01 May 2021, 1:19

Kia ora,

We hope you continue to stay healthy and safe and greet you from our little place in the Pacific Ocean. May we present Mahara 21.04? It is available for download and installation. There are a great number of new features and additions in this release that support assessment or certification and integration with learning management systems in particular.

Highlights in Mahara 21.04 include: 

Other notable new features include:

• Quickly turn all pages within a collection into template pages
• Default option for comments on 'Notes'
• Easier setup for Docker as development environment

View the Mahara manual for these new features as well as changed functionality. Please note that the manual is currently still being updated for all new features, and we expect to have that done within the next two weeks.

See the full list of new features and bug fixes.

You can check out the feature release video.

Download the code or access it via Git.

How to install or upgrade

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

If you are looking for translations, have a look at the language packs information page.

Supported releases

Mahara 20.04 and 20.10 are still supported for security updates. The support for Mahara 19.10 ends in May 2021. Support for Mahara 20.04 will end in  October 2021, Mahara 20.10 will be supported until April 2022. Mahara 20.10 will receive updates until April 2022.

Minor point versions for Mahara 19.10 (the last one), 20.04, and 20.10 will be made available in May 2021.

For more information, please see our release cycle.

We recommend you upgrade to 21.04 as that gives you the longest support time frame at the moment. If your organisation uses Mahara 20.04 or 20.10, you can stay on either version until their support runs out. If you cannot upgrade to a supported version of Mahara right away, you can purchase our extended security support.

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

Support and bugs

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

If you need help with anything, the support forum is the best place to ask your question.

The Mahara manual is in the process of being updated for Mahara 21.04.

Credits

Several organisations contributed to the release of Mahara 21.04 through funding new features and bug fixes and developing new features themselves. We want to thank the following organisations (in alphabetical order) for their support of this release:

• Catalyst IT
• Capital & Coast District Health Board
• LearningWorks
• Pharmacy Council
• SWITCH
• Universität Bremen
• ZHAW

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

 Fun statistic on the number of changed lines, which changes the picture a bit (excl. re-applied changes):

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, José Miguel Andonegi, Juan Ezeiz, Ramón Ovelar
• Czech. Contributors over time: Viktor Fuglík, Veronika Karičáková, David Mudrák, Adam Pátek, Matouš Trča, Marek Drahovzal, Lukáš Kotek, Jiřina Nováková, Tomáš Jeřábek
• Dutch. Contributors over time: Balaam's Miracle, Bas Brands, Eric, Jeroen Hendrickx, Joost Elshoff, Koen Roggemans, M Kerkhoff, Marinka van der Kolk, Raoul Dorrisen, rmob, Snicksie, Volker Schmidt
• French. Contributors over time: Alain Benoit, Alain Bolli, Alexandre Croteau, Anne017, Aurelien Besson, Cmathieu, David Truong, Dominique-Alain Jan, Emilie Lenel, Équipe StudiUM, Eric Breton, François Lizotte, Giulia Vighetti, Hélène V., Jean Marc, londumas, Melvin Romero, Pascale Hyboud-Peron, Paula Caterino, Philippe Petitqueux, Pierre Guinoiseau, sic, Stéphane, Yannick Cordel
• German. Contributors over time: Andy Hediger, Anne Spindler, Bradley Pfau, Christian Kleinhanss, Daniel Winzen, Dennis Baudys, eledia, Ernst Artner, Ettore Atalan, finnnns, Gunnar Staniczek, Heinz Krettek, Jan Behrens, Jonas Renggli, Jürgen Friedrich, Kristina Höppner, M. Ehlers, Marcel Debray, Mathias, Michael Engel, Michael Wuttke, Moritz Ringler, N2k1, Nico Verse, Patrick Neumann, Ralf Hilgenstock, Ralph Ballier, Silas Zahner, Sonia Coiro, Stefanie Berger, Steffen Pegenau, Stephan Woidowski, Tobias Bannert
• Japanese. Contributor over time: Mitsuhiro Yoshida
• Te reo Māori. Contributor over time: Ian Cormack

There are many more translations of Mahara at varying stages of completeness.

The Mahara manual is also being translated. Many thanks to everyone contributing to that.

We want to acknowledge other groups of people as well who contributed to Mahara 21.04: graphic designers, business analysts, UX researchers, accessibility consultants, testers, documentation writers, system administrators, developers improving supporting infrastructure, and security researchers.

Ngā mihi

The 21.04 Release Managers at Catalyst

03 May 2021, 11:00

Hello everyone,

The Mahara project team is offering a series of online sessions (and one in-person) to introduce the new features of Mahara and a series of sessions for an overall introduction to Mahara over the next few weeks.

All events are free to attend. Times have been selected to accommodate attendees around the world as best as possible for the online sessions.

• Introduction to Mahara and new features of Mahara 21.04: 13 May 2021 in person in Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington), Aotearoa New Zealand
• New features in Mahara 21.04 (3 repeating sessions)
• Introduction to Mahara (3 repeating sessions)
• Introduction to Mahara with focus on competency portfolios (3 repeating sessions) as part of TechWeek NZ, primarily for the Pacific region

I look forward to seeing you at one or two of these events.

Kristina