Administration → Configure site
Note
Configure site is only accessible by site administrators.
In Configure site you can:
Administration → Configure site → Site options
In Site options you can set global options that will apply by default throughout the entire site.
Note
One or more fields may be disabled if overridden by a setting in your config.php file.
When you are done editing one or more settings, click the Update site options button at the bottom of the page.
Site settings
Note
You can install more language packs. There is a complete list of them as well as more information about the language packs on the wiki.
User settings
Users can choose page themes: If this setting is enabled, users can select a theme for their portfolio page. The page is displayed with this theme to other users. Thus, the institution or site theme can be overwritten.
Display remote avatars: If checked, users’ default profile pictures will be their Gravatar pictures (remote avatar). Users will need an account with Gravatar for this to work.
Note
If you use your own avatar server to provide profile pictures for your users, you can use that instead of Gravatar for the default profile pictures. In order to do so, you need to add $cfg->remoteavatarbaseurl = 'http://example.com/avatar/'; (with the correct URL to your service) to your config.php.
Users can hide real names: If checked, users who have set a display name may choose to be searchable only by their display name and will not be found in searches by their real name. In the administration section of the site, users are always searchable by their real names. An administrator (site and institution) always sees the display name, first and last name and username.
Search usernames: If checked, usernames can be searched on as part of “Search users” on the Dashboard and via Find friends.
Anonymous comments: If checked, logged-out users / users without a login can leave comments on public pages or pages they can access via a secret URL.
Logged-in profile access: If this option is unchecked, profile pages are initially viewable by all logged-in users, but the owner is allowed to restrict access to a smaller group if they wish. Enable this option if you want to make sure all users can see each others’ profile pages. Profiles of institution members will always be visible to other members of the same institution.
Staff report access: If enabled, institution staff will have access to the reports page for users in their institutions. This page is normally restricted to administrators and lists extra user information including page access lists.
Staff statistics access: If enabled, institution staff will have access to the statistics for users in their institutions. This is normally restricted to administrators and site staff.
Users can disable device detection: If checked, users can disable mobile device detection in their account settings. This allows them to be more flexible in what they can view and do on a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet. This setting is part of the responsive design changes to Mahara.
Require reason for masquerading: If checked, administrators will be required to enter a reason for masquerading as other users. This will be logged, and if the setting “Notify users of masquerading” is enabled, included in the notification to the user about the masquerading. This setting needs logging to be turned on.
Notify users of masquerading: If checked, users will be notified when an administrator masqueraded as them. The notification will include who, when and - if enabled under “Require reason for masquerading” - why. This setting needs logging to be turned on.
Mahara comes with a search plugin that allows you to search for users and pages. If you install another search plugin, you will be able to select which one to use for your site.
Search settings
See also
You can configure the internal search plugin in the administration of the search plugin.
Mahara cannot only be used for individual work but also to work collaboratively in groups. Some settings are available in that area.
Group settings
See also
Group categories are managed by site administrators in the groups area of the administration.
You can use Mahara with multiple institutions and separate them for administrative purposes, e.g. user management and permissions, and to give them a different theme.
Institution settings
Account settings
Session lifetime: For security reasons, after a specified period of inactivity, a user will be logged off the site automatically. This field specifies this time in minutes. The default value is 1440 minutes (24 hours).
Default registration expiry lifetime: As site administrator you can decide when pending registrations that require approval expire. This time may be specified in days, weeks, months, years or “No end date”. If the latter option is chosen, pending registrations will not expire by default. The default value is 2 weeks.
Default account lifetime: If set, user accounts will expire after this amount of time from when they were created. When a user account is expired, the user cannot log in. This time may be specified in days, weeks, months, years or “No end date”. If the latter option is chosen, accounts will not expire by default.
Override user account lifetime: Choose for which accounts a change in the default account lifetime shall take effect:
Note
Site administrators are always excluded from a change in the account lifetime as they should always have access to the system.
