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Mahara

Requirements

Server OS

Mahara is officially supported on the following operating systems:

• Debian GNU/Linux, all versions from 6/“Squeeze”
• Ubuntu GNU/Linux, all versions from 12.04/“Lucid Lynx”

Mahara is not officially supported, but known to work or mostly work, on the following operating systems:

• Most other variants of Linux, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Slackware, Fedora and SUSE.
• Microsoft Windows - all desktop versions from XP, all server versions from Windows Server 2003.
• Mac OS X Server, from Tiger upwards (note that people seem to be having more luck with Leopard and above).

Currently, we’re not certain of the status of Mahara on other operating systems (Solaris springs to mind). If you know more, feel free to add them to the above list!

Web Server

Mahara is officially supported on the following web servers:

• Apache, all versions from 2

Mahara is not officially supported, but known to work or mostly work, on the following web servers:

• nginx (using fastcgi)

Database Server

Mahara is officially supported on the following database servers:

• PostgreSQL, all versions from 8.3
• MySQL, all versions from 5.1. Note that you will need InnoDB table support (And equivalent MariaDB versions)

Mahara’s database must be in UTF8 encoding. In MySQL, you can use any UTF8 collation you like - generally, you’ll pick the one that suits your locale.

If you are using MySQL 5.1.5 or older, you need to add the SUPER privilege to Mahara’s database user in order to enable the Elasticsearch search plugin. (IF you will not be using Elasticsearch, you don’t need this.)

Mahara is not supported or known to work on any other database server.

PHP

PHP version 5.3.6 or later is required. In addition, you’ll need the following extensions:

• gd (include Freetype support)
• curl
• pgsql OR mysqli
• For networking support: openssl and xmlrpc
• mcrypt
• zip and unzip utilities (necessary for portfolio exports)
• Optionally: imagick
• Optionally: adodb (improves performance)
  • The ADOdb PHP extension, written in C, which Mahara will automatically detect and use to improve the performance of its database layer.
• Recommended: zlib, zip, bz2

You should make sure that magic_quotes_gpc is off, and that register_globals is off. Mahara will work around these settings if they’re on, but it’s better if you turn them off.

Features

Working with pages and artefacts

What makes Mahara different from other ePortfolio systems is that you control which items and what information (artefacts) within your portfolio other users see.

In order to facilitate this access control, all artefacts you wish to show to other users need to be bundled up and placed onto a page.

You can have as many pages as you like, each with a different collection of artefacts, and intended purpose and audience. Your audience, or the people you wish to give access to your page, can be added as individuals or as a member of a group or community.

ePortfolio owners create pages using a 4-step process, and page have the following features:

• ePortfolio owners can receive public or private feedback on their pages and artefacts within that page.
• Users accessing a page can report any objectionable material directly to the site administrator.
• Users can add pages and artefacts within a page to their watchlist and receive automated notifications of any changes or updates.
• ePortfolio owners can submit a page for assessment by a tutor or teacher allowing for a snapshot of the page and associated artefacts on a certain date.

Profile information

Within Mahara you can share details through a variety of optional profile information fields including:

• Preferred name
• Student ID
• Postal address and contact phone numbers
• Links to your social media profiles
• Profile pictures

File repository

Mahara includes a file repository which allows you to:

• Create folder and sub folder structures
• Upload multiple files quickly and efficiently
• Give each file a name and description
• Manage your file allocation quota
• When uploading a file, you may have to agree to a configurable copyright disclaimer or add specific licensing information
• Extract .zip, .tar.gz and .tar.bz2 from within the files area

Journals / blogs

A comprehensive blogging tool is provided in Mahara, where blogs and blog postings are considered artefacts and may be added to a page.

The blogging tool allows you to:

• Create journal entries using a WYSIWYG editor
• Attach files to journal entries
• Embed images into entries
• Configure whether or not you want comments on your journal entries
• Create draft entries for later publishing

Résumé builder

Mahara includes a résumé builder which allows you to create digital CVs by entering information into a variety of optional fields including:

• Contact and personal information
• Employment and education history
• Certifications, accreditations and awards
• Books and publications, professional memberships
• Personal, academic and work skills and
• Personal, academic and career goals

Administration

Administrators are able to customise Mahara via a number of configuration settings which include:

• Language packages and themes
• Virus protocol
• Session and account lifetimes
• Authentication methods
• Institution setup to allow for multiple organisations to use one Mahara instance
• Page editor
• Configurable static links to main pages

In addition, with the Modular plugin structure of Mahara, artefact and block types may be configured, disabled or enabled, according to the organisation’s requirements.

Interface with Moodle

Mahara provides a single-sign on capability that allows users, at the option of the administrator, to be automatically logged in to both their Mahara and Moodle accounts by providing a username and password at only one of these sites.

The user can sign on at Mahara, and click on a link to her Moodle account, or sign on at Moodle, and click on a link to her Mahara account.

The single-sign-on feature runs over an encrypted transport, and the user’s passwords do not have to be shared between sites.

This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit.

Security

• Mahara automatically detects system settings that a pose a security threat.
• Session key handling code has been tightly integrated with the core form/request APIs.
• Provides database abstraction that prevents any database injection attacks and input validation that prevents script injection attacks.
• User authentication can be tied to external systems such as student management systems or other databases such as their Student ID number.

Interoperability

• Mahara includes an Import/Export system with Leap2A suport, and static HTML export.
• Users can place their views under any of the Creative Commons licenses.
• Mahara is built using PHP web scripting language and leverages PHP5’s OO features.
• All plug-ins follow a consistent structure and inherit from a common base class (core functions of plug-ins are implemented once)
• Mahara currently supports plug-ins for Artefacts, Authentication and Search. Therefore interoperating with an existing product simply requires the development of a plug-in.

Scalability

Mahara has been designed as a web application with a plug-in architecture. This means it is possible to scale the application up by separating hardware for search, database, file storage and web servers.

It is also possible to replicate each of these operational components to further scale the system upwards. In addition Mahara is designed to:

• be load balanced across several web servers
• have a share file data from a centralised file server
• and have a separate database server.

This hosting setup has proven scalability for similar systems like Moodle.

Tested & Working

This label indicates that I could install the script without major problems and I could run the script without the need for major modifications to the original code (except for the usual configuration, of course). The label does, on the other hand, not indicate that scripts without this label would not work properly. The missing of the „tested & working“-label just indicates that I did not yet test these scripts.

Webmaster’s Choice

This label indicates that the owner of this website uses this script / application for his own projects with success and satisfaction. This does, however, not indicate that these projects could not have been realized using other scripts / applications as well or that other scripts would not fit the demands of other projects as well or even better.