01 October 2015, 15:01

Hello everyone,

I am happy to share a new plugin called Page status. The plugin adds the ability to indicate the status of a Mahara page. This new  block allows to select from one of four statuses. These are: Not set, In progress, Need help, Ready. The development of the block came from the need to easily communicate the status of a page to all registered users. In this project, all registered users have initial viewing access to all pages created on that system. We are hoping that a status message will encourage users to collaborate more readily and that it will aid in lowering barriers to sharing and building content together. In combination with the new Page templating ability available in 15.10 core, which we also commissioned, we can now add this block to every new individual and new group pages. Our default status for a page is 'In progress' but this can be changed in the code quite easily. Users can choose to set the status to what they would like it to be at any time. Catalyst IT did a great job in helping us scope and then also developing this work.

You can download it here:

Mahara version 15.04: https://github.com/dirkca/maharapagestatus/tree/15.04

Mahara version 15.10: https://github.com/dirkca/maharapagestatus/tree/15.10

Below are some screen shots:

19 February 2016, 23:33

Hello Dirk & community,

we like the idea of showing the status of a page a lot! I guess it sometimes would be very helpful in advance, before submitting a feedback to a page e.g. still "in progress".

Unfortunatelly, I am currently facing a small problem with getting the plugin (v15.10) to work with our mahara installation 15.10.1 :   when trying to add the block at the top of a page, I get the following error:  Template "content.tpl" could not be found in any of your include path(s)

I've seen in your github comments that there was a minor change regarding template content.tpl from v15.04 to 15.10, but I could not figure out, where I should change/adjust something, so that it would work with our installation.

Any help / hint appreciated a lot

Thanks,

Bernie from Germany

20 February 2016, 0:10

amendmend:

could fix this finally myself:

just created a directory template inside

htdocs/theme/raw/plugintype/blocktype/pagestatus

and copied the content.tpl inside it, too.

23 February 2016, 16:12

Hello Bernie,

glad you were able to make it work for you. We had some issues in our own Mahara and made some changes mostly because some customizations were getting in the way I think. The changes we made would not be good to include in the github files.I am hoping to be able to make some time in the next few days to test your changes on a standard mahara so that I can update the github files appropriately.

Its nice to see you find it a useful block. I had it developed because in a project I am working on a requirement is that all pages within the system can be searched for and viewed by all registered users without the page owners explicitly having to share their pages. We had come across research that suggests that only a small portion of teachers (~10%) would actually do the extra step of sharing their work (small group work or individual work) with a larger audience when they would be required to make a conscious decision to share and then act on it. One of our customizations flips the mahara default setting for page access around and makes them view able by all as opposed to private.

The status block then is an effort to help overcome the perceived 'fear of sharing' by having a visual that clearly states that the page is a work in progress or that the page author would like some help. We went a step further and had the page template feature developed also which is now part of Mahara core. By doing so, we are able to place the progress block on every page that is created as a default block.

Anyhow, I am curious to see what the feedback might be about the block. All the best.

Dirk