27 April 2017, 13:44

Hello Mahara community,

We would like to invite you to check out the latest version of Mahara, version 17.04. It contains exciting new features - some of them long-awaited - that make portfolio work easier, allow you to connect to a learning management system comfortably and administer your Mahara site more effectively.

We would like to thank everyone who's contributed to this release of Mahara by reporting and fixing bugs, creating new features, testing patches, translating the software, and showcasing Mahara.

You can get the code at

https://launchpad.net/mahara/17.04/17.04.0

Highlights in Mahara 17.04 include:

• App-style navigation
• Combined pages and collections
• LTI for single sign-on from an LMS
• Friend activity watchlist
• Print portfolio pages nicely

Other notable new features include:

• Delete a page via the page itself
• View the last update time of a page
• Inherit from any core theme
• Update language packs via the commandline

View the Mahara user manual for these new features as well as changed functionality.

See the full list of new features and bug fixes here:

https://launchpad.net/mahara/+milestone/17.04.0

You can check out a recent presentation for an overview of the new features.

How to install / upgrade

You can find instructions on how to install a new Mahara site or upgrade an existing one on our wiki:

https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/System_Administrator's_Guide/Installing_Mahara

https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/System_Administrator's_Guide/Upgrading_Mahara

If you are looking for translations, have a look at this page:

https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Language_Packs

Supported releases

Mahara 15.04, 16.04 and 16.10 are still supported for security updates. The support for Mahara 15.10 ends with now, and the support for Mahara 15.04 will end in October 2017 along with the end of support of Mahara 16.04. The support for Mahara 16.10 will end in April 2018, and Mahara 17.04 will be supported until October 2018.

Since the 15.04 release is the last one before moving to Bootstrap, we extended the support for it to 2.5 years instead of the usual 1.5 years.

For more information, please see https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/SupportedVersions

We recommend you upgrade to 17.04 as that gives you the longest support time frame at the moment. Users of Mahara 15.04, 16.04 and 16.10 can stay on their versions until that support runs out.

All site administrators running a supported version of Mahara are encouraged to subscribe to our security announcements:

http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/view.php?id=43

Support and bugs

If you find any bugs in this new release, please feel free to use our bug tracker to report them:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+filebug

And if you need help with anything, the support forum is the best place to ask your questions:

http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/view.php?id=2

The user manual has been updated for Mahara 17.04. New features are listed under the "New in Mahara 17.04" index entry.

http://manual.mahara.org/en/17.04

Credits

A number of organisations around the world supported this release through funding new features, bug fixes or contributing their own code that made it into Mahara 17.04. We want to thank the following organisations (in alphabetical order) for their continued support:

• Catalyst
• Catalyst Open Source Academy
• Donau-Universität Krems
• Instructure
• Kineo (Pacific)
  
• Kwantlen Polytechnic University
• New Zealand Ministry of Education
• Northland District Health Board
• Povsod
• SWITCH
• Te Rito Maioha Early Childhood New Zealand
• Université de Montréal

We also wish to thank the people who contributed code to this release. The code contributors are listed according to the number of changesets:

And the organisations they work for or are associated with:

The most complete translations at the time of writing (at least 90%):

• Basque (Contributors: Abel Camacho, Asier Iturralde Sarasola, Ibai Oihanguren Sala, Iñaki Arenaza, Juan Ezeiza)
• French (Contributors: Alain Benoit, Alexandre Croteau, Anne017, David Truong, Dominique-Alain Jan, Emilie Lenel, François Lizotte, Hélène V., Jean Marc, londumas, Melvin Romero, Pascale Hyboud-Peron, Paula Caterino, Philippe Petitqueux, Pierre Guinoiseau, sic, Stéphane)
• German (Contributors: Andy Hediger, Christian Kleinhanss, Daniel Winzen, Dennis Baudys, eledia, Ernst Artner, Ettore Atalan, finnnns, Heinz Krettek, Jan Behrens, Jürgen Friedrich, Kristina Hoeppner, Marcel Debray, Mathias, Michael Wuttke, Moritz Ringler, Nico Verse, Patrick Neumann, Ralf Hilgenstock, Stefanie Berger, Steffen Pegenau, Tobias Bannert)
• Japanese (Contributor: Mitsuhiro Yoshida)
• Slovenian (Contributor: Gregor Anželj)

For a full list of translations and contributors, please see

https://translations.launchpad.net/mahara-lang/

Many more people contributed to this release in their capacity as business analysts, UX specialists, QA, mobile development and deserve a big thank you: Business analysis, usability, QA, mobile development, developers for the user manual and Behat infrastructure.

And finally, thanks also go to the security researchers who help make Mahara secure.

Cheers

The 17.04 Release Managers