Backup
- Login to the course that is the one (or has the activities) that you wish to back up.
- In the “Administration block,” choose “Backup”
- You will see a screen titled “Course backup: + the name of the course” and a listing of course components with checks in boxes next to each. (column 1 has component names, column 2 is the “user data” relative to each component.)
- A few possibilities for this one — so read and then make your choices. . .
- If you wish to make an exact duplicate of the course, then you need not “uncheck” anything, and then click the “Continue” button at the bottom of the page.
- If, however, you want to backup the course, but not keep the “user data” for past course participants, then click on the “All/None” link at the top of the right column. (Note: some activities, such as Wikis and Databases count teacher input as “user data” so you may want to add back checkmarks next to “user data” for just those items. Otherwise, you will lose your starter pages for those activities.
- If you only want to back up one or a few of the components of this course to use in another course, first click on the “All/None” link at the top of left column. Then simply check next to the items you wish to include in your backup file. (For example, if you wish to backup a wiki activity, you would click on the “All/None” link at the top of the left column to remove all checkmarks from boxes, then click on each box next to “Wikis” and next to the “User data” for Wikis, only.
- At the bottom of this page are items where you choose other things related to this course to back up.
- “Metacourse” – The default is yes. You can usually leave this alone.
- “Users” “Course” is the default, and it is typical to just leave it at that.
- “Logs” – typically “No,” unless you are backing up and restoring in the middle of a course that is continuing with the same students and users.
- “User files” – these are the files the users have uploaded to this course. Choose “Yes” here if backing up midway through a course, “No” if you want to start the course over.
- “Course files” — Choose “Yes” if you want the files that you, the teacher/creator uploaded to the course files to be transferred. (images, documents, web pages, etc.).
- Finally, click the “Continue” button at the bottom of the list.
- The next page will list what will be backed up. If all looks well, click the “Continue” button.
- The next page will show the Name of the file, usually “backup-[course name]-[date numbers]- [time numbers].zip,” then list the activities completed and, hopefully, the message that “Backup completed successfully.” Click the “Continue” button.
- It will then go to a page listing the backup files completed for this course (some of these may be done automatically-depending upon the system administrator’s setup arrangements.) Your most recent file can be identified by the date and time. Look first at the bottom of the list.
- If you plan to move the backed up course or files to a new course or another server, then you must download the “zip” file to your desktop or other local storage device. To do so, click on the file name and this will start the usual download process for your browser and system. Choose “Save to Disk” or your browser’s equivalent message. Click the “Okay” (or equivalent) button to download the file to your desktop or regular download folder location.
- You can now transfer the .zip file to a USB stick, attach to email or burn it to a CD for physical transport with you, or just open your browser to the Moodle server on which you wish to “restore” this course or set of activities.
