.
23. The installation will proceed, and after finishing just click on the “Continue” tab.
24. You’ll then be directed to a new window, to fill your username, password, email and other information, after finishing just click on the “Update profile” tab.
25. You’ll be directed to your Moodle website.

Now, you’ve a fully functional courses platform, that you can start using and start adding you own courses.