Technical Details

[jhb]

As near as I can tell, the offer by Steve Williams to host has been
deemed the most pragmatic. So the next question is, what version of
MediaWiki will we be using, which add-ons, and when do I get an IP
address to point vanagonwiki.net at?

I figure the sooner we get that blank slate up, the sooner we'll get
is filled, and as I've learned from hill climbing in a Vanagon,
momentum is everything.

John Bange
Vigilant Guardian of the vanagonwiki.net domain

[Mike "Rocket J Squirrel"]

jhb wrote:
> As near as I can tell, the offer by Steve Williams to host has been
> deemed the most pragmatic. So the next question is, what version of
> MediaWiki will we be using, which add-ons, and when do I get an IP
> address to point vanagonwiki.net at?
>
> I figure the sooner we get that blank slate up, the sooner we'll get
> is filled, and as I've learned from hill climbing in a Vanagon,
> momentum is everything.

Right on.

Version of MediaWiki? No clue.

Addons:

-- texvc for math (vhttp://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Math),

-- FCKeditor for WYSIWYG
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WYSIWYG_editor#FCKeditor) -- it seems to
work well although on the old wiki it decided to stop working for me,
only, kept working for others. Something in my profile got stuck in its
craw, maybe.

-- Possibly a calender extension for gatherings?

My votes only, I defer to those that actually know mediawiki and its
extensions.

--
Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
74 Westrailia: (Ladybug Trailer company, San Juan Capistrano, Calif.)
Bend, OR
KG6RCR

[Marius Strom]

My personal opinion is that the wiki shouldn't be a calendar/gathering
announcement spot - leave that for the regional/local vanagon groups. I
think the wiki should purely be focused on technical & how-to info, but I'm
just one guy with one set of thoughts. :)

[Mike "Rocket J Squirrel"]

Marius Strom wrote:
> My personal opinion is that the wiki shouldn't be a calendar/gathering
> announcement spot - leave that for the regional/local vanagon groups. I
> think the wiki should purely be focused on technical & how-to info, but
> I'm just one guy with one set of thoughts. :)

Marius has a good point. The OW had a calender page but it was hardly
used. As Sudhir suggests, leave it to the regional groups to maintain
their own darn pages and the wiki can provide links to them.

[Mike South]

This is the link for the FCKeditor wysiwyg extension. I think we
definitely want this version of the extension rather than the older
one that just stored html and eliminated the wiki code completely.

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FCKeditor_(Official)

Like I said, I'm willing to help with anything along the lines of
getting this set up.

Is there anything you need from us, Steve?

mike

[Peter DiFalco]

I agree with the FCKeditor extension for sure, and also might suggest:

Category Tree: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CategoryTree to create AJAX (dynamic display) trees of page categories, really useful for reducing the "dive through articles to reach what I'm looking for" factor.

ShareThis: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ShareThis  I'm kind of a social media guy, so when I find a procedure or article that I want to add to my online sites, such as a blog, or a social bookmarking service like Delicious or Diigo, it's really convenient to have an icon palette of those things ready to share out the link.

Video Flash: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VideoFlash for embedding YouTube videos

Cheers,

Peter

[Steve Williams]

A plain vanilla Mediawiki installation is up.

I've configured it to require registration and log-in to edit.

I've imported the images from the wiki archive:

http://vanagonwiki.sbw.org/wiki/Special%3APrefixIndex?namespace=6

At 09:37 PM 5/5/2010, jhb wrote:
>... what version of MediaWiki will we be using?

The latest is 1.15.3:

http://vanagonwiki.sbw.org/wiki/Special:Version

>... which add-ons?

I haven't installed any add-ons yet. Who would like to help install
add-ons? I'll give you an ssh log-in so you can work on the server directly.

Or else I'll install the add-ons already requested in this thread as
I have time.

>... when do I get an IP address to point vanagonwiki.net at?

You may CNAME vanagonwiki.net and www.vanagonwiki.net to vanagonwiki.sbw.org.

The current IP address, 208.69.42.148, should be pretty stable, but a
CNAME is preferred.

[Marius Strom]

I'm happy to help with installing addons and such.

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Williams
Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2010 5:03 PM
To: vanag...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Technical Details

[Mike "Rocket J Squirrel"]

Steve Williams wrote:
> A plain vanilla Mediawiki installation is up.

Great, Steve! Thank you so much for your work.

John, please let us know when www.vanagonwiki.net has been pointed and
the wiki is on the air at that address.

I personally feel that we should hold off sending out a general
broadcast asking for article submissions until we have an index page and
Marius has plugged in the FCKeditor add-on. The plain-vanilla Mediawiki
editor is hokee-dokee but if the rich-text editor was brought online and
made the default editor for new users it would be make it easier for a
lot of the Vanagon community who are not so html/wiki conversant to put
up a page.

Who volunteers to make the index page? I posted the old one yesterday.
If someone wants to crib from it.

[John Bange]

On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 5:03 PM, Steve Williams <s...@sbw.org> wrote:

You may CNAME vanagonwiki.net and www.vanagonwiki.net to vanagonwiki.sbw.org.

The current IP address, 208.69.42.148, should be pretty stable, but a CNAME is preferred.

CNAME set up. It works!

--
John Bange

[John Bange]

John, please let us know when www.vanagonwiki.net has been pointed and the wiki is on the air at that address.

wiki is up... now all we need is admin access!

