Mahara ePortfolios: Beginner's Guide: Create your own ePortfolio and communities of interest within an educational and professional organization with this book and ebook

1. Enter http://maharaforbeginners.tdm.info into your browser's address bar.

2. Click on the Register link found at the bottom of the Login block:

3. Fill in the registration form. Enter your Email address, First name, and Last name.

4. Agree to the terms and conditions if there is a button asking you to do so. Make sure you read them first:

5. Then, click on the Register button at the bottom of the page.

6. On the following page you will see an input box inviting you to give a reason for joining the site. Write a quick description and click on Complete Registration. Hopefully, you will now get an on-screen message telling you that you have successfully registered and to check your e-mail inbox for instructions on activating your account. If not, don't worry, you will get a message on the screen letting you know what went wrong. Then, correct the problem and try again.

7. Now...

1. Once your account has been registered, you can log in to the site whenever you visit by using the Login block on the home page. Type your Username and Password, and click on Login.

2. If this is the first time you are logging in and your account was created for you by your site administrator, it is likely that you will be asked to change your password. If this is the case, enter your New password twice and click on Submit:

3. That's all there is to it! You have just logged in to Mahara for the first time.

1. Click on the Content button on the main menu.

2. You will notice that Mahara has opened the Content submenu. The Profile tab is selected when you first enter your content space. Let's take a quick look at Janet's profile. You will notice that the About me tab is selected. Janet has already entered her name:

3. Say something about yourself! Scroll down to the Introduction section of the About me page and enter some text. Here is what Janet typed in:

4. Whenever you make any changes, click on the Save Profile button at the bottom of the page. If you don't, you may find yourself losing all your hard work! This can happen sometimes if there is a period of inactivity and you get logged out.

5. Next, click on the Contact information tab to the right of the About me tab.

6. You will see that you are expected to fill out some telephone numbers and addresses. The first thing you should notice is that you...

1. Click on the Profile pictures submenu button under Content.

2. You will notice that to begin with there are no images found — that's because you haven't added any yet. Click on Choose file to find the profile picture you want to upload from your computer or external hard drive (or wherever). Mahara asks that your image is between 16x16 and 1024x1204 pixels, so make sure it is!

3. When you're happy with the image that you have selected, don't forget to add an Image Title for your profile picture before you click on the Upload button.

4. You are allowed to upload up to five profile pictures and you can delete any picture at any point. You have the option to set a default picture — if you do, you should probably choose a fairly sensible one. If you click on Use no default, the default Mahara profile shadow will be shown instead. Janet Norman has uploaded two profile pictures...

1. Click on the Résumé tab under the Content submenu.

2. The Introduction section asks you to type in a cover letter and some personal information. Type in some information about yourself in this section. What is it that you do? This is about your writing style and how you want to represent yourself — do you want to write formally or informally? Don't forget to click on the Save button immediately after you have entered your information.

3. Now, click on the Education & Employment tab. Use this section to fill in all your past education qualifications. Just click on Add to start filling out a new listing. You should see that you can add details such as the dates of the education placement, its name and address, and details of the qualification you gained there. Here is a listing that Janet entered for her own Master's degree:

4. Do the same for your previous employments.

5....

1. Start by clicking on the Portfolio tab in the main menu. By default you will be in the page's section of your portfolio. You will be looking at this section in more detail in Chapter 4, Organize and Showcase Your Portfolio. For now, you will notice that there are already two pages — your Dashboard page and Profile page.

2. Click on the link for your Profile page.

3. Scroll down the page and look at the different sections. Can you see the section for My Pages? This is probably empty at the moment, but as you start adding pages, they will appear here. Similarly, it is unlikely that the My Groups section has any information in it yet. The About Me block in the top left is also looking empty. Here is what Janet's profile page looks like at the moment:

4. Have a look at your wall. Try typing a message directly into the box in the Wall section and click on the Post button. If you are just...

1. In the Pages section of the Portfolio area, click on the button to the right of your Profile page to begin editing it:

2. You will now see your profile page in edit view. It will look something like this:

3. You will notice that you are being encouraged to select different blocks from within a set of six tabs at the top of the screen and drag them down onto your page. Later you will be looking at these blocks and learning how to position them on your page. Right now though, you will be focusing on how to work with the text box. Click into the General tab. You should see this:

4. Click on the text box icon and drag it somewhere onto the space below in the page, to position it amongst the other blocks already present on your page layout. You will see the other blocks moving as you are dragging to make space for the text box. You will also see a dotted gray line showing you where the new...

1. Open up the text block that you created earlier for editing. You can do this by clicking on the icon that looks a little bit like a cog at the top of the block:

2. You are going to add a hyperlink to the text. Did you notice that the two link icons are grayed out and unclickable? This is because you can't hyperlink to something before you have highlighted it. Do this by clicking and dragging your mouse over the text that you want to hyperlink. Now you should see the two hyperlink buttons in color.

3. Click on the Make Hyperlink button (the one that looks like a chain) to start creating your hyperlink for the word (words) that are highlighted. Janet has chosen to make a link from the word "Mahara" to the Mahara website. You should see a new dialog box similar to the one shown in the following screenshot:

4. You now get the chance to enter your link. Janet therefore...

1. Find an image on the Internet that you would like to add to your text box. Janet went straight away to a free images site that she knows — Stock xchng at http://www.sxc.hu. She entered the word e-portfolio into the search box and found some suitable images. She has chosen an image of a man jumping in the air with his portfolio in hand:

Image by Asif Akbar (http://www.sxc.hu/photo/991217)

2. Copy the link of the image. You can usually do this by right-clicking on the image and clicking on Copy image location.

3. Reopen the text box on your profile page that you created earlier and click on the Insert/edit image button.

4. You will see a dialog box pop up. In the Image URL field, paste the location of the image that you copied in step 2.

5. Give your image a relevant Image description. This shows when you hover over the image with your mouse.

6. Select the Alignment, Dimensions, Border...

1. Click on the Portfolio tab in the main menu. This time, click on the link to the Dashboard page. This will open up your current dashboard page. The screen should look something like the following screenshot. As you can see, it's quite empty, but already has a welcome message, an information section, and some blocks to show latest pages, forum topics, and activities:

2. Now return to the pages listing by clicking on Portfolio once again or clicking on the back button in your web browser.

3. Click on the page editing button next to the dashboard page listing to start up the page editing view.

4. One thing you'll notice is that you don't have access to the welcome message or the information section to edit them. This is because these are controlled by the site administrator — they have the power to choose what the welcome message says. If you don't want the information...

1. Click on the Settings button in the control panel menu on the top right of the screen:

2. You will now be on a page called Settings. On this page, you have a number of options available, the first is to change your password. You may feel like you can't remember your old password very well and want to switch to a more memorable one. If you need to, try entering a new password for yourself. Enter your current password along with the new password and a confirmation of your new password.

3. Next, you have the option to change username. Perhaps your current username is too long and you would like to shorten it. Type in a new username for yourself. Ensure that you remember your new username. The username you choose must be available and should not be already taken by another user. Some users might not have this option available depending on how the site administrator has set things up. Janet decided to change her username...

1. Click on the button on the control panel menu, which is represented by a letter with a number next to it in the top right of the screen. The number in this link represents the number of unread notifications you have. At the moment Janet doesn't have any notifications and so a zero is displayed:

2. Now, you will be on a page called Inbox. This is the place where you will see all of your messages, just as you would see in a normal e-mail inbox. You can mark messages as read or delete them, as well as filtering them by activity type.