Mahara 1.8 user manual

This is the user manual for Mahara 1.8, which was released on 24 October 2013.

Warning

Mahara 1.8 is not supported anymore. Please install or upgrade to a supported version.

When you see the “New in Mahara 1.8” icon , a feature was introduced in Mahara 1.8 or changed from Mahara 1.7.

Note

You can also go to the index, look for the entry “New in Mahara 1.8” and then explore the features from there.

You can reach older versions of the Mahara user manual as well as different formats via the “Links” section in the left sidebar.

License

The Mahara user manual is licensed under your choice of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 unported or GNU General Public License version 3 or later.

Contributors

The Mahara user manual is written by Mahara community members.

You can see the list of contributors to the user manual on Ohloh for contributions to the English version of the manual and images for the translations. On Launchpad you can check for all translations of the user manual and their contributors.

Table of contents

• 1. Introduction
  • 1.1. What is Mahara?
  • 1.2. The Mahara framework
  • 1.3. How does Mahara fit in to the e-learning landscape?
  • 1.4. What if Mahara does not support a feature I want?
  • 1.5. Other things to do
  • 1.6. Where can I get ideas of how to use Mahara?
  • 1.7. Getting help
• 2. Dashboard
  • 2.1. Login
  • 2.2. Overview
  • 2.3. Quick links
  • 2.4. User-specific information
• 3. Content
  • 3.1. Profile
    • 3.1.1. About me
    • 3.1.2. Contact information
    • 3.1.3. Messaging
    • 3.1.4. General
  • 3.2. Profile pictures
    • 3.2.1. Pictures uploaded to Mahara
    • 3.2.2. Remote avatars
  • 3.3. Files
    • 3.3.1. Upload a file
    • 3.3.2. Upload multiple files
    • 3.3.3. Edit a file or folder
    • 3.3.4. File quota
  • 3.4. Journal
    • 3.4.1. Change your journal settings
    • 3.4.2. Add a journal entry
    • 3.4.3. Add a file as attachment to a journal entry
    • 3.4.4. Add an image to a journal entry
    • 3.4.5. Work with multiple journals
  • 3.5. Résumé
    • 3.5.1. Introduction
    • 3.5.2. Education and employment
    • 3.5.3. Achievements
    • 3.5.4. Goals and skills
    • 3.5.5. Interests
    • 3.5.6. License
  • 3.6. Plans
    • 3.6.1. Create a new plan
    • 3.6.2. Add tasks to a plan
    • 3.6.3. View all tasks of a plan
    • 3.6.4. Edit tasks in a plan
  • 3.7. Notes
    • 3.7.1. View your notes
    • 3.7.2. Edit your notes
• 4. Portfolio
  • 4.1. Pages
    • 4.1.1. Overview page
    • 4.1.2. Profile page
    • 4.1.3. Create a new page
    • 4.1.4. Edit an existing page
    • 4.1.5. Copy a page
    • 4.1.6. View a page
    • 4.1.7. Give others access to your page
  • 4.2. Page editor
    • 4.2.1. Editor navigation
    • 4.2.2. Edit title and description
    • 4.2.3. Edit layout
    • 4.2.4. Content chooser
    • 4.2.5. Page layout area
  • 4.3. Skins
    • 4.3.1. Create a skin
    • 4.3.2. Choose a skin
    • 4.3.3. What is the difference between themes and page skins?
  • 4.4. Collections
    • 4.4.1. Manage your collections
    • 4.4.2. Add a collection
    • 4.4.3. Copy a collection
    • 4.4.4. Add collection pages
    • 4.4.5. Manage collection pages
    • 4.4.6. Give others access to your collection
  • 4.5. Shared by me
    • 4.5.1. Edit access for users with an account
    • 4.5.2. Edit access to your profile page
    • 4.5.3. Restrict access based on time
    • 4.5.4. Choose advanced options
    • 4.5.5. Edit access for users without an account
  • 4.6. Shared with me
  • 4.7. Export
  • 4.8. Import
  • 4.9. Feedback
    • 4.9.1. View feedback
    • 4.9.2. Give feedback
  • 4.10. Feedback for assessment
    • 4.10.1. Submit a page or collection for assessment
    • 4.10.2. Instructor feedback
  • 4.11. Tags
    • 4.11.1. Tag cloud
    • 4.11.2. My tags
    • 4.11.3. Edit tags
• 5. Groups
  • 5.1. My groups
  • 5.2. Find groups
  • 5.3. Set up a group
    • 5.3.1. Create a group as a user
    • 5.3.2. Create a group as staff member or institution administrator
    • 5.3.3. Create a group as a site administrator
    • 5.3.4. Edit general group settings
  • 5.4. Inside a group
    • 5.4.1. Group homepage
    • 5.4.2. Members
    • 5.4.3. Forums
    • 5.4.4. Pages
    • 5.4.5. Collections
    • 5.4.6. Share
    • 5.4.7. Files
