Step-by-Step Tutorial:
Requirements:
MLE-Moodle is an extension to Moodle, so you need to install Moodle 1.9.x first. You can get Moodle here.
Therefore the requirements of Moodle are the requirements of MLE-Moodle too:
  • Moodle 1.9.x (Attention: Does NOT work with Moodle 2.0!!!)
  • PHP 4.3.0
  • Database: MySQL 4.1.16 or Postgres 8.0 or MSSQL 9.0 or Oracle 9.0
For a detailed list of requirements of Moodle click here.

For the Moodle installation instructions, please click here.

Setting up Moodle courses:
So after you have finished the installation of Moodle, you should create at least one course. So as the Admin do the following:
  • In the "Site Administration" panel click on "Courses" and "Add/edit courses"
  • Click on the "Add a new course" (on some Moodle versions you must choose a category first)
  • Select a Full name like "mLearning Testing course" and a short name like "mLearn" (of course you can choose any other name)
  • On the next page (assigning roles) add yourself as a teacher, so you can access the course
  • Now you have a blank new course, create another course (just like that) which will be the Mobile Community course

So now we have at least two courses we could use now for eLearning. If you want you can click on your "mLearning Testing course" and add learning content. You can do this by pressing the "Turn editing on"-button which is loacted at the upper right. Afterwards you can add resources and learning-activities.

Installing MLE-Moodle files:
Now we are ready to turn Moodle to a mLearning system. Download the MLE-Moodle installation package. Extract the content and upload this content (the content of a folder named "moodle" in the ZIP file!) to the moodle root- folder on your web-server. The Moodle root-folder is the folder which contains the "config.php" and the folders "mod", "lib", "admin" and lot's more. The MLE-Moodle installation package contains similar folders (like "mod", "block" or "admin") you need to overwrite. Don't worry not a single Moodle-file is overwritten, so it is save to click on "overwrite" if you are asked.
To check if you were successful, go to the "blocks" folder in the Moodle root-folder. You should see a new folder called "mle".

Finishing the installing:
Now visit your Moodle web-server with your web-browser and log-in as the admin.
  • In the "Site Administration" panel click on "Notifications"
  • After the page has finished loading click on the "Continue" button at the bottom of the page. Click on the "Save" button if you are asked.
  • In the "Site Administration" panel click on "Modules" - "MLE" - "MLE Moodle Config"
  • Check that "Enable MLE-Moodle" is activated.
  • Select the Mobile community course you created earlier and activate mobile communities
  • Click on save
Enabling Mobile access:
  • Log in as Admin
  • Go to the front page and click on the button "Turn editing on" (upper right)
  • Search for a new block called "blocks" and select "Mobile Access"
  • Move the new "Mobile Access"-block where you want it to be
  • In the new "Mobile access" block click on the last URL for the mobile browser access to open the page in your browser
  • Be patient the first access to MLE-Moodle needs some time
Now you should see the MLE-Moodle front page, as you would see it on the mobile phone browser. If you click on the "Download"-button in the "Mobile access" block (back on the start-page of Moodle), you will be redirected to a download-server where you can download the mobile phone application which is already pre-configured for your MLE-Moodle server.

In the next part of this tutorial we learn how to customize our MLE-Moodle configuration:

Configuration of MLE-Moodle:
Configuring browser access:
As Admin go to "Modules" - "MLE" - "MLE Browser Access"
If you do not want that users can access Moodle with their mobile browser, you can deny the access here, but this is hardly usefull.
So first of all we are going to change the URL for the mobile browser. After the installation you probably see a very large URL in the text field - no one will every type this URL on a mobile phone, so you will need a shorter URL which redirects the user to this large URL. The best way would be to create a subdomain that redirects to this large URL (eg: http://mobile.myschooldomain.com). If you can not create your own sub-domain you can use a redirect service like http://tinyurl.com.
For our demo-MLE-Moodle server, we created this short URL: http://demom.elibera.com, which redirects to this long URL: http://elibera.com/testing/moodle91/blocks/mle/browser.php.

If you want you can now set a custom page-title too. To change the look-and-feel you need create your own theme. See the FAQs on how to do that.
Don't forget to click on Save!

