Site-wide Announcements in Moodle

Show Critical Announcements Inside Every Moodle Course — No Coding Required

Short description:
A focused guide for teachers and administrators who want to place clear, highly visible messages at the top of their Moodle courses. Learn a safe, sandbox-tested technique that works across themes, requires no plugins, and uses ChatGPT to help you customise the banner for your institution.

Long description:
Educators frequently ask the same question: “How do I make sure students actually see my announcements in Moodle?”
Despite the many communication tools Moodle provides, none ensure visibility inside the learning path. Forum posts can be missed. Dashboard alerts are ignored. Emails get buried. And theme changes are often restricted or risky.

This course offers a practical alternative.

You will learn how to create a clean, modern message banner that appears only in the first section of each course — the one place every student lands. The method uses a small piece of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS placed in Moodle’s Additional HTML settings. It does not touch core code, does not require plugins, and can be fully tested in a safe sandbox before you apply it to your live site.

The mini-course includes:

  • A clear explanation of why Moodle’s traditional communication channels often fail inside course pages

  • Access to a publicly available Moodle sandbox where you can practise as a full admin

  • A ready-to-use banner script with image support, buttons, colours, and layout already built in

  • Instructions on how to ask ChatGPT to customise the message for your own context

  • Troubleshooting guidance for different themes and Moodle versions

If you want your students to notice important information — orientation messages, onboarding guidance, safety notices, policy updates, or upcoming deadlines — this is one of the simplest, safest and most flexible solutions available.