Mahara's user interface—finding your way around
One of the beauties of Mahara is that the menu options are laid out very simply. After clicking through the menu options a few times, you will find that you instinctively know where the option you are looking for is located.
A word on Mahara themes
Before we look in more detail at navigation, it is important to realize that Mahara can be themed. This means you are able to change the visual layout of Mahara—the header section can be configured to have a different logo, layout can be altered, and font size/color can be adjusted (among other things). Theming doesn't affect Mahara content, but only the way it looks.
The demonstration site theme we are using in this book is an adaptation of "Default", which is the theme you begin with. The only difference is that we have made the theme orange and black whereas the default is green. Don't worry if your Mahara has a slightly different coloring or layout, all the "content" should be the same. Now, we move on to menus.
In Mahara there are two types of menus; the main menu and submenus. Let's take a look.
The main menu and submenus
The main menu is the most important feature for navigating around your Mahara. This is because it appears on almost every page that you visit and contains options for linking to all the important sections of your portfolio. You can see it at the top of your Mahara page and it will look a bit like this:
We will be looking in detail at each of the sections of the main menu as we go through this book. Let's get a quick idea of where each button takes us:
- Home: Clicking here returns you to the Mahara homepage.
- Profile: Click here to navigate to your personal profile space. Click into this area to put in your own personal details and to set up your own profile page.
- My Portfolio: Clicking here takes you to your portfolio. In this area you can add your own "stuff" and start creating some web pages.
- Groups: Click here to take you to social aspects of Mahara. You can join groups, access forums, and get in contact with other Mahara users in this section.
- Settings: Here you can control the finer details of your Mahara.
- Logout: This logs you out of your Mahara.
Each of the menu items discussed above, with the exception of Home and Logout, has its own menu associated with it. These are what we call submenus. Submenus are found below the main menu. Here, is the submenu for the Profile section:
Site blocks
Site blocks are another important navigational tool. In a standard theme, they appear on the right-hand side of the screen. Site blocks contain quick links to sections of your portfolio, removing the need to navigate through the main menu and submenus. This is the case for the main site block that you use to log out of Mahara, access site settings, and link to your personal profile (by clicking the picture):
There are site blocks that also display useful information such as the online users' block that shows the users of the site who have been online within a certain time period. By default, this is the Last 10 minutes:
The footer
The footer is located at the bottom of your Mahara page and contains links to Terms and Conditions, Privacy Statement, About page (that tells you a bit about Mahara), and a Contact Us page (that allows you to get in contact with the site administrator). Mahara provides templates for some of these pages, but your site administrator should have adapted them to your own organizational requirements. There will also be an image linking to Mahara.org. Here is what the footer should look like:
