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First-Time Setup

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Table of Contents

After the installer finishes, work through this checklist before you invite students. Each section links to the full guide.

Prerequisites: a completed installation (see Installing Academy & Exam OS) and the owner account you created in the installer.

1. Sign in as the owner #

  1. Open https://your-domain.example/login.
  2. Sign in with the owner e-mail address and password from the installer.
  3. Open the staff area. The Overview page shows the institute overview and the staff menu on the left.

See Staff Area Overview for a map of the menu.

2. Schedule the cron jobs #

The background worker seals expired test attempts, grades them, produces exports, reconciles online payments and delivers Communication Hub announcements. Without it, results of timed tests are not released.

  1. In your hosting panel’s Cron Jobs section, add the worker commands to run every minute.
  2. Single Site and Multi Site: also add the hourly licence renewal command.

The exact commands, including hosting-panel examples, are in Cron Jobs & Background Worker.

3. Configure e-mail (SMTP) #

Sign-up verification, password resets and e-mailed announcements depend on working e-mail.

  1. Open Email / SMTP (under System / Integrations, address /staff/settings/email).
  2. Enter your SMTP details and save.
  3. Click Send test email to me and check that it arrives.

See E-mail & SMTP Settings.

4. Brand your website #

  1. Open Branding & Website Settings (under Website & CMS) to set the site icon (favicon).
  2. Use its Edit website settings list to set the site name, logo, tagline, colours and footer text.
  3. Open Business Profile to enter your institute’s name, address and contact details.
  4. Open Contact Page to configure the contact form and map.

See White-Label & Branding and Website & CMS.

5. Publish your legal pages #

Open Legal Pages (under Website & CMS) and choose Create draft starter pages. It adds private, empty drafts for Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer, Refund / Cancellation Policy, Cookie Policy, Acceptable Use Policy and Contact / Legal Notice, set up for the footer. Write your own wording in each page, then publish it.

Important: The starter pages contain no legal text, and Academy & Exam OS does not provide legal advice. Have your policies reviewed for your institute before you publish them.

6. Set up your academic structure #

  1. Exam Streams — create the exams or programmes you prepare students for.
  2. Syllabus & Subjects — build the subject and chapter tree for each stream. Questions, tests, PDFs and videos are all mapped to this tree.
  3. Batches & Enrollment — create batches and assign students and teachers.

See Users, Roles, Batches & Access.

7. Set your marking defaults #

Owners and administrators can open Mock Test Settings (under Mock Tests) to set the institute’s default marks for a correct answer and the wrong-answer penalty. The built-in default is +4 / −1 / 0. See Creating & Managing Mock Tests.

8. Add your staff #

Staff members first create their own account on your website, like students. The owner then opens People & Permissions, assigns the staff role (Administrator or Teacher) and the permitted exam streams, and adds teachers to batches. Review each role’s permissions before inviting staff to register. See Users, Roles, Batches & Access.

9. Remove demo data (Mode B installations only) #

If you installed with demo data, remove it before real students use the site: open Demo data (under System / Integrations). See Demo Data (Mode B).

10. Optional integrations #

11. Take a first backup #

Back up the database together with Web/config/app_local.php, Web/config/installed.php and the whole Web/storage/ folder, and store the set outside the website folder. See Backups & Restore and review the Security Checklist before going live.

Related documents #

Watch the Video Tutorial #

This topic is also covered in Academy & Exam OS Video Tutorial 02: First-Time Setup & Licence Activation (watch on YouTube). All Academy & Exam OS video tutorials.

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