How to Upgrade Moodle

For upgrading your moodle site to the latest moodle version, follow the five steps:

  1. Backup your moodle site.
  2. Download latest moodle package.
  3. Put your site into maintenance mode.
  4. Upload downloaded compressed file to your server.
  5. Start upgrade process.

1. Backup

There are 3 things you need to backup before you upgrade:

  1. Moodle software files (moodle folder)
  2. Moodle uploaded files (moodledata folder)
  3. Moodle database

2. Download

You can download the latest Moodle release from:

https://download.moodle.org/releases/latest/

3. Maintenance Mode

To put your site in maintenance mode, navigate to:

Site administration → Server → Maintenance mode; and enable it.

4. Uploading and Extracting

Suppose your moodle installation is in sub-directory: mysite.com/moodle

4.1 Upload the Compressed File

Upload the compressed file, that you have downloaded, to mysite.com/moodle

4.2 New Folder

Create a new folder mysite.com/moodle/OLDSITE

Use capital letters for better visibility.

4.3 Move Old Files

Move (do not copy) everything in mysite.com/moodle to mysite.com/moodle/OLDSITE

Select everything in mysite.com/moodle except the folder OLDSITE & uploaded compressed file. Then move to mysite.com/moodle/OLDSITE.

4.4 Extract

Extract or unzip or unpack the compressed file to mysite.com/moodle

4.5 Copy Configuration File

Copy your old config.php file from mysite.com/moodle/OLDSITE to mysite.com/moodle

5. Upgrading

Moodle will automatically detect the new version and perform all the SQL database or file system upgrades that are necessary.

Open the URL mysite.com/moodle in a browser and follow the upgrade process.

Finally, disable maintenance mode and check your website.

If everything is fine, you can delete OLDSITE folder.