Configuring the mobile application (MLE client):
As Admin go to "Modules" - "MLE" - "MLE Client: Installation"
If you do not want to use the mobile client, you can turn it off here, by decativating the access.
Besides this setting you can activate or deactivate the internal download-server. If you deactive the internal download-server you will use the public download-server from elibera.com.
The download-server (no matter if intern or extern) can be access over the block "Mobile Access"!

Configuring your own internal download-server:
If you do not want to use the mobile client, you can skip this part!
We strongly recommend to use the internal download-server and host the installation files of the mobile client on your own server. Otherwise you are completely dependent on our server. If our server is down or in maintainance, you can't install the mobile client. Therefore you should host the installation files on your own server.
If you only activate the internal download-server without hosting the installation files, your internal download server in MLE-Moodles links to the installation files on our server (elibera.com), therefore you are still dependent on our server to be online (but you will always have the most up-to-date installation files).

To host the installation files on your own server, you must download the installation files first. The installation files are packed in a ZIP file or in a 7z file (the 7z file needs only 5 to 10MB, whereas the zip file needs 25 to 35MB). Here are the links to the most current installation packages:
And the smaller but identical 7z files (note: you need a tool to uncompress 7z files, if you don't know how to do that use the ZIP files above): You only need to download the language packages you really need. Furthermore you need to download the following file: mle_moodle.php (click with the right mouse-button on this link and select save-as and store the file as "mle_moodle.php").

Now you need to upload the files to your MLE-Moodle server (MOODLE-DIR is the path to your MLE-Moodle installation):
  • Copy the mle_moodle.php file to MOODLE-DIR/blocks/mle/dwn/ (and overwrite the existing file).
  • Now create a folder in MOODLE-DIR/blocks/mle/dwn/ called "mle_moodle"
  • Extract the downloaded installation packages and upload the content to this folder: MOODLE-DIR/blocks/mle/dwn/mle_moodle/ (if you are asked if you should overwrite, say yes)
  • in the folder MOODLE-DIR/blocks/mle/dwn/mle_moodle/ you should see now a new folder called "genvendor".
As Admin go to "Modules" - "MLE" - "MLE Client: Installation"
In "MLE installation files" enter now the full path to "MOODLE-DIR/blocks/mle/dwn/mle_moodle/" (MOODLE-DIR is the full path to your MLE-Moodle installation). Don't forget the "/" at the end!.

Now click on save at the bottom. You are now using your internal download-server and host your own installation files.
On the MLE-Info Page you can see if there is a new mobile client avaliable. If there is a new build, you should do the previous steps again, to update the installation files on your server.

Additional configuration of your internal download-server:
These steps are optional but strongly recommended to improve the useabillity for your users!

We strongly recommend to use a SMS gateway for the installation of the mobile client. With a SMS gateway the user just enters his telefon number and gets a SMS with the installation link on his mobile phone (there the user just needs to click on the link and the installation starts). This is the easiest way of installing the mobile client on the phone. Note: the use of a SMS-gateway is recommended but optional. If you do not want to pay money for a SMS-gateway just scroll down to the "Ticket URL"-part.

First of all you need a SMS provider with a HTTP-Gateway to send SMS (the SMS is send with a HTTP request). Just do a google-search to find an apriopiate SMS-gateway provider for you. From this SMS-gateway provider you should get the info how the HTTP-URL looks like to send a SMS with an HTTP request, here is an example:
http://mysmsserver.com/send.php?user=myusername&pass=mypassword&number=00431234567&text=this+is+my+sms+text

Test this URL for your SMS-Gateway, see if it works and checkout what you see after you have entered this URL in your browser. Useually you would see something like "OK" or "SUCCESS" (this is the SMS URL token, write it down we will need this later).
For MLE-Moodle you would change this URL to this:
http://mysmsserver.com/send.php?user=myusername&pass=mypassword&number={0}&text={1}
{0} and {1} are dynamical values and are replaced by MLE-Moodle. This URL you must enter on the "MLE Client: Installation" page in the field "SMS URL". Afterwards make sure that "activate SMS Script" is activated (the checkbox above). Now enter the "SMS URL token" too (eg: "OK" or "SUCCESS" or whatever word you saw after successfully sending a SMS) and click on save at the bottom of the page.

Now you can test the sending of SMS in your internal gateway server.

