8.1. Overview

8.1.2. Warnings

After you have installed Mahara, you may see a number of warnings when you go to the Site administration. They should all be resolved to ensure that your site is secure and has all the necessary settings.

  1. new15 Session entropy length: Your PHP session.entropy_length setting is too small. Set it to at least 16 in your php.ini to ensure that generated session IDs are random and unpredictable enough. You can learn more about this advisory on the OWASP session management cheatsheet.
  2. Noreply email address: If the system email address is empty or a malformed email address, you are asked to check and correct it in the system mail address setting <email_settings>.
  3. Site-wide password salt: If you do not have one set, please edit your config.php and set the “passwordsaltmain” parameter to a reasonable secret phrase: $cfg→passwordsaltmain = 'your secret phrase here';

8.1.3. Register your Mahara site

You can choose to register your Mahara site with mahara.org, and help us to compile a picture of the Mahara installations around the world and to get a picture by how many people Mahara is used.

Register your Mahara site

Register your Mahara site

You can preview the data that is sent. Sending weekly updates is recommended so that the information we have is up-to-date. All information is sent anonymously. We will only know, for example, which version of Mahara you are running, how many times blocks or artefacts have been used, how many users you have etc.

8.1.4. Site information

The Site information gives you a quick overview of:

  • How your site is used.
  • When your site was installed.
  • How big the database is.
  • How much site data has been accumulated.
  • Which version of Mahara you are running.
  • Whether your cron is running or not.
Site information

Site information

If you have problems with your Mahara instance and you request information from the community in the forums, this information, esp. about your version and the cron, are useful to have. Furthermore, the version number allows you to check that you have the latest security release of your Mahara version installed.

Note

The cron job is very important in Mahara as a number of vital tasks are only performed when it is running. You can find more information of how to set it up in the wiki.

8.1.5. Site statistics

You can view some statistics about your Mahara site that give you an indication of how your site is used.

8.1.5.1. Full site information

The full site information gives you information about:

  • Installation date of your site
  • Number of registered users (“Users”), i.e. everybody who has an account
  • Number of active users, i.e. users that have at least logged in once and have done something
  • Number of groups and average group membership of a user
  • Number of pages and average pages per user with pages
  • Database size
  • Disk usage
  • Mahara version
  • Information on the cron
Overview of the site

Overview of the site

8.1.5.2. Users

On the Users tab of the site statistics, you see information about

  • the average user

    • average number of friends with the name of the person with most friends
    • average number of pages with the author of the most pages
    • average amount of file quota used with the user who has used most

  • daily user statistics with information about how many users logged in, were created and existed in total on a specific day

  • institution membership with the number of users per institution in descending order

Statistics about users

Statistics about users

8.1.5.3. Groups

On the Groups tab of the site statistics, you find information about

  • the number of groups by group type

    • course group
    • standard group

  • the number of groups by access type

    • open membership
    • approved membership
    • controlled membership

  • The size of the groups in descending order according to the number of members including

    • number of members
    • number of pages
    • number of forums
    • number of forum posts
Statistics about groups

Statistics about groups

8.1.5.4. Pages

The Pages tab in the site statistics holds information about

  • the most frequently used blocks in portfolio pages
  • a graphical distribution of profile, group and portfolio pages
  • the most popular pages sorted in descending order with links to the page and the author
Statistics about pages

Statistics about pages

8.1.6. Close site

You may close the site to everyone except administrators. This is useful when you prepare for and complete a database upgrade. Only administrators will be able to log in until you either reopen the site or an upgrade is successfully completed.

Close your Mahara site

Close your Mahara site