Retani: Moodle 5.3 theme

Overview

Retani Studio is a custom theme I designed and built for Retani Consults, a team that installs, hosts, themes and extends Moodle for training facilities and universities. The goal was to give Moodle the calm, modern feel of the software learners already use, while keeping the same Moodle underneath so every course, plugin and report keeps working.

The challenge

Moodle is flexible and open, which is why institutions choose it, but its default interface can feel dense: walls of blocks, crowded navigation and admin screens built around long checkbox tables. Retani needed a theme they could brand per client and ship on every new installation, without creating an upgrade burden.

What I built

• Login: a split layout with rotating messages and imagery, and a clean sign-in form.
• Course page: a course header with tags, teachers, section and activity counts, and a segmented progress bar. Blocks sit in a tidy right-hand drawer.
• Dashboard: course cards with cover images, progress and a single clear action, with the timeline and filters kept simple.
• Editing & blocks: a searchable block picker and a redesigned site administration, grouped into clear categories so admins find settings faster.
• Backup & restore: even the deepest admin flows were redesigned, with step indicators, readable forms and toggles in place of dense checkbox tables.

Design principles

• Made for 5.3: built and tested against Moodle 5.3 using core templates, so upgrades stay simple.
• Your brand: logo, colours and typography are set once and applied across every page, from login to gradebook.
• Clear for everyone: cleaner navigation for learners, and faster screens for tutors and admins.

Outcome

Retani Studio is now the foundation of Retani's Moodle offering. It ships with new installations and redesigns, and is backed by a long-term support plan covering security patches, Moodle version upgrades and theme updates, so client platforms stay current without a rebuild.