Chapter 2. Managing User Accounts and Authentication

Administrators can perform a wide range of tasks related to user accounts on the Moodle site. These tasks include creating users, editing users, defining cohorts (groups of users for help in enrolment process), and customizing the user profile with user pictures and extra fields.

In the first chapter, we looked at Moodle, the architecture, and the installation process. Once installed, the administrator needs to configure how users are added, edited, and managed within Moodle.

In this chapter, we deal with the essential areas of user account management that every administrator will have to deal with:

• Add a new user
• Upload users
• User authentication
• Tackle the common choices of user authentication:
  • Manual authentication
  • E-mail-based self-registration