14 June 2010, 0:43

Mahara.org users should have noticed that the email problem has been fixed and that emails are now flowing again.

It turns out that the underlying cause of the duplicate email problem was a combination of a bug in the Mahara event handling code and PHP running out of memory while sending out the forum emails.

A fix is in the code repository and will be part of the upcoming 1.2.5 release (which will be out within a week or two). If you want to apply the fixes to your site now, you can find them here:

• d08395ac1308727dd45396083f454c47605c0604
• d736fd6c0c99cb998af56979b12ceab60ed101ee

Those who are PHP-savy may be interested in the full details of the problem and solution.

Again, our apologies for this and thank you for your patience!

Francois

01 June 2010, 0:27

Now that the email flood has stopped I can finally post. I was going to post this after Richards announcements but thought that adding to the email flood would not be a nice welcome gift from me to you all.

I thought it about time to put in a first post in my new formal capacity as "Community Champion" of Mahara. By now you have probably read Richard's post announcing my arrival (cards and well wishes can be sent to the Mahara Maternity Ward), but simply put, I see myself as a new conduit between the ever growing and dynamic Mahara community and the skilled development teams. I hope to be able to bring the energy and enthusiasm that I have for Mahara here to the masses on Mahara.org and help to continue to build and strengthen the community through co-operation, collaboration and communication.

So that's the "fluff" out of the way. Let's talk about what's coming. What's coming? Mahara 1.3! That's what! I hope to be able to keep you all in the loop on this one.

Now I need to be clear here. We are not talking imminent release here. 1.3 is a work in progress that will be released "when it's ready". We don't want a Vista on our hands here do we? But the work towards 1.3 is very much in motion with large chunks of the code already committed to GIT.

A major focus of the 1.3 release is continual improvement on usability based on a usability assessment that was conducted on the current release. From that report the following has been  implemented:

1. Menus

Account settings, Notifications & Logout button have been moved out of the main navigation and are now linked to with small icons in the upper right corner.

The resume section has been reorganised into sub-tabs.

Links to edit/view profile page have been removed from the profile navigation and are now included in the My Views page, to make it clear that the profile page is a View.

2. Dashboard

The logged-in home page is now a View, which is configurable on the My Views page via the Dashboard link.  By default the Dashboard has a list of recently updated Views on the site, and links to the user's own Views and recent notifications.

3. Introductory help boxes

The home page now has three big boxes (with links if you are logged in) to give new users a better idea of what you are supposed to do with Mahara.  They are always shown on the logged out home page, but users who are familiar with Mahara can remove them so that they no longer appear when logged in. 

Smaller things, mostly suggested in usability report:

• - Message threading added to the 'send message' page so that you can see what you are replying to; removed quoted message from text box when making a reply.
• - Many small changes to language strings & help text
• - More helpful link text on notifications
• - Use icons to indicate different notification types.
• - Removed confusing 'add blog' button & replaced it with a multiple blogs account setting.
• - Registration CAPTCHA removed & replaced by less intrusive methods for detecting bots.
• - Terms & conditions added to registration page.
• - Other small things from usability report: Wider text fields, better placement of help icons, cancel/delete buttons given more prominence, guidance for date formats

02 June 2010, 6:46

Hi,

I was wondering if you have any plans to work with the integration of Moodle and Mahara.

It would be great if this was something you aim to work on, as it would be a great asset to schools/education.

Good Luck

PP