    • 5.4.8. Report
  • 5.5. My friends
  • 5.6. Find friends
    • 5.6.1. Send a friend request
    • 5.6.2. Accept a friend request
    • 5.6.3. Deny a friend request
  • 5.7. Institution membership
  • 5.8. Topics
• 6. Blocks
  • 6.1. Files, images and video
    • 6.1.1. File(s) to download
    • 6.1.2. Folder
    • 6.1.3. Image gallery
    • 6.1.4. Some HTML
    • 6.1.5. Image
    • 6.1.6. Embedded media
    • 6.1.7. PDF
  • 6.2. Journals
    • 6.2.1. Journal
    • 6.2.2. Journal entry
    • 6.2.3. Recent journal entries
    • 6.2.4. Tagged journal entries
  • 6.3. General
    • 6.3.1. Text box
    • 6.3.2. Creative Commons license
    • 6.3.3. Navigation
    • 6.3.4. Plans
    • 6.3.5. Inbox
    • 6.3.6. Latest pages
    • 6.3.7. Watched pages
    • 6.3.8. Group info
    • 6.3.9. Group members
    • 6.3.10. Group pages
    • 6.3.11. Recent forum posts
  • 6.4. Personal info
    • 6.4.1. Contact information
    • 6.4.2. My friends
    • 6.4.3. My groups
    • 6.4.4. My pages
    • 6.4.5. Profile information
    • 6.4.6. Wall
    • 6.4.7. Résumé
  • 6.5. External content
    • 6.5.1. External feed
    • 6.5.2. External media
    • 6.5.3. Google Apps
  • 6.6. Blocks in various pages
    • 6.6.1. Files, images and video
    • 6.6.2. Journals
    • 6.6.3. General
    • 6.6.4. Personal info
    • 6.6.5. External content
• 7. Settings
  • 7.1. Account settings
    • 7.1.1. New password
    • 7.1.2. Change username
    • 7.1.3. Change profile URL
    • 7.1.4. General account options
    • 7.1.5. Delete account
  • 7.2. Notifications
  • 7.3. Inbox
• 8. Fulltext search
  • 8.1. Search for text
  • 8.2. Search for media
  • 8.3. Search for portfolios
  • 8.4. Search for users
  • 8.5. Search for groups
• 9. Administration
  • 9.1. Overview
    • 9.1.1. Admin home
    • 9.1.2. Warnings
    • 9.1.3. Register your Mahara site
    • 9.1.4. Site information
    • 9.1.5. Site statistics
    • 9.1.6. Close site
  • 9.2. Configure site
    • 9.2.1. Site options
    • 9.2.2. Edit site pages
    • 9.2.3. Menus
    • 9.2.4. Networking
    • 9.2.5. Licenses
    • 9.2.6. Pages
    • 9.2.7. Collections
    • 9.2.8. Share
    • 9.2.9. Site skins
    • 9.2.10. Fonts
    • 9.2.11. Files
  • 9.3. Users
    • 9.3.1. User search
    • 9.3.2. User account settings
    • 9.3.3. Suspended and expired users
    • 9.3.4. Site staff
    • 9.3.5. Site administrators
    • 9.3.6. Add user
    • 9.3.7. Add and update users by CSV
    • 9.3.8. Change the authentication method and remote username in bulk
  • 9.4. Groups
    • 9.4.1. Administer groups
    • 9.4.2. Group categories
    • 9.4.3. Add and update groups by CSV
    • 9.4.4. Update group members by CSV
  • 9.5. Institutions
    • 9.5.1. Overview
    • 9.5.2. Add an institution
    • 9.5.3. Edit an institution
    • 9.5.4. Members
    • 9.5.5. Institution staff
    • 9.5.6. Institution administrators
    • 9.5.7. Admin notifications
    • 9.5.8. Institution pages
    • 9.5.9. Institution collections
    • 9.5.10. Share institution pages and collections
    • 9.5.11. Files
    • 9.5.12. Institution statistics
    • 9.5.13. Pending registrations
  • 9.6. Extensions
    • 9.6.1. Plugin administration
    • 9.6.2. HTML filters
    • 9.6.3. Allowed iframe sources
    • 9.6.4. Clean URLs
  • 9.7. Experimental features
    • 9.7.1. Bulk export of Leap2A files
    • 9.7.2. Bulk import of Leap2A files
    • 9.7.3. usersuniquebyusername variable
• 10. Staff access
  • 10.1. User search
  • 10.2. Viewing user reports
  • 10.3. Institution statistics
• 11. Mahoodle
  • 11.1. Moodle to Mahara
  • 11.2. Mahara to Moodle
  • 11.3. Link to specific Mahara page in Moodle
• 12. Mobile Mahara
  • 12.1. Mobile browsing
  • 12.2. MaharaDroid
  • 12.3. PortfolioUp
• 13. Glossary
• 14. Tips and tricks
  • 14.1. Open Badges
    • 14.1.1. Create a collection of badges
    • 14.1.2. Select the badge collection in Mahara
    • 14.1.3. Generate an iframe for your badge collection
    • 14.1.4. Embed your badge collection in a Mahara page
  • 14.2. Link to specific Mahara page in Moodle

For documentation writers

• 1. ToDo list
• 2. Information for Mahara user manual writers and translators
  • 2.1. Screenshots
  • 2.2. Admonitions in use are
  • 2.3. Conventions
  • 2.4. In-text formatting
  • 2.5. Hyperlinks
  • 2.6. Index entries
  • 2.7. Translators beware