Upgrading to Moodle 3.11

[rhetoricked]

I have a Moodle installation on my domain legalcommunication.org. I’m hoping to upgrade to Moodle 3.11, but I have no idea how to do that. Could I get some advice or does Reclaim offer a service to do that for a fee?

-Brian

[Ed_Beck]

Brian,

You can upgrade Moodle using Installatron, but the Installation upgrade is a little limited in terms of upgrading plugins.

The first thing to realize about Moodle has three parts, the files that make it work, the Moodle Data folder, and the config files. So when you go into file explorer, there will be a folder that starts with a . has a random string of letters, and ends with .data. Something like .asdfhash.data

That’s how Installtron creates the Moodle Data folder. You should be very careful of that folder and not do anything to it as you upgrade. The second piece that is important and you should be careful of is the Config.php file.

The second important thing, is that you need to save your plugins that are currently spread all across the Moodle Folders. Unlike applications like WordPress that have one plugin folder, your extra plugins for Moodle are distributed across all your files. At some point, you will need to find them all and move them back into the upgraded moodle.

With all that in mind here’s what I would do:

1. Go into CPanel, and find “My apps” Use Installatron to make a backup of your Moodle before you do anything else.
2. Move all of your Moodle Files from their current directory, EXCEPT don’t move the Moodledata file or the config.php file. Leave them so that they are the only things in the old Moodle folder. Make a new folder (up one level) that you call moodle-archive or something like that.
3. Go back to “My Apps” and upgrade Moodle from my apps. Sign into your Moodle as an administrator and do the database update. It’s very easy, just follow the prompts on the screen.
4. Figure out if you installed additional plugins that need to be replaced. You should be able to get a list of additional plugins that are missing. You will have to go through the folders in the Moodle Archive folder and find them, and move them to the new production instance.

After you upgrade, you should get a report like this. You will need to go back to those plugins in the plugin directory and figure out what folder it was installed in, usually in the installation directions.

5. Once you have all your plugins working, you don’t need to save the Moodle Archive folder, and you can get rid of it to save some space and because you also have the Jetbackup backups from Reclaim and the Installtron Backup that you made in step 1.

If anything goes wrong in steps 2-4 restore to the backup you made in step 1.