16 March 2010, 10:48

Hi,

We are trying to develop a module/plugin to integrate the OpenInviter feature into mahara. It is at http://openinviter.com/. Has anyone done this before? Does Mahara already have any plugins to help users import thier contact lists from public email provider sites like Gmail,  Yahoo and Hotmail for instance.

Regards,

 -MA 

16 March 2010, 23:32

Hello Mahmound,

       Mahara does not have any plugins that allow users to import their contact list. However, for me this was one feature that we was going to incorporate into our site. You could do it by creating a plugin. If you need help just ask in the forums.

17 March 2010, 6:22

Well, I always thought that this was something that should come out of the box, since Mahara is about eportofolios and social networking. How are you supposed to create a website using Mahara to attract many users thought this viral marketing tool. I think once this is done, it should be incorporated into the system as soon as possible.

 Once we've got a clear view on this we'll post it back to the community. I was only asking to see if someone already went along this path before.

 Another thing i've been wondering about is the "Networking" tab in the administration view. I didn't manage to get it right as it always complains about the Openssl thing and not being able to generate keys. Whats that all about? Does this enable Networking in some way?

18 March 2010, 22:05

Hello Mahmoud,

                          Mahara is usually used by educators to create learning environments. You could read more about this on their about page. For them inviting people who are outside of their institutions would be most highly unwanted.  At least that's what I would intend to think but, I can't answer for the developers here at mahara. 

I was letting you know that we're going to be doing this soon but, not with openinviter. We're going to create a more dynamic inviter plugin. There are better contact inviters out their but, they cost some money. You might want to use one of those to give your users the best experience. Just trying to help you out a little. 

On the networking................

If you plan to use moodle with mahara then this would be handy for you.  Mahara's networking features allow it to communicate with Mahara or Moodle sites running on the same or another machine. If networking is enabled, you can use it to configure single-sign-on for users who log in at either Moodle or Mahara.

It only allows you to network with  other mahara sites or moodle sites. Hope this helps.

21 March 2010, 17:00

Dear Allan,

 Thanks for the insight and sorry for the late reply. I think the networking feature should be more open to enable integration with other systems than moodle. However, i can't say i saw it working in the first place to see how it is as i haven't passed the OpenSSL problem in the first place.

 Regarding the Openiviter plugin, we are currently working on implementing it and i think it does the job quite nicely. I have seen it being adobted in many other systems so its good for the job. Will keep you posted on our progress.

 Regards,

-MA

26 March 2010, 11:44

For the networking feature what other systems are you trying to integrate? Are you trying to allow other sites to connect with yours like the facebook connect?

You can allow other sites to connect with yours by writing a API for your site. This is one thing we will be working on in the feature. With allowing other systems to connect other than moodle I am not sure what would need to be done. I have seen some post in this forum regarding this. A mahara developer might be able to give you an idea of how to do this.

Regards,

Allen

P.S. - Here is the link that might get you started - http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=1199