Time for action—viewing and investigating your profile page
- View your profile page by clicking on the View Profile Page tab.
- 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.
- 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.
- Janet Norman from PI - Inc's profile page looks like this so far:
- 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.
- Go and have a look at Derrin's Mahara.org profile page at http://mahara.org/user/view.php?id=106 This will allow you to see what a more populated profile page can look like (you won't need to sign in because Derrin's Mahara View is toggled to "Allow public access"):
What just happened?
You just viewed your profile page for the first time ever and learned a bit about how it is initially organized. Let's look at a few of the new things we just encountered.
When you add your personal information, Mahara remembers it all and uses it to automatically enter details to save you time. Information from your profile is autoloaded into different sections of your profile page
At the moment, your profile page will be looking quite empty. You probably noticed that there were sections in there for groups, friends, and Views, but no information shown. This is because we haven't even added any groups, friends, or Views yet!
The profile page wall
We just found out how to post on the wall on our profile page, but what is the profile page wall and what is it used for?
The wall gets used as a place where people post messages that are directly and publicly aimed at you (as opposed to messages in forums that are aimed at closed groups of people and system messages that are privately sent to you). Anybody who visits your profile page will see what has been written to you on your wall. This means you have to think carefully before writing on someone else's wall, as it is open to the world.
We also touched on the idea of making your own post private. This essentially turns your wall post into a message as it can't be seen by everyone. A private wall post will be viewable only by the user whose wall it belongs to.
To see a good example of a Mahara wall being used, visit the former Mahara core developer Nigel McNie's wall at http://mahara.org/blocktype/wall/wall.php?id=12.
Some more profile page examples
Having a look at some other people's profile pages can give you ideas on content and construction. If you go back to http://mahara.org/user/view.php?id=106 and click on some of Derrin's friends, you can see some more profile pages. Many of them have made their Mahara profile page open to view by the public in just the same way that Derrin has. Other people require you to sign in to Mahara before you view their profile pages.
----- Punam from Pennytown Primary thinks -----
You can do much more with your profile page, though. So, let's start by looking at something we can add.