**Some thoughts on Moodle and other LMSes in 2025**
Read it on my blog, it has a nicer image/text layout.
I have used Moodle long, long ago – I think the last time in 2010 (as a content/course designer). I didn’t like it much then. It felt too spartan.
Then I worked for some time in BlackBoard (2012-2022), TalentLMS (2013-now) and briefly in Canvas (2015).
Blackboard felt more polished than Moodle. Maybe because I was using cloud hosted version with enterprise support. BB’s social feed is also nice.
In 2013 I started using (cloud based) TalentLMS and designed/transferred all courses I was selling/providing. I still use TalentLMS for flagship courses for companies. Not sure for how long.
TalentLMS is very easy to use LMS with just enough functionalities. I was always happy with their support and never experienced downtime. I would probably stick with it forever if … year 2022/23 didn’t happen.
TalentLMS redesigned their packages (and pricing) and suddenly I was paying 2x as much as earlier. The subscription is tied to number of users and levels of functionalities. Last year they also jumped on AI train and started offering AI/LLM assistants for course preparation.
Sure, I’m not forced to use AI tools. Nevertheless, I felt it is time to leave this story behind.
I reevaluated the current LMS market and 2 months ago I decided to try Moodle again. This time – from the scratch. Sounds crazy? Why would anyone in their right mind leave the comfort of cloud based LMS and take the technical tinkering path?
I don’t know, I just knew I wanted to do it.
So I did.
Firstly, I installed Moodle to my Proxmox server from Turnkey’s Moodle template. The installation was dead easy, click, click, click, voila. Moodle 3.5 was up and running in no time.
But then I wanted to upgrade it to 4.5. I fought with for a few days, then I gave up. I couldn’t find the way to upgrade it.
Then I started from scratch. Installed Ubuntu LXC on Proxmox and followed Moodle installation instructions. MariaDB, Apache, latest Moodle 4.5.
40 or 50 steps. I fought 2 weeks with various details, securing Moodle, optimizing web server, configuring messaging etc. In the meantime an issue with a new router and slow resolution of DNS happened.
At last, I think I made it. First two courses are already (almost) ready. There are no errors in logs. UI feels snappy.
It is true that everything in Moodle needs extra attention. While in TalentLMS I didn’t need to think about messaging, digital badges, certificates etc, Moodle requires dealing with separate plugins.
There is absoultely TOO MUCH possibilities and functions. It requires quite an effort to make a course simple enough not to overwhelm the participants. But I have a great team this time who already built courses in Moodle and they help me a lot.
What is most interesting is I FOUND A BUG. Really, while using basic functionalities (duplicating learning activities) the digital badges started to multiply like rabbits. Suddenly, there was 98000 digital badges in my course! I reported a bug and the power of FOSS community showed in all its glory. Now I can track the resolving of the bug in Moodle bug tracker and it looks like the fix will be available in the next major release 5.0.
I almost couldn’t believe it – Moodle is an old software (147 000 active installations, 430M users, 50M courses), I’m using it for 1 month and BAM, I found a bug. Not sure if I’m happy or dissapointed about this. Probably both.
Building online courses
If I put aside technical challenges, I must say that I like Moodle’s capabilities very much. Yes, it has TOO MUCH possibilites, but at the same time, it allows very fine grained control of everything: access to learning resources, scoring, designing own scoring rubrics, and most importantly… plugins and themes!
I found some nice plugins for automatic issuing of attendance certificates (PDFs) with verification system (‘Custom Certificate‘).
I like Union boost Theme too (because I can theme every course category with a different page layout and graphic design).
Moreover H5P plugin adds interactivity (HTML5+JS) I was looking for. For example, drag&drop interactive tests and similar.
I’m also using registration plugins (built-in self-enrollment). Yes, even user registration can be modified.
I had some issues with built-in WYSIWYG editors. TinyMCE wasn’t happy with my iframe includes of videos/presentations. So I just switched to built in Atto HTML editor, which is not so strict and now my embedded content works as it should.
I feel I didn’t even scratched the surface regarding the basic functions and plugins.
Yesterday I got an email a new version of Moodle is available (4. 5. 2.). I relived bad experiences with my first upgrade attempt and I’m a bit nervous to update it. I’m asking myself:
Why Moodle can’t have a click-click-click update system, like normal people?
I need quite a lot of mental energy and focus to do their ‘just git or download, copy folders, run something in cmd‘ update procedure.
TL;DR
Should you take this path (building Moodle server from scratch)? If you like technical tinkering and challenges, yes, of course.
But if you just want to build online courses, then probably not. In such cases you better look for hosted Moodle options. Didn’t explore this option much, but what I saw there is a lot of companies that offer Moodle hosting.
Tags: #moodle #selfhosting #LMS #TalentLMS
https://blog.rozman.info/some-thoughts-on-moodle-and-other-lmses-in-2025/
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