Default account inactivity time: If set, users who do not log in for this amount of time will be considered “inactive” and will not be able to log in anymore. This time may be specified in days, weeks, months, years or “No end date”. If the latter option is chosen, users are not set to “inactive” by default.
Warning time for inactivity / expiry: If set, a warning message will be sent to users this amount of time before their accounts are due to expire or become inactive. This time may be specified in days, weeks, months, years or “No end date”. If the latter is chosen, users do not receive a warning before their account expires or they are flagged as having an inactive account.
Security settings
Proxy settings
Email settings
General settings
Mahara logs a number of events. These can now be collected in the database as well. The primary reason for logging events in the database is the logging of administrators masquerading as users for enhanced audits of these actions.
Logging settings
Log events: Decide which events you wish to log in the database. Events are generated every time the user does something significant on the site, such as editing a page. This log is kept in the event_log table in the database.
Note
No matter which logging setting you choose, all events are still logged in the access log.
Event log expiry: Decide for how long you wish to keep your database log. If you selected to log all events, the table can grow quite quickly especially on an active site. This time may be specified in days, weeks, months, years or “No end date”. If the latter option is chosen, the event log is not deleted by default.
See also
A report of masquerading sessions is available in the “User reports” section if you turned on logging of masqueraded session or all logging.
The table event_log contains the data that can be logged.
Administration → Configure site → Edit site pages
Here you can edit the content of some pages around the site and the pages linked to in the footer:
All pages come with default text that you can change entirely. Every page must contain some text. You can use the visual editor to style your page.
Edit site pages
Note
If your site has added custom pages to the menu, e.g. like MyPortfolio.school.nz where you have a number of additional informational pages, you can now edit their content from the Edit site pages screen. In order to do so, a server administrator needs to make changes on the backend.
Administration → Configure site → Networking
Mahara’s networking features allow it to communicate with other Mahara or Moodle sites. If networking is enabled, you can use it to configure single sign-on (SSO) for users who log in at either Moodle or Mahara or allow users from another Mahara instance to access yours.
From Moodle 2.0 on you can connect Mahara and Moodle to save certain content you created in Moodle through the portfolio feature.
Networking overview
In order to use networking site-wide with any institution, you need to:
Depending on which site you wish to connect, you may need to provide some of the other information on the page, in particular the WWW root and the public key.
See also
The comprehensive guide for setting up a Mahoodle can be consulted when connecting Mahara and Moodle.
You set up MNet for an institution when you edit the authentication method XML-RPC.
Administration → Configure site → Licenses
The site administrator can allow users to add license metadata to their artefacts in the general site settings. Additionally, an institution administrator can require institution members to choose a license for any of their artefacts in the institution settings.
Licenses that are available to all users of the site are defined on the Licenses page. Mahara comes with a number of pre-defined licenses, but the site administrator can add many more or delete any of the existing ones.
Available licenses on the site
Icon: Every license can have an icon / license logo that is displayed on the details page of an artefact.
Display name: The name that is displayed for each license around the site, e.g. the drop-down menu where a user can select a license and on the details page of an artefact.
Acronym: The short name by which the license is also known. This acronym is also displayed to the user on the details page of an artefact.
URL: The Internet address where the license text can be found. When a license is displayed on the details page of an artefact, it is linked to this URL.
Note
It is important for users to be able to click on a link to the license because that allows them to learn about the license conditions and what they can do with the artefact or not.
Click the Edit button to change properties of a license. You can change the display name, acronym and the license icon, but not its URL. If you want to change the latter, you will need to create a new license.
Click the Delete button to remove a license from the system.
Click the Add a license button to add an additional license that users can choose from.
As site administrator you can add as many licenses as you wish. Go to Administration → Configure site → Licenses and click the Add a license button.
Add a new license to the site
As site administrator you can change the properties of any license. Go to Administration → Configure site → Licenses and click the Edit button next to a license that you want to change. You can change all license properties but the URL.
