When you run the Moodle install script, the installer asks you to specify a directory in which to store the course material. This is the Moodle data directory. It holds material that is uploaded to the courses. You will need to have this directory created before you run the install script. That is what you will do in this step.

For security, the Moodle data directory should be outside the main Moodle directory. For example, suppose you are creating a learning site called www.williamrice.com/learn. You will install Moodle into /learn, and create the Moodle data directory somewhere outside of /learn.

Preferably, you will put the data directory somewhere that is not accessible over the Web. For example, on my hosting service, anything put into the directory /public_html is served over the Web. Anything outside of that directory cannot be seen over the Web as shown in the following screenshot:

You should check with your hosting service's technical...