You don't need to activate anything in Mahara in order to work with flickr images. If you go to the "View all sizes" page for a flickr photo and then copy the link provided under "Download" (for the size that you want), you only get the URL to the image and can put that into the URL field for the image in the Mahara visual editor.
This is a bit cumbersome but rather a limitation on the flickr side than on Mahara because flickr doesn't make this link more obvious under "Share".
If you want to add images that you have uploaded to Mahara to your blog post, the best and most secure way is to attach the image to the blog post and then you'll have a dropdown menu via the image icon in the visual editor from which you can choose the image. Copying a link from the files area can result in the permissions not being correctly set when other people view the blog post (see this dicussion).
Cheers
Kristina
]]>I think it is a shame this is so difficult as students of the more visual disicplines such as architecture or fine art really need to be able to add inline images to their blogs.
]]>Unfortunately you really do need to upgrade to 1.2.6 or higher to get this fix. 1.2.5 didn't have it. The version number '1.2.6testing' is actually less than 1.2.6, it's what we use to indicate that your version is somewhere between the 1.2.5 and 1.2.6 releases.
Dave, you'll be able to fix it by downloading a newer release (1.2.6 or 1.3.3) and following the upgrade instructions:
http://wiki.mahara.org/System_Administrator%27s_Guide/Upgrading_Mahara
Brett, it looks like Ubuntu 10.10 is stuck with the 1.2.5 version which still has the bug, so I think your only option is to move away from the package altogether and install Mahara manually.
https://launchpad.net/mahara/+packages
R.
]]>First of all, thanks to Ellen Marie Murphy for those helpful workaround suggestions. Your description of the problem we have is accurate.
I think what's going on here is a "last mile" problem. There's a post above, dated last August (i.e. 6 months ago!) stating that this bug has already been solved.
Yet this 'solution' doesn't seem to have found its way into the repositories, nor are there any simple, step-by-step instructions as to how I can apply it to my existing installation. So actually, from a fairly typical perspective (user/typical admin) it doesn't seem like a solution has been made operational at all.
I'm not experienced at this, and I don't want to reinstall the entire system, nor do I want to work independently of the repositories, because then subsequent updates will take a lot more time than I want to spend.
I think comments above from mark terry and Dave Emsley are completely correct. It looks bad to students that image management in Mahara seems stone age. This is essential functionality (and which is advertised to work). In our institution at least, student perception is very low among our test users.
I'm aware that this is an open source system and the forums seem helpful and active. So I'm a bit reluctant to post a reasonably negative, ranting comment about something that looks very promising. But it just seems that at the moment things aren't working. How many more months before this fix makes its way into the STANDARD version?
]]>
I'm going to try to help :) and hope I can. There are several ways you can embed pictures into blogs, and its not too difficult. I'd like to first understand how you are currently attempting to do that. So, are you attaching the images to the blog post first, and then selecting the insert image icon on the toolbar and you don't see an option to choose the attached image? If so, I'm not sure I can fix that part, but I can suggest another option or two (as a work around)
1. In Mahara, go to the Files section and right-click (or ctrl click on a Mac) and copy the Link location. In your blog, paste that link in where it asks for an Image URL. (there is an advantage to adding an image that way. That is that the blog post can be pulled into a view without including a link to download it--directly anyway).
2. I've had a great deal of success using Picasa for storing images. Picasa provides an embed code for each image. That embed code can be copied into a blog post by select the html option on the html toolbar. I could give you more specifics about how that works, and the benefits, if you need them.
I hope this helps. I only dabble with the backend of Mahara and do not feel qualified to address the ubuntu/php stuff, but I am pretty familiar with the frontend part.
Ellen
]]>
Mahara now reports it is running version: Mahara version 1.2.5 (2009111015)
Yet the situation with inserting images into blog posts is exactly the same (i.e. the drop-down to choose images is still missing).
Any ideas? Has the fix not been added to the 10.10 repository yet either?
Cheers
Brett
]]>I was hoping to avoid re-installing the whole system, as this opens the can of worms of having to transfer users/files from my current installation. I'm new to this, plus although there's only 15 students they still don't want much downtime...
I might try an in-place upgrade from Ubuntu 10.04 to 10.10 to see if that solves the problem (having backed up first).
Cheers
Brett
]]>version 1.2.4 is the latest Mahara available for that version of Ubuntu.
If you want a more recent version you have two options:
1- upgrade to Ubuntu 10.10 (which has Mahara 1.2.5)
or, as Richard suggested
2- install Mahara manually (i.e. not using the packages provided by Ubuntu)
Cheers,
Francois
]]>If Mahara was installed from the ubuntu repositories using apt-get, then apt-get update; apt-get upgrade should have worked for you. If Mahara was installed manually, you'd need to follow the upgrade instructions here:
http://wiki.mahara.org/index.php?title=System_Administrator%27s_Guide/Upgrading_Mahara
]]>I'm running a small Mahara installation as a test (we have allowed only 15 students on at the moment to see what happens) and we have hit this bug.
I see that a fix has been released and committed, but I certainly don't know how to go about adding that to our installation.
I have it installed on an Ubuntu server through their repositories (using apt-get) but issuing update/upgrade commands through apt-get doesn't fix the problem. We don't have any technical staff with Mahara experience, nor do Google searches like "how to apply fixes to Mahara" seem to be getting me very far.
Any ideas as to how I can download the fix and install it?
I'm running Mahara 1.2.4 under Ubuntu 10.04 Server.
Cheers
Brett
]]>Blogging is definitely, at least in my eyes, a very important aspect and should be used by students instead of uploading only documents.
But Ian definitely has a good point that Mahara is not just blogging. If your students already put their photography online in flickr or any other service, then they should be able to pull the content in via RSS feeds.
Cheers
Kristina
]]>Mark
]]>You might be interested to know that Richard fixed that bug. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/624272
Your tech guys should know how to get the fix into your installation.
Cheers
Kristina
]]>Regards, Ian
]]>The functionality was definitely there because I used it with students (I think we had 1.2.4 back then). Somehow a change in the code must have broken it. You are the first to report that issue. As Mahara is a community, the community relies on its members to report and fix bugs and extend Mahara. ;-)
As I wrote, I filed a bug at https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/624272 and I am pretty sure that this bug will be addressed quickly and a fix committed to version 1.2. At the same time, the functionality could very well be extended at the same time as you can see by Ruslan's response.
I am not a developer and could not tell you where your tech support could look in the code to even fix it themselves and not wait until an 'official' fix is available.
Cheers
Kristina
]]>This issue worries me - I am a newcomer to Mahara and was intending to introduce it to my students as a means of documenting work done on photography courses - Mahara is being promoted by my college - but students are used to the ease and simplicity of Facebook etc. and the inability to simply add an image to a blog does not promote participation. It would be useful to hear an 'official' response to this problem.
Mark
]]>I filed a bug report at https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/624272 Can't insert image on demo.mahara either, but it works on master.dev (1.3).
Cheers
Kristina
]]>