20 January 2010, 14:28

Hello

I'm new to Mahara and I have very little developer experience.

I've been looking at using Elgg and have just come across Mahara. It would be great to use an NZ product.

With Mahara I've found in the documentation how to change some of the language - e.g. changing 'views' to 'pages' & 'icon' to 'avatar'. Great! Simple!

Will it be easy for me to remove certain tabs/features like "My Resume" &  "Institution Membership"?

Thanks,

Paul

20 January 2010, 17:07

Hi Paul,

  a good start would be to install something like firebug for firefox and look into the code. It's interesting and a good exercise to learn about coding. I remember that in the forums you will find additional info.

Feel free to ask the comunity for assistance

HTH Heinz

20 January 2010, 21:17

Thanks Heinz

So there isn't an administrators way of doing this, I guess.

So I'd look at the code and work out which bit to cut out, to exclude the menu items I don't want?

That sounds feasible for me

Paul

20 January 2010, 21:48

Hi Paul,

The 'my resume' tab can be removed by disabling the resume artefact plugin in Site Administration -> Administer Extensions.

You can't do this with the Institution membership tab, because it's not an artefact plugin.  However, you can still disable it without modifying the core code, by defining a function in local/lib.php called 'local_main_nav_update'.  If this function is defined, then mahara passes an array containing the menu structure to the function before drawing the menu, so you can remove the Institution membership tab at that stage.

Alternatively you can look at the manara_standard_nav function in lib/web.php and just delete code for the menu items you don't want.

21 January 2010, 1:23

Very cool!

Mahara rocks for support! I have more faith in commiting to this software.

thank you Richard. 

23 January 2010, 16:31

Paul,

      I just wanted to drop a line about elgg. We tested it for a few months and wasn't real happy about the software. To modify Elgg core coding is extremely hard unless your an experienced programmer. We also didn't like the dashboard part as well. Mahara on the other hard is much easier. I have been learning php for the last year (no expert yet) but, I have been able to modify the core coding pretty good. Of course their are blocks for us but, we'll get through them eventually. The community is a good resource for getting help. Sometimes you may not get an answer right away or you may even figure it out on your own. Good luck.