What are location settings?
Moodle is a program for running online courses. Location settings tell Moodle where your site is, in the world. The most important is the time zone, which is the clock region you live in. If it is wrong, deadlines, quiz times and course dates show the wrong hour. Moodle also stores a default country and city that new users start with.
These steps are for Moodle 3. Newer versions use almost the same page.
Steps
- Log in to Moodle as an administrator.
- Open Site administration. It is in the navigation block, or under the menu icon on the left.
- Click the Location tab.
- Click Location settings.
- Find Default timezone. Choose your region, such as a city in your area. This is the zone Moodle uses for the site and for users who have not picked their own.
- Find Forced timezone. If you pick a zone here, every user must use it and cannot choose their own. Leave it on Users can choose their own time zone unless you need to force one.
- Find Default country. Choose the country most of your users live in.
- Find Default city. Type a city name if you wish.
- Scroll to the bottom and click Save changes.
Each user can have a personal setting
A user can set their own time zone in their profile. They click their name, choose Preferences, then Edit profile, and pick a Timezone. This works only if you have not forced a time zone.
Check your work
- Open a course with a dated activity, such as an assignment.
- Look at the due time.
- It should match the time zone you set.
Tip: If times still look wrong, also check the clock of your server. Ask Hostvento support if you have doubts. Purge the Moodle caches if old values stay: Site administration, Development, Purge all caches.
Quick recap
- Location settings control time zone, country and city.
- Open Site administration, Location, Location settings.
- Set the Default timezone first.
- Use Forced timezone only if you need it.
- Click Save changes.