Furthermore we strongly recommend to use a better "Ticket URL". It doesn't matter if you are using a SMS-gateway or not, this URL should be as short as possible. This URL is used for the installation (it contains the link to the installation file). Either it is stored in the SMS (a SMS can only have 160 characters) or the user has to enter the URL on his mobile phone in the web-browser (so it should be as short as possible).
The standard URL would be: http://yourserver/blocks/mle/jad.php?t=JADID. Where JADID is the ID of the installation file. So what you need to do is, to build a redirect to this URL.
If you are using Apache (most people do that), here is a simple way to achive such ja redirect:

Go to MOODLE_DIR/blocks/mle and create a new folder called "jadredirect". Copy the file .htaccess into this fodler on your server. Note: in MLE-Moodle versions after 0.8.6 this folder and this file already exist.
If you go to your browser and enter the following URL: "http://yourmoodleserver/blocks/mle/jadredirect/" (replace yourmoodleserver with the URL to your MLE-Moodle-server) you will get redirected to your internal download-server, if not please check the URL and that you are using Apache (with mod-rewrite).
Now you need to compress this URL by:
  • Creating a subdomain like "jad.myserver.com" that links to http://yourmoodleserver/blocks/mle/jadredirect/
  • Or you go to http://tinyurl.com/ and create a tiny-URL for http://yourmoodleserver/blocks/mle/jadredirect/ (result example: http://tinyurl.com/mlejad)
On the "MLE Client: Installation"-page you enter this compressed-URL in to the field for the Ticket-URL (don't forget the "/" at the end and to click on Save), example: http://tinyurl.com/mlejad/ or http://jad.myserver.com/

If you open your internal download-server and select a device you can test the new short URL, by clicking on "Start installation now". This link (example: http://tinyurl.com/mlejad/t85) should open now a JAD file.

Keeping MLE-Moodle up-to-date:
As Admin go to "Modules" - "MLE" - "MLE Info" and check out if there is a new version of MLE-Moodle or it's sub-components. An update of MLE-Moodle is done like a fresh install without the configuration steps (and of course you do not need to create the courses again).
To see if the update was successful, please visit the MLE Info page again and see if the version number is now correct.

Uninstalling MLE-Moodle:
It is no problem at all to uninstall MLE-Moodle. First delete the blocks "mle" and "online_users_mobile" via the Admin-Page (Moduls - Blocks - Manage Blocks). Than delete the activities "mlo", "flashcardtrainer" and "mobiletags" via the Admin-Page (Moduls - Activities - Manage activities). Afterwards you need to delete the following files and folders in your moodle-root folder:
  • admin/settings/mle.php
  • auth/mle/
  • blocks/mle/
  • blocks/online_users_mobile/
  • lang/de_utf8/mle.php
  • lang/de_utf8/help/flashcardtrainer/
  • lang/de_utf8/help/mlo/
  • lang/en_utf8/mle.php
  • lang/en_utf8/help/flashcardtrainer/
  • lang/en_utf8/help/mlo/
  • besides en and de there are other languages shiped with MLE-Moodle: es, it, pt
  • mod/flashcardtrainer/
  • mod/mlo/
  • mod/mobiletags/
For a complete and clean uninstall please check out the UNINSTALL.txt.

What's next?:
Go to the FAQs and read through the questions. A lot of questions are already covered there. If you still need help, check out the Support-page or post your question in the forum.
A lot of information can be found in the WIKI too (Here you can find most of the documentation).

Advanced configuration and installation [optional]:
The rest of this tutorial is optional and is not recommended for beginners. The installation of the additional servers is only necessary if you need a completely independent mLearning solution and have lots of concurrent users. Please see the FAQs for details.

Requirements for the MLE server software:
  • A server with a public IP adress, where you can install and run Java (J2SE) programs. This is useally called a "root-server", where you can install and run everything.
  • Java (J2SE) 6.0 or higher
  • A Linux operation system is recommended but not necessary (will work with Windows too)

Installation and Configuration of the gateway or messaging server:
The installation is described in the following tutorial: Registering the gateway and messaging server in MLE-Moodle:
  • As Admin go to "Modules" - "MLE" - "MLE Client: Server"
  • Now set the IPs and the Ports for your custom gateway and messaging servers
  • Deactivate the public gateway and messaging server checkboxes
  • Click on Save
From now on, every mobile application that is downloaded will use your custom gateway and messaging server.