Moodle™ offers extensive customization options. If you have used it before, you will notice that you can change the behavior, look and feel without writing any code. However, that will require certain level of expertise because of how complex Moodle™ is.
But it’s a necessary evil that we just have to conquer if we are going to be at our best. Why is this so important?
Creating a Moodle™ Custom Page – Why is it Important?
- Every e-learning organization or establishment wants to stand out. They want to showcase their brand identity in every detail possible to get the attention of their learners. It maybe a logo or a color theme on their website, icons, font and so on. All these bring out the look and feel and build their visual identity.
Should your e-learning site be neglected?
Definitely NOT, you also want to be in the spotlight and provide the best functionality. So to achieve this goal, you must customize your Moodle™ in such a way that you are spectacular.
- While Moodle™ functions effortlessly, many instructors and learners find the interface not-so-appealing as you can see from the discussion here. Moodle™ customization is necessary to make the Moodle™ site very appealing to users.
- Users are mostly drawn to user interfaces that are attractive and user friendly. When the Moodle™ is customized properly with the users in mind, they will be happy and the engagement levels on your e-learning site will flourish.
- Customizing Moodle™ gives your Learners/students a solid visual identification and a better way to navigate. Your learners know what exactly to expect.
How to Customize Moodle™?
Technology is on the move and with the popularity of open source, you can create a lot because anything is possible. However, Moodle™ is a little complex than normal like we pointed out earlier. So your options for customization are now limited to just two (2), namely:
- Do-It-Yourself (DIY) if you are good at it
- Hire a developer or Moodle partner and pay for their services
Now, while these options are possible, you can’t build pages in Moodle™ from the ground up. And achieve a deeper level of customization, that will be outstandingly captivating.
These options will cost you more money and time. Especially since Moodle™ lacks a dedicated page building feature. And you need to get the basics right to know what you have to do.
So what’s the way forward?
What you need is an easy-to-use page builder that requires no special knowledge or experience in programming and costs very little to help you achieve maximum results.
There are many page builders out there such as Edumy, Edwiser RemUI, New Learning and so on. These page builders give you the necessary accessories to create or improve UI with ease.
Edwiser RemUI for example, has been on top of the list with awesome testimonies. Thanks to the flexibility of the theme and detailed documentation. I would suggest you to check out the free trial to get started.
Things To Remember For Better Moodle™ Customization
Let’s look at how we can customize Moodle™ in a better way now – the easier, the better.
Homepage customization
The Moodle™ homepage is the first page your student sees when the website loads and it should lead the learner to other pages without any trouble or confusion.
For you to successfully achieve that, you will need grab your learner’s attention without being overbearing. The trends of homepages today are so different than they were just a few years ago. Modern home pages have a refreshing quality to them, as well as a simple creative appeal. This is only possible if your homepage has gone through a systematic Moodle™ customization.
For Moodle™, Edwiser RemUI offers the Edwiser RemUI Homepage Builder to use in customizing the homepage with easy drag and drop functionalities. You will not need to write any code. See more information here on how to customize Moodle™ homepage to your taste.
Check out the Moodle™ Homepage customization docs here
Dashboard Customization
Another part of the Moodle™ that requires customization is the dashboard. This is because this part of the Moodle™ site is used to manage other parts of the Moodle™ by providing a way to manage information. For example, this is where you can see all the registered students and instructors. You can also decide how your Moodle™ site is used from the functionalities on the dashboard.
Since it is a very busy part of the Moodle™, it is necessary that it is properly customized so that the learners are not overwhelmed by data flying around the page or too many unnecessary buttons facing the user.
This Moodle™ customization problem is solved using the Edwiser RemUI for Admins & Teachers plugin. It provides an All-Inclusive Dashboard with Multipurpose Custom Blocks.
See more information here.
Moodle™ Login Page Customization
It is very important to customize the login page to be interesting and not time consuming since it is already a barrier to the main feature a user intends to access. The user should not feel frustrated or simply abandon your e-learning site for a competitor.
Edwiser RemUI provides a fully customizable Moodle™ login page to help create an intuitive Moodle™ login page that is very interesting and easy to use. To see how to do this step-by-step, follow this link.
Moodle™ Custom Pages
Moodle™ has a fixed page structure set by default. But you might need to create some personal pages which differ from the usual convention.
Also, there are several benefits of having custom pages in Moodle™ – Aesthetics, navigation, better structure/layout, flexibility to tweak page layouts as per your e-learning requirements.
This requires a custom page builder to edit, add or change page elements with minimal effort, flexibility in page designing, change the page layout as per e-learning needs, helps with optimizing learner experience, complete control over the page layout and how it functions, personalized design and so on.
Edwiser RemUI theme gives us the Demo Importer and the Page Builder. With demo importer you will be able to quickly set up your Moodle™ homepage with pre-made home page templates by easily importing demo courses.
See more details here
Unique branding
The easiest and the most credible way to recognize an organization is through unique website features such as logo, colours, themes, font, icons, certifications, e-mail addresses, domain and so on.
It becomes very important that these features are properly customized to be unique, interactive and informative.
Edwiser RemUI has many features in store to help you achieve better branding. For example Color Customization lets you make the most of your theme colour palette for a great design. See more on color customization here.
There are multiple Personalization Options to help you to choose the right font, logo and so on to suit your design. More personalization information in this link. You can even use the Live Customizer to modify your Moodle™ site elements in real-time.
See others in the documentation.
Custom Reporting
In Moodle™, custom reports are auto generated from the data or information already gathered. This is usually in the dashboard. For example, a custom report can show how many persons visit your Moodle™ site and what exactly they access while there. But there are different plugins/reports to fulfill different reporting objectives. And Moodle™ doesn’t offer custom reports.
A well customized report passes the right information and helps to make the right decision. If a report is not properly customized, wrong information might be distributed leading to other mistakes.
Edwiser Reports is a free, all-in-one Moodle™ reporting plugin that provides ready-made reports as well as all the necessary resources for making appealing custom reports with graphs, charts, table and so on. It provides visual reporting and analysis of e-learning trends in a user-friendly way.
For instance if you want to check the course progress as well as when he was last active on the LMS, Edwiser Reports lets you create a custom report that will calculate the course progress and also show the last access details about the same user.
See more details here
Conclusion
And there you have it! These are the pointers to keep in mind while customizing Moodle™ the right way! Probably, the simpler way too!
So, where do you want to start?
If you ask me – To customize Moodle™ properly and with ease, you could start with the Custom Page Builder in Edwiser RemUI. It offers enough flexibility to transform your Moodle™ site and make it top notch.
You can try out the demo or even take advantage of the free trial 🙂 Check it out today!