Several months ago the good folks at Packt sent me a copy of Alex Buchner's 'Moodle Administration' book for review. While I had not written a review of it until now, I assure you that this 350 pages long mix of Moodle admin common sense and slick Admin skills certainly gathered no dust on my shelves. If you look at the picture here and count those page tabs I have used to mark useful (and used) information, you can imagine that each tab has significantly improved one or more aspects of our school Moodle (things like screen readers and accessibility tools, meta-courses, enrolment procedures, backing-up/ archiving/ deleting courses etc.) In most cases, this book saved me literally hours of trying to figure some of these things our myself AND improved the Moodle experience for myself, my teaching colleagues and (most importantly) our students.

Now let's be straight here - I am no 'techie' so a few things in this book went right over my head (not the book's fault but my own ignorance). The book does not make Moodle to be the easiest of systems to handle for some operations (eg 'awkward' file upload and management system, which can however be improved and Alex shows how) but the honesty with supporting 'how to' information is commendable.

'Moodle Administration' is definitely is a well packed (pardon the pun Packt) and very clearly written companion in which every Moodle Admin would find something useful, from installation tips,  customisation, performance optimisation to security advice. The Moodle Health Check at the end of the book is simply elegant, useful and very easy to administer. 

'Moodle Administration' has made me realise even more what a flexible and in fact robust beast Moodle is and/or can be. If you are a Moodler running or considering to run Moodle as admin, this book could be one of your best friends. Or even a lifeboat. And you know how much they are worth at times.