There are many free themes for Moodle as well as premium ones which you can upload to the server, but before we walk you through some of them, here are some three simple steps that you need to follow every time you want to adjust your platform’s appearance.
Step One: Log in to the Moodle Dashboard
Step Two: In the settings section on the left, choose Site Administrator option, then Appearance, then Themes and Finally Theme Selector. (Site Administrator>Apperance>Themes>Theme Selector)
Step Three: Select theme for default page, then click on Use Theme and finally click Continue
Themes for Moodle You Need to Know
1.Standard Themes
These are themes that are freely provided every time you start to use Moodle. Standard themes are further categorized into ones that allow you to change a logo and those that allow custom CSS. The former category comprises the following themes:
- Splash
- Skylight
- Magazine
- Formal White
- Brick
- Arialist (This does not display the logo at course level)
- Afterburner
The custom CSS variety comprises the following themes for Moodle:
- Splash
- Skyhigh
- Overlay
- Non-zero
- Arialist
- Fusion
Other additional standard themes include: Anomaly, Binarius, Boxxie, Leatherbound, MyMobile, Nimble, Standard and Serenity themes.
2. York St John Theme
This is a multi-color responsive theme. It is built with many additional widgets including ones for social media sharing. It is a highly intuitive theme that comes with a complementary theme for Mahara offering a rich look and feel. A live twitter feed makes it even more interactive.
3. Growdly Theme
Growdly is a special version of Moodle theme based on Iomad made by E-Learn Designers. This theme includes a home page slide and some special styling for other pages. It uses Iomad for delivering Moodle to its churches. Growdly allows you to select a different colourset and logo for your organization. Above all, it is completely open source and easy to use.
4.Easy Education Theme
This is a stylish theme that is designed with educational institutions in mind. It allows you to upload your own banner image, header and gives you the flexibility to do various tasks without necessarily having to go through the settings page. It has nicely rounded borders which give it a mature and complete look.
5.My Pathway Theme
This theme contains clear images that aid easy navigation around each Moodle site. Its design accommodates key elements of the organization’s branding, allowing for distinctive illustrations. Alongside a custom login page, My Pathway offers fully responsive content panel and easy to update icons (with no HTML coding required to operate it).
6. Lambda Theme
This premium theme offers unlimited color options making it easy to customize the style of your Moodle platform – allowing you to set the color combination that suits you best. Most importantly it is fully customizable with multiple fonts, backgrounds, plugins and layouts that are easy to set up via the theme’s settings panel. In addition, it offers you the choice between a boxed and full width layout options which can be applied throughout the site.
7. Virtual Learning Theme
This theme is built for the typical virtual learner. It has a clean layout structure alongside various features that provide an uninterrupted learning experience for users. Settings are relatively easy to adjust with options to change user profile settings and front page settings being available. The default form of this theme includes a calendar on the right side of the homepage and Recent Activity timeline on the left hand side of the dashboard. Its clean layout and fully responsive content panel make this theme one of the easiest to use.
8. Moodlemoot Edinburgh
Moodlemoot Edinburgh is a premium “Mobile first theme”. It has a clean user interface and interactive tools for ease of use. In addition, it comes with customizable backgrounds, layouts and plugins. Its wide base of color options allows the user to customize their Moodle to their liking. One of its main highlights is that it has collapsible breadcrumb, configurable widgets and highly responsive tables.
9. Elegant Theme
Just like its name suggests, Elegant is a stylish and well thought-out theme. And although it is made for educational institutions, organizations can also use it provided they adjust a few settings via a provided panel. Its clean layout means you can use it easily without having to refer to a user manual to achieve your end goal. Its simplicity, alongside helpful plugins and customizable background makes Elegant one of the most painless personalized themes out there.
10. Corporate Theme
Corporate theme has a responsive design with huge settings page allowing for complete customization. Its front page features a layered slideshow providing additional marketing spots for the user. Its grid based course listing alongside custom styles for icon boxes and social media icons make the Moodle platform quite interesting and exciting to use too.
11. Oliver Theme
Oliver’s accordion and into spots make it unique theme that is easy to navigate and show-case organizational prowess. It has a unique layered slideshow and unlimited color settings. In addition, it provides customized background banner image settings even for internal pages. It is compatible with all major browsers including Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, IE11,IE10 and IE9. It is also compatible with Bootstrap 2.3.x. The main attraction of this theme is that it allows one to hide all blocks or show all blocks with one click.
12. Portal Responsive Theme
The Portal theme, built with skeleton grid, features a great system of 16 columns each with responsive design. It offers an exclusive login page which matches the style of the user’s company colors. Its FrontPage showcases featured courses, custom banner and HTML blocks. It utilizes vector icons from Font Awesome meaning that it offers good loading speed always. In addition, its footer module provides exclusive resources such as Contact & News, Useful links and Brand sections.
Conclusion
By trying out different themes, you can gradually spice up the learning experience and gain much more value from your online training programs. Remember, structure, speed of loading, ease of customization and general feel and look of the theme are the main features that separate the best themes for Moodle from the not-so-good ones.