Moodle is a powerful learning management system (LMS) used by schools and universities around the world. But just like any powerful tool, if it’s not set up right, it can get sluggish. That’s exactly what happened at one small university. Their Moodle site was crawling, frustrating both instructors and students. So, a few tech-savvy instructors rolled up their sleeves and decided to fix it.
TLDR (Too Long, Didn’t Read)
Moodle was running slow, making it hard for students and teachers to use. A few instructors discovered the power of caching and upgraded their server resources. These two simple changes made Moodle fast and responsive again. Now, everyone’s happy, and classes run smoothly!
The Slowdown Begins
It all started during the first week of the semester. Students couldn’t open their quizzes. Pages took forever to load. Submitting assignments felt like sending a message by pigeon. The complaints started rolling in: “Why is Moodle so slow?”
The tech support team was small, and most of the Moodle setup had been done years ago. Since then, the number of users had doubled—and so had the problems. Something needed to change.
Meet the Fix-It Team
Three brave instructors decided to take matters into their own hands. They weren’t IT pros, but they knew enough to dig in. Their mission? Speed up Moodle before the semester collapsed into chaos.
They started reading documentation, asking questions in Moodle forums, and checking server logs. That’s when they discovered two major issues:
- No or very little caching was enabled.
- The server was under-powered for the current traffic.
Wait. What’s Caching?
Imagine you go to a bakery every morning. If the baker remembers you like chocolate croissants and has one waiting, your visit is quick. That’s caching. Moodle can “remember” commonly used bits of data—or pages—and deliver them fast. Without caching, Moodle “bakes from scratch” every time someone clicks a link.
Our instructors learned that Moodle supports several kinds of caching:
- Data caching: Stores generic data often requested by plugins or core features.
- Session caching: Keeps info about who’s logged in and what they’re doing.
- Page caching: Saves page content so it doesn’t have to regenerate every time.
Turns out, all of these were either using the default file system (slow) or weren’t set up at all. Ouch.
Turning on the Afterburners
The instructors installed Redis, a high-speed caching system. Redis stores data in memory. That means lightning-fast reading and writing. Moodle supports Redis natively, so setup wasn’t too hard.
After setting Redis as the cache store for sessions and data, they immediately noticed a difference. Logins were faster. Course pages opened in a snap. But they weren’t done yet.
The Big Upgrade
Next came the hardware. Their Moodle server had just two CPU cores and 4 GB of RAM. That had worked fine three years ago. Not anymore.
More students, video content, and quizzes meant more stress on the server. So, the team arranged an upgrade:
- 8 CPU cores – to handle more simultaneous users.
- 16 GB RAM – for caching and smoother performance.
- SSD storage – for faster file access.
They moved the Moodle site to this new server over a weekend. When everyone logged in Monday morning, the difference was HUGE.
How They Knew It Worked
Slow login times had dropped from 10 seconds to under 2. Quizzes loaded in less than a second. Even during peak usage, the server barely blinked.
They also added some monitoring tools to track performance:
- New Relic: to keep an eye on response time and database queries.
- htop: to watch CPU and memory usage.
- Moodle’s built-in performance debugging: to see where time was being spent.
The graphs showed what they were hoping: faster loads, quicker queries, and smoother user experience.
Bonus Tweaks!
With caching and a faster server in place, they still found a few more things to polish:
- Cron Jobs: They scheduled Moodle’s background tasks more effectively.
- Theme Optimization: Streamlined their custom theme to remove bloated scripts.
- Database Tuning: Adjusted MySQL settings like buffer pool size.
Each little adjustment shaved off milliseconds. It all added up.
Happy Teachers, Happy Students
Once Moodle sped up, complaints vanished. Students submitted assignments without tears. Grading was quicker. Teachers could use quizzes, videos, forums—anything—without worrying about performance issues.
One of the instructors joked, “It’s like we gave Moodle a triple espresso!”
Lessons Learned
The instructors weren’t system admins, but they became system saviors. Here’s what they learned that might help you too:
- Don’t ignore caching. It’s probably the #1 way to make Moodle faster.
- Monitor your server. Usage grows—your hardware should grow too.
- Small changes, big impact. Even minor tweaks can improve speed.
- Community matters. Forum users and Moodle’s docs were incredibly helpful.
Thinking Ahead
The team didn’t stop there. They now have a plan for the future:
- Enable load balancing if traffic grows again.
- Look into using a content delivery network (CDN) for serving static files.
- Keep the Moodle software up to date for security and speed improvements.
They also trained others on the basics of Moodle performance so more people could help maintain the system. Now, performance isn’t one person’s job—it’s a team effort.
The Takeaway
Sluggish Moodle? Don’t panic. With some smart caching and a hardware boost, Moodle can fly. These instructors didn’t need a computer science degree. They just needed a little curiosity and determination. And now, their Moodle site runs like a dream.
So if your LMS is lagging, follow their lead. Check caching. Beef up your server. And enjoy stress-free learning again!