Mahara 1.2 E-Portfolios: Beginner's Guide: Create and host educational and professional e-portfolios and personalized learning communities

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

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

3. Fill in the registration form; enter a Username and Password.

4. Hang on! Before clicking the button to register, you really should read the Terms and Conditions and privacy statement before you agree to them.

5. Then click the Register button at the bottom of the page. Hopefully, you will now get an on-screen message telling you that you have successfully registered! If not, don't worry, you will get a message on the screen letting you know what went wrong; correct the problem and try again.

6. Now that your details have been accepted, you will receive an e-mail from the Mahara site. In the e-mail, click the link provided to register.

7. A new window will open in your browser showing that you have logged into the Mahara site:

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

2. If this is the first time you are logging in, it is likely that you will be asked to change your password. If this is the case, enter your New Password twice and click Change password.

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

1. Click the Profile button on the main menu.

2. You will notice that Mahara has opened the Profile submenu. The Edit Profile tab is selected when you first enter your profile 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 Norman typed in:

4. Whenever you make any changes, click the Save Profile button at the bottom of the page.

5. Next, click the Contact Information 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 can have more than one e-mail address in a Mahara site. To add another e-mail address, click the link to Add email address. The e-mail address will receive a confirmation e-mail from the Mahara site and you...

1. Click the Profile submenu button called Profile Icons.

2. Click Browse to find the profile icon you want to upload from your computer or USB stick (or wherever).

3. Don't forget to add an Image Title for your profile icon before you click the upload button.

4. You are allowed to upload up to five profile icons and you can delete any icon at any point. You will need to choose one of your icons as your default profile icon which should probably be a fairly sensible one. Janet Norman has already uploaded two profile icons:

1. Click the My Resumé tab on the Profile submenu.

2. The first two text-entry boxes ask you to type in a cover letter and also some information about your interests. Type in some information here to get you started. Don't forget to click the Save button immediately after you have entered your information.

3. Now scroll down to see the contact information that has been carried across from the Contact Information page you edited earlier.

4. As you work your way down the page, you will be prompted to fill in your personal information, employment history, education history, and so on. Fill in the sections that are relevant to you.

5. Click into the My Goals tab and write your three different types of goals.

6. Click into the My Skills tab and write your three different types of skills.

1. View your profile page by clicking on the View Profile Page tab.

2. You will find this under the Profile button on the main menu. If you entered information into the About Me page, you will notice this is showing in your profile.

3. Scroll down the page and look at the different sections. You probably won't see many more sections filled in as you're only just starting. Can you see the sections for My Views. This is probably empty at the moment but as you start adding Views, they will appear here.

4. Janet Norman from PI - Inc's profile page looks like this so far:

5. 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 playing around with it at the moment, it might be best to check the little box Make your post private, so no one else can see it.

6. Go and have a look at Derrin's Mahara.org profile page at http://mahara.org/user/view.php?id=106 This...

1. Click on the Edit Profile Page button in the Profile submenu. You will see a page that looks a bit like this:

2. 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 View page. Later we will be looking at these blocks and learning how to position them on our page. However, right now we are focusing on how to work with the text box.

Click into the tab called General. You should see this:

3. Click and drag the text box icon somewhere onto the space below to position it amongst the other blocks already on your View layout. You will see the other blocks move as you are dragging to make space for the text box. You will also see a dotted gray line showing you where the new block will appear. Here is a basic diagram showing the drag-and-drop action:

1. Open the text block 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. We 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 you mouse over the text you want to hyperlink. Now you should see the two hyperlink buttons in color.

3. Click the Make Hyperlink button (the one that looks like a chain) to start creating your hyperlink from the word(s) that are highlighted. Jane has chosen to make a link from the word "Mahara" to the Mahara website. You should see a new dialogue box similar to the one below:

4. You now get the chance to enter your link. Jane therefore enters a link to the Mahara website http://mahara.org. She has also added a Title to her link. This title displays...

1. Find an image on the Internet that you would like to add to your text box. Janet goes straight away to a free images site she knows called "Stock Exchange" at: http://www.sxc.hu. She enters the word ePortfolio into the search box and finds some suitable images. She chooses an image of a man jumping in the air with his portfolio in hand.

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

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

4. You will see a dialogue 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 cursor.

6. Select the Alignment, Dimensions, Border, and Vertical space / Horizontal space for your image.

7. When you have finished, click Insert. This is how...