03 December 2008, 10:32

First off, I am really excited to see that the groups feature now lets you, as a group, share files and create views.  That's totally awesome and I can see tons of collaborative scope for this!!  I have a few questions though (or they might be bugs, I am not sure).  Blogs: if I am in the group I created and want to drag in a blog post I thought it would allow me chose from my own personal blogs.  It doesn't, which is fine, we could have a group blog space I guess.  Except there is no group blog space.... have I missed it?  There was also a missing text string when I did try to drag a blog into the group view (after it told me I had no artefacts). 

 Is this the place for me to ask these questions etc? If not, can you please tell me where is best? Thanks!

03 December 2008, 15:54

Firstly, there is no group blog space - it wasn't within our scope and it's a non-trivial task to do... I'm sure someone will want it later on down the track and be prepared to pay to make it happen quickly

Richard Mansfield was most of the way through adding support for putting your blogs and posts in group views, but I don't think he has committed it yet. Look out for it in a future beta release.

These forums are ok for asking about such things, though if you find an actual bug, or establish Mahara is missing a feature, you should use the tracker, so we can keep all of that information in one place.

04 December 2008, 7:06

Thanks Nigel, that's good to know.  I guess because the blog feature is there, it looks exactly the same as it does in my own personal user area of My Portfolio,  *and* it all works great in My Portfolio, then you just expect it to work in the groups space as well.  I guess too that it is not entirely obvious to me that this is a beta version I am playing with since this is www.mahara.org.  Is there a clear message about expectations on this site somewhere that I missed and that I can point people to (since I am encouraging clients to join this space and play with features)?

04 December 2008, 15:49

Actually, it's turned out that I was lying - the work Richard was doing was to do with copying views with blogs in them, which I believe will allow you to put a personal blog into a group View - but you won't be able to do it directly by configuring a blog block in a group view.

There is no message on the site about it running beta code. Though currently, whether it's beta or stable won't change that group blogs probably won't be in 1.1

05 December 2008, 7:51

hmmm... I think maybe we are talking at cross purposes... what I mean is that I think it is important that people know what to expect from a site. It is significant to be aware that one might encounter bugs or features that do not work so that we do not grow frustrated with features which appear as if they *should* work... 

05 December 2008, 16:03

Well to be fair, mahara.org isn't a demo site per se - demo.mahara.org, dev.mahara.org and master.dev.mahara.org are the true demo sites.

I guess we can add a warning somewhere for the time being - will something on the "About" page do?

08 December 2008, 19:37

Hi - I've read through this thread again, and had a chat to Richard Wyles. I realise now you were talking about the blog blocktype in Views - I missed that the first time around.

I talked to Richard Mansfield about it, and it turns out that yes we need to make changes to remove the blog blocktypes from group Views. I'm going to file a bug for this.

We can add a warning about the site running beta code. Though you seem to know this already, so can communicate that to people who you are getting to use the site as a demo in the meantime.

Lastly, please be aware that we're working on Mahara as fast as we can, but as always, funding alters priorities. If there's a chargeable bit of work to be done, that has to be done first, much as I would like to work on Mahara 1.1 instead! If you're really keen for bugs in the beta to be fixed right now, then the single best way to do that is to contact Catalyst and offer to fund work. Otherwise, we will fix bugs as fast as we can and they'll be fixed by the time Mahara 1.1 is out. 

08 December 2008, 20:54

I filed the bug - bug 3063

09 December 2008, 3:30

And I just updated the bug report with our current thinking on this issue. Deneka, it would be great to get your feedback on the proposed solution

09 December 2008, 7:38

HI Nigel, I'm sorry if you misunderstood, but I was not (and am not) criticising Mahara development.  I realise there are funding issues with the project, as with all projects (in fact we have contributed to the development of Mahara already and will continue to do so).  And yes, I am aware that the version of software running here is beta and shall advise people accordingly.  My concern, however, was for the community itself (unfortunately I don't know everyone) and the managing of expectations on a site which is trying to nurture a new community.