How to back up your Moodle site

What is Moodle?

Moodle is free software for online teaching. Teachers use it to share lessons, quizzes and grades. A backup is a spare copy of your work. If something breaks, you can use the copy to put things back.

Part 1: Back up one course

1. Log in to Moodle as a teacher or administrator.
2. Open the course you want to save.
3. Click the gear icon, or the More menu, in the course page.
4. Click Backup.
5. Choose what to include, such as users, activities and files. The page has tick boxes for this. Click Next.
6. Tick the items you want. Click Next again.
7. Check the summary. Click Perform backup.
8. Wait until you see a message that the backup is complete. Click Continue.
9. Find your file in the list called User private backup area. Click Download and keep the file somewhere safe.

The file ends in .mbz. You can restore it later with the Restore option in the same menu.

Part 2: Set up automatic course backups

1. Log in as an administrator.
2. Go to Site administration.
3. Open Courses, then Backups.
4. Click Automated backup setup.
5. Set the backup to Enabled. Choose the days and the storage place.
6. Click Save changes.

Automatic backups need Moodle's scheduled tasks, called cron, to run. Ask Hostvento support if you are not sure it is set up.

Part 3: Back up the whole site

A full Moodle backup has three parts. You need all three.

1. The Moodle program files. Copy them with File Manager in your control panel, or download a compressed copy.
2. The moodledata folder. This is where Moodle keeps uploaded files.
3. The database. This is where Moodle keeps users, grades and settings. In your control panel, use the backup tool or export it with phpMyAdmin.

Quick recap

• Course backup: open the course, click Backup, then Perform backup.
• Download the .mbz file and keep it safe.
• Automatic backups are in Site administration, Courses, Backups.
• A full site backup needs program files, moodledata and the database.