06 April 2018, 16:11

Kia ora Mahara community,

It is with great pleasure that we announce the latest version of Mahara, Mahara 18.04. This release features a large number of new features and helps organisations become GDPR compliant.

Highlights in Mahara 18.04 include:

• GDPR compliance
• Password policy
• Copy portfolios in Leap2A formats
• Outsource files to object storage
• Link to an internal Mahara page
• Link to text within text
• Rotate images
• Link to the user manual in the footer
• Associate an institution with a group
• Decide which assessment statuses to display in SmartEvidence
• Automatic SAML metadata refresh
• Modern date picker
• Make certain tasks faster
• No more Flash
• Expiry of internal notifications

Other notable new features include:

• More compact collection navigation
• Anonymous public comments always go through moderation
• Show a warning when the database version is newer than the codebase
• Store session information in Memcached or Redis
• HTML report for Behat test results
• Recaptcha field for "Contact us"

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/18.04.0

You can check out the feature release video.

You can download the code at https://launchpad.net/mahara/18.04/18.04.0.

Alternatively, you can access it via Git from https://git.mahara.org/mahara/mahara.

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 17.04 and 17.10 are still supported for security updates. The support for Mahara 16.10 ends now. Support for Mahara 17.04 will end in October 2018, Mahara 17.10 will be supported until April 2019, and Mahara 18.04 will receive updates until October 2019.

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

We recommend you upgrade to 18.04 as that gives you the longest support time frame at the moment. Users of Mahara 17.04 and 17.10 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 18.04. New features are listed under the "New in Mahara 18.04" index entry.

http://manual.mahara.org/en/18.04

Credits

A number of organisations around the world supported this release through funding new features, bug fixes, or contributing code that made it into Mahara 18.04 or was the inspiration for code changes. We want to thank the following organisations (in alphabetical order) for their support of this release:

• The Australian National University
• Carleton University
• Catalyst
• Central Queensland University
• Landesinstitut für Schulentwicklung (State Institute for School Development in Baden-Württemberg, Germany)
• New Zealand Ministry of Education
• Pace University
• PH Bern
• Povsod
• Queen Mary University of London
• SWITCH
• Synergy Learning
• Totara LMS
• University of Sussex

 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 over time: Abel Camacho, Asier Iturralde Sarasola, Ibai Oihanguren Sala, Iñaki Arenaza, Juan Ezeiza)
• Czech (Contributors over time: Viktor Fuglík, David Mudrák, Adam Pátek, Matouš Trča, Veronika Karičáková, Marek Drahovzal, Lukáš Kotek, Jiřina Nováková, Tomáš Jeřábek)
• Danish (Contributors over time: Aputsiak Niels Janussen, Jesper Hvirring Henriksen, Per Schou-Nielsen)
• French (Contributors over time: Alain Benoit, Alain Bolli, 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 over time: Andy Hediger, Christian Kleinhanss, Daniel Winzen, Dennis Baudys, eledia, Ernst Artner, Ettore Atalan, finnnns, Gunnar Staniczek, Heinz Krettek, Jan Behrens, Jürgen Friedrich, Kristina Hoeppner, Marcel Debray, Mathias, Michael Wuttke, Moritz Ringler, Nico Verse, Patrick Neumann, Ralf Hilgenstock, Silas Zahner, Stefanie Berger, Steffen Pegenau, Tobias Bannert)
• Japanese (Contributor over time: Mitsuhiro Yoshida)
• Slovenian (Contributor over time: Gregor Anželj)

For a full list of translations and contributors, please see

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

A shoutout also to the people who contributed to Mahara 18.04 in their capacity as business analysts, UX researchers, testers, and mobile developers. Mahara couldn't be without their contributions.

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

Cheers

The 18.04 Release Managers at Catalyst