The advantage of Open Source software is that anyone can grab a copy for free and have a play around with it. Of course, if you want to use Moodle for your school or business many companies will host it for you online, including Moodle's own recommended Partners.
On the main Moodle site, http://moodle.org/, on the Downloads and Plugins tab, you can access different setups of Moodle according to your requirements—from the standard packages to install on a server, to special installer packages for MacOSX and Windows if you want to try it out yourself on a local host, you will then be presented with a list of "current stable builds" to choose from. The + version is updated weekly. You can then download Moodle as either a .tgz or .zip file, as shown in the following screenshot:
This book is intended to give a flavor of Moodle 2.0 , not to give comprehensive technical instructions for installing or upgrading. However, the following are some key points to bear in mind:
Note
If you are new to Moodle admin or you want a more detailed look from an administrator's viewpoint, you might find Alex Bűchner's Moodle Administration (updated for Moodle 2.0) and also published by Packt a useful addition to your library.
It's important that either you (if you're doing this yourself) or your Moodle admin or webhost are aware of the requirements for Moodle 2.0. It needs:
PHP 5.2.8
MySQL 5.0.25 or else MSSQL 2005 or else Oracle 10.2
If you are Moodle for the first time, you can find step by step instructions in the docs on the main Moodle site here: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Installing_Moodle and more specifically related to Moodle 2.0 here: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Installing_Moodle_2.0
If you already have an installation of Moodle, you will find instructions for upgrading in the docs on the main Moodle site here http://docs.moodle.org/en/Upgrading_to_Moodle_2.0 If you are upgrading from an earlier version of Moodle (such as 1.8) then you should upgrade to Moodle 1.9 first before going to 2.0. You must update incrementally; shortcuts for example. updating from 1.7 directly to 2.0 -- are simply not possible. Read the docs carefully if you are planning on upgrading from very early versions such as 1.5 or 1.6.
The way themes work has changed completely. While this allows for more flexible coding and templating, it does mean that if you had a customized theme it will not transfer over to Moodle 2 without some redesigning beforehand.
The same applies to third party add-ons and custom code: it is highly unlikely they will work without significant alterations.
Making courses from 1.9 or earlier restore into Moodle 2. 0 has proved very problematic and is still not entirely achievable. Although this is a priority for the Moodle developers, there is at the time of writing only a workaround involving restoring your course to a 1.9 site and then upgrading it to 2.0.