LMS upgrades & maintenance — done on schedule, done right
LMS platforms ship security releases regularly and major versions roughly twice a year. Most sites don't keep up. Then one day, the upgrade you've been putting off becomes a four-version jump on PHP 7.4. We prevent that — with deepest experience around upgrades for Moodle™ and broad coverage of other LMS lifecycles.
Maintenance isn't glamorous, but it's the difference between a Moodle™ site that quietly hums for years and one that has a crisis every six months. We treat upgrades like a flight checklist: same procedure every time, written down, rehearsed, signed off.
Most of our maintenance clients haven't had an unplanned outage in years — and they aren't on the latest version because it's the latest, they're on it because it's the one we tested last month against their plugins.
What's included
- Same-week security patching (Moodle™ point releases)
- Planned major-version upgrades, rehearsed in sandbox first
- PHP version upgrades with deprecation sweep
- Database engine and version upgrades (MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL)
- Plugin compatibility audits before each upgrade
- Theme regression check against your custom theme
- Removal of abandoned third-party plugins, with replacement suggestions
- Cron health, gradebook lock and course rebuild monitoring
- OS-level patching and kernel updates with reboot scheduling
- TLS certificate auto-renewal and rotation
- Email deliverability checks (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, bounce processing)
- Quarterly performance & security report
Questions, answered.
We're way out of date. Can you still help?
Yes — this is a big part of what we do. Several of our long-term clients first contacted us from Moodle™ 3.5 or 3.9. We do the multi-step upgrade in stages, rehearsing each one in a sandbox first.
How long does a major upgrade take?
Calendar time: typically 4–8 weeks of planning and rehearsal. Downtime on the day: usually under 30 minutes for the user-facing site. Larger sites with extensive plugins can take longer.
What about Moodle™ Workplace upgrades?
Same approach. Moodle™ Workplace ships on a slightly different cadence to Moodle™ LMS and has its own licensing — we coordinate with your Moodle Certified Partner where needed.
Can we keep the same theme across a major upgrade?
Often, but not always — themes that rely on older Mustache templates or specific Bootstrap versions sometimes break across major upgrades. Our plugin/theme report tells you up front whether yours is safe, fixable, or due for a refresh.