25 August 2009, 4:25

Hi

Can someone please advise which files I need to change to make changes to a theme, i.e, to create another one for a different institution, or does anyone have any themes they would like to share.

Thanks, Kevin 

25 August 2009, 6:37

Hi Kevin,

http://mahara.org/group/view.php?id=40 will give you support how to modify existings themes. The coming Mahara 1.2 offers a collection of several themes.

HTH Heint

25 August 2009, 8:48

Thanks Heinz

I have just "stolen" a couple of Derrins colour wheel themes and applied them to a couple of different institutions. I then created a user that has membership to all three institutions. When that person logs in which institution do they join? cos it never goes to the default, if you understand what I mean, is there supposed to be some indication of which institution they are in when they log in to Mahara,

Thanks Kevin

25 August 2009, 12:41

Hi Kevin,

good question We have to ask the core devs about it.

Heinz

25 August 2009, 17:37

Hi - what theme they'll see will be rather arbitrary at this time. Note that the theme they're shown doesn't mean they're "in" a particular institution for the period of that login. The user is always in all the institutions they're in, if you know what I mean.

We haven't put any logic in place for allowing admins to prioritise the order in which themes are shown to users in multiple institutions, and that's something we should probably do at some point. It's still a tricky question though.. maybe the best thing is just to show them the site default theme!

26 August 2009, 4:33

Thanks Nigel and Heinz

Forgetting the themes for a minute, I'm still a bit confused about the institutions. As I explained previously I have set up three institutions and have given a user (me) membership to each of those institutions. However, I don't know which institute I'm in, but does that matter?? However, I would have thought that if I was "in" a given institute then when I go looking for friends I would only see people that were members of that institute, but that is not the case, every Mahara user can be seen.

As admin I created a view in an institution called Gemyni and made a view that is available for all logged in users ( I assume that would be for those those logged into the Gemyni instiution). When I log in as a user, I cannot see that view nor seem to have any way of getting into that institution. I can see that I am a member of that institution but can't actually get in it. Am I missing something here or just looking for something that doesn't yet exist? Is an institution something that only virtually exists

Cheers, Kevin   

26 August 2009, 18:00

Hi,

Institutions are currently designed so that administration of the user accounts on a Mahara can be spread across more people than just the site administrator. There is nothing about institutions that prevents a user in one from seeing something in another - so far, we've explicitly not bothered to do that because we see Mahara as helping to break down such institutional boundaries.

However, we are aware that sometimes people want to be in a walled garden, so I imagine at somepoint somebody will fund this feature. Also, we haven't provided access controls in some places for users to restrict things to certain institutions only - e.g., group membership or view access. We should do that at some point too.

So when you made that institution view, making it avaliable to all logged in users means for everybody - not just those in your institution. And you're right about institutions currently being more "virtual" than real - there is no "institution page" for institutions the same way that there are group pages, and institutional views are currently there mainly so the institutional admin can make template views for others to copy.