How to hide a site in Moodle

If you don’t want a Moodle site/course to be visible at all, then the not-too intuitive setting you need is called “Availability.”

The setting is located under: Administration > Settings and at least in version 1.7 has only two settings:

• This course is available to students
• This course is not available to students

The popup help says:

This option allows you to “hide” your course completely.

It will not appear on any course listings, except to teachers of the course and administrators.

Even if students try to access the course URL directly, they will not be allowed to enter.