One of the recurring questions in Moode forums is people asking for advice on how to choose the right Moodle hosting plan. In this blog entry we will discuss technical considerations for choosing a Moodle hosting provider.

Number of Concurrent Users

One of the important aspect of choosing a Moodle hosting plan is knowing the number of concurrent users you will have on your platform, This is very important because if your Moodle hosting package is not equipped to support the number of users you have then Moodle will run very slow in return leaving the students frustrated and damaging the eLearning experience your business provides.

You need to choose the peak number for your number of concurrent users. The peak number should drive the hardware requirements, not the average number. Otherwise your user experience will be very slow when they need to use it the most. Let us say that most students access your Moodle during the exam weeks then that is when there experience needs to be good. The number of concurrent users drive the RAM and CPU requirements for the server.

Knowing how many concurrent users will be accessing the moodle platform and how many registered users you have will be the key to choose the right environment for your site. Both the number of concurrent students and number of registered students are important aspects. The number of concurrent students will help us decide how much RAM and CPU you are going to need.

Amount of Storage Space

You need to consider how much storage space you need per users and for your courses. You need to plan for at least 30% more space than you think you need to avoid issues.

LAMP Infrastructure

At this level you are expected to know which version of Moodle you will be hosting. This is important because there are different prerequisites for the infrastructure for each version of Moodle and knowing this information will be handy to choose the right hosting for your Moodle. This information can easily be found documented in the technical directions for each Moodle version on Moodle.org or in Moodle forums.

Choosing a LAMP infrastructure is important because Moodle runs best in LAMP standard infrastructure (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP).

Before choosing a provider ask your hosting company if they will guide you on updating the correct version of LAMP to meet the requirements of future Moodle updates as well as helping you update MySQL and PHP to meet the requirements of our version of Moodle you are running.

Our recommendation is to host your Moodle on a Linux server. Even though Moodle can be hosted on Windows server the performance will be much better on a Linux server.

2-) Company

Moodle Support and Services:

It is important to ask what kind of Moodle support and Moodle services your hosting provider is giving with hosting. We offer level 3 support which includes patch updates, performance issues and emergency support. We also offer level 2 support which includes support for plugins, blocks, integrations etc. At Paradiso Solutions we offer reliable and responsive customer support for all your LMS softwares such as Totara, Mahara and Moodle. Our involvement in the Moodle, Totara and Mahara Communities gives us an edge on understanding the software exceptionally well.

Choosing a Provider Dedicated to Moodle

Choosing a provider dedicated to Moodle will be a smart choice since the environment will be configured to Moodle requirements.

This is also important because if your provider have other services to host then your Moodle may be competing for the use of streaming video applications, video conferencing or photography catalogs etc which will use a lot of resources from the server and will affect the overall performance of your Moodle.

Here is a checklist of items to consider when choosing a plan and a provider to host your Moodle:

•  Number of users you will have
• ·Number of users expected at a peak time
• Storage per user
•  Number of courses
• Total size of the courses

Our experts can work with you to solve any issues, questions or eLearning development needs, in timely manner and according to your outlined specifications. For our LMS tech support please contact us at [email protected] or call +1 800 513 5902