 

--
John Bange

[Mike South]

Look! I'm on the wiki!!!!

http://www.vanagonwiki.net/wiki/User:Msouth


:)

mike

[Marius Strom]

Hey, now, I was first.. :)

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike South
Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2010 6:31 PM
To: vanag...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Technical Details

[Mike "Rocket J Squirrel"]

Marius Strom wrote:
> Hey, now, I was first.. :)

Hang on lads. The registration timestamp on the confirmation email I got
from the wiki is 6:29 PST.

What kind of hand are you holding?

[Marius Strom]

I'm going by the official list of users -
http://www.vanagonwiki.net/wiki/Special:ListUsers

I was the first registration at 17:26 PST, you followed at 18:28 PST. :)

Enough about that - let's get some privileges so we can get extension adding
and editing!

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike "Rocket J Squirrel"

Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2010 6:47 PM
To: vanag...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Technical Details

[Mike "Rocket J Squirrel"]

Marius Strom wrote:
> I'm going by the official list of users -
> http://www.vanagonwiki.net/wiki/Special:ListUsers
>
> I was the first registration at 17:26 PST, you followed at 18:28 PST. :)

Drat!

[Peter DiFalco]

ElPedro is now registered. Nice place we got here. 

[Mike South]

On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 8:49 PM, Marius Strom <mar...@thestroms.org> wrote:
> I'm going by the official list of users -
> http://www.vanagonwiki.net/wiki/Special:ListUsers
>
> I was the first registration at 17:26 PST, you followed at 18:28 PST. :)
>
> Enough about that - let's get some privileges so we can get extension adding
> and editing!

You do realize we can already edit, right?

Like I put this up for a test: http://www.vanagonwiki.net/wiki/Conversions

Just making sure people know. If you search for something and it
isn't there, or just type it in the url bar as if it is there, it will
give you a link to edit that page.

Like http://www.vanagonwiki.net/wiki/this_page_does_not_exist , if you
hit that link it will give you a link to edit, then it will exist, and
I will look (even more) like an idiot. But we'll be able to look in
the page history and see whose fault it is :).

Sorry if I'm explaining the obvious, just wanted to make sure everyone
knows that nothing is holding them back from creating "real" (ie not
just user) pages now, it's ALIVE.

THANKS STEVE!!!!

mike

[Marius Strom]

Yep, knew we can already edit. I've already put together an updated main
page.

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike South

[B]

But there are no links on the main page to any of your added pages (using FIrefox on Mac Snow Leopard). I can only see them by using the links you're all including your emails.


B&S - patiently waiting to restore a solar panel page and a Westy curtains page
'87 Westy 'Esmerelda Blanc'
SoCal

[Mike South]

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 8:53 PM, B <withheld.f...@gmail.com> wrote:
> But there are no links on the main page to any of your added pages (using FIrefox on Mac Snow Leopard).  I can only see them by using the links you're all including your emails.
>
>
> B&S - patiently waiting to restore a solar panel page and a Westy curtains page

You can see everything that's been done from the recent changes link
on the left nav (just added that fact to the text on the front page,
too). I also put a link to the category pages on the front page, so
if you can put category links on your pages [Category:Foo] those will
start being a sort of auto-navigation (heh, "auto". I kill me.).

You should just go ahead and go to
http://vanagonwiki.net/wiki/westy_curtains and click the "edit this
page" link. Don't be shy! We can always move stuff around,
re-categorize, etc. I think the best thing to do now is get content
in there, and as soon as we see that we need better organization,
we'll know we're getting somewhere.

mike

[B]

Hi,

I've entered a bunch of text (actually, copied/pasted it from our HTML page but I don't think that matters). The link for "editing help" gives me an empty page. I don't see how to insert images, so I typed in placeholders. And I don't see how to change text color, so I also typed in placeholders. Anyway, there's some content for you to observe.

I'm not enamored of the default wiki formatting. It's doing funny stuff with my itemized lists. But when I told it to ignore wiki formatting, it also ignored all my whitespace, so that was ... um ... interesting. So I took that out.

The stuff on the "recent changes" link is going to scare the general readership off!!! It's much too much detail for a non-techhie.

I don't know how to put a category link on my page. I tried adding [Category:Westfalia] at the top of my stuff, but that doesn't seem to do the trick.

Heh. "Auto". :-p

We also have a page on solar setup to add. When things are a bit further along, I'm happy to have a go at adding that. I am techhie, but I have enough family members who aren't that I'll often be able to warn you when you're asking for too much 'intuition' from the general readership.


B

[Mike South]

[[Category:foo]] needs a double square bracket (internal links are double bracket, external single bracket, as a general rule).

See here 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:List 

for help with various kinds of lists (I applied some of these to your page).

I changed the font color with a span tag as recommended here: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Using_colours

For images, look here, and scroll down until they are actually putting images in as examples, the stuff at the top is kind of confusingly useless.

I don't know how to upload images, but once you've done it, if you know the name the stuff on that page should probably get you what you want.

mike

[Mike South]

On Sat, May 8, 2010 at 10:39 PM, Mike South <mso...@gmail.com> wrote:

For images, look here, and scroll down until they are actually putting images in as examples, the stuff at the top is kind of confusingly useless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_markup

that's the link I meant to include.

mike 

[Steve Williams]

Marius is now a Mediawiki sysop and has access to install plug-ins.

I've enable file uploads, e.g. images and PDFs:

http://www.vanagonwiki.net/wiki/Special:Upload

[Mike South]

To paraphrase the best book on programming for the layman,

awesomer and awesomer!

Thanks Steve!

mike