Edit a license on the site
Note
You cannot change the URL of the license. If you have a mistake in the URL, you will need to delete the license entirely and add it correctly.
Administration → Configure site → Pages
You create and copy site pages like regular portfolio pages. You do not have all blocks available. Check the blocks in various contexts for blocks that you can use in site pages.
Site pages
Once you are done creating your site pages, you can share them with others.
Note
For example, you can create site pages with informational content to share with other users or you can create templates which users can copy into their own accounts.
Administration → Configure site → Collections
You create and copy site collections like regular portfolio collections.
Site collections
Once you are done creating your site collections, you can share them with others.
Administration → Configure site → Site skins
Warning
Skins is an experimental feature in Mahara 1.8 for theming pages. While you can change a lot of style elements, changing all of them is not advised depending on the theme that is underlying your page.
This feature is only available when the following parameter is added to the config.php file of your Mahara site: $cfg->skins = true;.
You can create skins that will be available to all users of your site.
Site skins
See also
The process of creating and editing a site skin is very similar to creating and editing skins in your portfolio.
Administration → Configure site → Fonts
You can install additional fonts to be used with page skins. Currently, you cannot use these fonts anywhere else.
Fonts overview page
Click the Install font button to install a font from your computer.
Click the Install Google font(s) button to install fonts you discovered through Google fonts.
Text: Decide in which preview text the installed fonts should be displayed on this overview page. The default text is “Grumpy wizards...”:
Note
Not all fonts have the full character set implemented. Especially, the Cyrillic and Greek alphabets may be missing and also some numbers, fractions and pucntuation symbols.
The three last sentences show most / all of the letters in the English alphabet.
Size: Decide on the size of the letters in which the installed fonts should be displayed on this overview page. The default size is 28.
Show: Decide which fonts you want to see on this overview page:
Click the Preview button to change which fonts are displayed depending on the criteria you selected.
The title of the font is shown.
See what your font looks like according to your preview settings.
You see whether it is a Google font or a local font that you uploaded.
Click the View font specimen button to see details about this font.
Click the Edit font properties button on a local font to change some font settings.
Click the Add font style* button to add more styles for a local font.
Click the Delete font button to delete this font.
You can install a font that you find online as long as you have the permission to do so. Please always read the license of a font before uploading it to ensure that you are allowed to do so.
See also
There are a lot of web sites for finding fonts. One of them where you can use, share and remix them is the Open Font Library.
Click the Install font button on the Fonts overview page.
See also
If you want to upload a font you found on Google fonts, please follow the Google fonts installation instructions.
Install a font
Font name: Provide the name of the font.
Font notice: Provide information about the font, e.g. license, and the font creator.
Font style: State what styles the font has available that you upload. If the styles come in separate font files, you need to upload all of them separately:
Font type: Decide where in a page skin the font can be used:
Generic font family: To what generic font family does this font belong? Choose from:
Font files: You need to upload your font in all these font files in order to ensure that it can be displayed in different browsers and on different devices. Click the Browse button next to each font file type to upload that specific font file.
See also
You can use the FontSquirrel Webfont Generator to convert your fonts into the required formats.
Click the Install font* button to finish installing this font or click the Cancel button to abort your action.
You can make certain changes to a local font and also install additional font styles.
Click the Edit font properties button on the Fonts overview page to make changes to a number of settings of a local font.
Edit font properties of a local font
Click the Add font style button to upload additional font styles for your font. If your font comes with a number of different styles in separate files, you need to upload them separately.
Add an additional font style to a specific font
Click the Install Google font(s) button to see the instructions and the font upload area for Google fonts.
Install Google font(s)
Administration → Configure site → Files
Here you can upload files that you can include in the links and resources menu or in site pages. You can add files that are in the home directory to the menu with resources for logged-in users. Files that you save in the public folder can be used in the menu for users who are not logged-in. Additionally, users can put them into their own portfolio pages as files to download.
See also
The process of uploading and managing files is very similar to files in your personal files area.
Site files