25 August 2010, 6:36

I believe this issue was raised a couple of months ago, but I'm not sure if it has been resolved. I am using version 1.2.5. when I try to embed a graphic in a Blog, I only get an option to input the image URL, but not the drop down menu enabling me to choose an image. 

25 August 2010, 16:07

Hi 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

26 August 2010, 5:35

Thanks Christina,

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

26 August 2010, 16:22

Hello Mark,

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

26 August 2010, 18:01

Hi Mark, image management in Mahara to date has not been great, but will get better. To date I have not encouraged students to use Mahara blogs (other than for reflection and text). If you just want a blog (without other portfolio features) I would use blogger, Vox, posterous etc. They could also use Google Docs, and drop that in. To me the real strength of Mahara (and O/S in general) is the fact that you do not have to be locked into the system. You can encourage students to make mashups, using the best tools available. For photography RSS is perfect, feeding straight into a view. Here is an example http://www.foliospaces.com/view/view.php?id=3803 The images are drawn from Flikr. It anyone wants a pony he is still for sale lol. 

You do make a good point though. Students are used to facebook, and whilst I believe we should also provide some digital literacy training to our students, they will take the easiest path. Myspace lost its market leadership almost overnight, because Facebook was easier to use. I still mourn the loss as at least Myspace gave students a tiny bit of html. Anyway, for now my advice is to make the use of views the focus and encourage students to experiment with building (photo) portfolios in different ways.

Regards, Ian 

27 August 2010, 6:51

Hello 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

28 August 2010, 9:21

Thanks to everyone for your help/suggestions - very impressed by the speed of response and action. Yes, the RSS photo feeds are very useful and I take the point about concentrating on Views. I saw Blogging as an easy way to introduce students to Mahara, leading to them (hopefully) having a closer look at other aspects.

Mark

29 August 2010, 18:23

Hello Mark,

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

07 January 2011, 4:15

Hi

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

09 January 2011, 14:38

Hi Brett,

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