Athas.org now has a wiki: http://athas.org/wiki/
It's, uhh, underpopulated at the moment, but it'll be a good place to persist things, like, say, prestige classes.
I'll work up a theme that pretends to actually match the site at some point. ;)
Go play. Make it so I don't have to populate the thing myself.
Ok, I'm an online and computer idiot, so tell me how this thing works.
Most wikis, you either log into them (sign up), or don't. And anyone can add, edit, or replace content that is on the wiki, with backups of every change, for several revisions retained, on the off chance someone tries to destroy the information there, it can be recovered. Prime examples of how good a wiki is, is the Wikipedia which is a very good source for encyclopedia information on the 'net. There are others that exist, set up by the same organization, like the Wikictionary, and Wikinews.
Excellent idea, Flip. Do you have a custom design in the works for it, or are you looking for one?
Yeah! Wiki!
Excellent idea, Flip. Do you have a custom design in the works for it, or are you looking for one?
Well, I'm sort of working on one, but if you want to throw something into the mix, I'm happy for it. It's mediawiki (http://mediawki.org/) and follows that format of skinning.
... Since you can at the user level select which theme to use, the more the merrier. ;)
I love wikis.
Things that are basically requirements:
- complete page history
- searchable
- categorization / tagging. Non-heirachical
- Markup to create tables. Non-obtuse
- Recent change tracking
Things that'd be nice:
- Email style wiki formatting: (ie, *bold*, not '''bold''', /italic/ not ''italic'' and so on
- Subpages
- (variation on above) "edit" pages. That is, have a page that is unmodifiable by a non-admin, but with prominent pointers to an editable copy. I think this would be highly useful for pages representing published information: the static page represents what's in the PDF, and the edited page is communtiy feedback, errata and adjustments.
- page voting
- "template" pages (not in the wikipedia sense of "includes", but real templates) that can be filled in for new pages of a certain type. For example, include all the headings and basic formatting for a new Prestige Class
- Recent change tracking at the category level.
- RSS/Atom feeds for the change trackings.
- Mass edit ability: If I add a new page, it'd be nice to be able to create links to that page all at once, rather than searching through every hit and adding links manually.
- General file upload ability. Requires account, and may be revokable.
I'm sure there are others. A lot of these could be managed with simple conventions, others require code change. Does anybody know of a (free, still developed) wiki that might meet these, or with a reasonable codebase that I can hack (perl isn't it.)?
You could of course have a linked site, or any number of linked sites contain the official/uneditable versions of any documents.
My site is linked. It's in my signature. I didn't link TikiWiki, but that's easy enough: http://tikiwiki.org
I don't have much for Dark Sun there at this time, other than doing what I promised Dawnstealer I would a while back -- have his pictures displayed in a gallery on my site. More will follow as I have time.
?So how is your site superior to the one that Flip setup
Well, my site is my personal website, and isn't my effort to supplant Flip's site at all. However, TikiWiki has a LOT of configurable features. It isn't just a wiki system, but a full Content Management System (CMS) built around the wiki. Some of the features, Flip might not be interested in (or technically permitted to have, like the Forum system) -- however, he *has* been looking for some alternatives to the current athas.org system he has in place (which also is why I brought it up). Besides the wiki, there is an article system in place, file downloads & image galleries - everything can be set into categories -- I believe kind of like how Flip was looking for. And the wiki pages could even be set up to be convertable into .pdf files on the click of a button. Once again, there are many, many features I'm not even going to list here. If you want to know more, the tikiwiki.org site has a downloadable 350 page fully-illustrated user manual & documentation available.
For my own website, I have it broken up into multiple categories -- one for Dark Sun, another for my wiki-based homebrew setting (t4W), another for World of Warcraft (my current video game addiction), the fourth is for the new World of Darkness, and of course, a category for just general things related to the site itself. Everything from the wiki, to the articles, to the forum system on my site all use the same "wiki" text notation, and the whole site is fully integrated with each other (no one piece seems out of place or merely attached on at the last minute).
So, I've been meaning to do this for a while, finally got around to starting this up this weekend.
Athas.org now has a wiki: http://athas.org/wiki/
It's, uhh, underpopulated at the moment, but it'll be a good place to persist things, like, say, prestige classes.
I'll work up a theme that pretends to actually match the site at some point. ;)
Go play. Make it so I don't have to populate the thing myself.
So Flip, are you guys gonna go with posting submitions on the wiki like you & Jon were talking about? Or is that still up in the air?
So Flip, are you guys gonna go with posting submitions on the wiki like you & Jon were talking about? Or is that still up in the air?
I've transcribed one or two of the submissions that jon sent to me last week. It'll occur.
Hey flip, I've migrated to TikiWiki for my site -- and it not only has the wiki pages, but a full CMS system, one that I think wouldn't be too hard to migrate athas.org proper to, with very nice features that are configurable (as well as activatable/deactivatable). I'm liking it more than the mediawiki that my hosting provider's systems wouldn't function with.
Hrm. I'll look it over.
I've transcribed one or two of the submissions that jon sent to me last week. It'll occur.
Cool
Only one or two? I sent you a mekillotload. :P
Yeah, yeah. I've got job interviews to deal with at the moment.
Yeah, yeah. I've got job interviews to deal with at the moment.
Jobs are overrated as long as you can live with your parents, have a high-speed internet connection, and are chained to the computer to make and edit Dark Sun material
You sold me xlorep, thanks for the info.
Jobs are overrated as long as you can live with your parents, have a high-speed internet connection, and are chained to the computer to make and edit Dark Sun material
Uhuh.
I'm looking over TikiWiki, may transition over the weekend.
Oh, it looks like the wiki formatting is completely configurable as well.
ok i guess i'll have to write some software myself.
at times like these I wish I was imortal.
Can always suggest to the tikiwiki people to integrate it into the articles section. Would be better than trying to write it from scratch, I think.
yea i would do it my self and submit it but i and not that good with php
yea i would do it my self and submit it but i and not that good with php
I am, but I haven't the time. Since they already have it in one part of the site, and since tikiwiki seems to be rather modularized, it would stand to reason that hopefully, it's not too difficult for them to make that adjustment.
I am, but I haven't the time. Since they already have it in one part of the site, and since tikiwiki seems to be rather modularized, it would stand to reason that hopefully, it's not too difficult for them to make that adjustment.
Having actually looked at the PDF generation API in php (<5.0 though) I'd have to say that it's exceedingly ... tedious. It wouldn't surprise me if the PDF generation was a variant of the html generation in the wiki -- that is, instead of rendering to HTML, it renders to PDF. If that's the case, and depending on how the articles are set up to be formatted (ie, do the articles and the wiki use the same formatting code ...) then it may actually be the equivalant of starting over to generate the pdf code for articles. It's hard to tell.
have you noted any speed issues? I'm reading a lot of complaints about the speed of TikiWiki ... indeed, I've rejected a couple of CMS's in the past because of their speed issues .... the more modularlized the php components end up, the slower they tend to be, it seems. I've seen CMS systems that, with a fully configured/set up home page, will hit the database a good 25-50 times (at least) on a front-page load. Using different connections.
Basically, efficency is a concern. Athas.org is currently a virtual host on a shared box.
Aside: Oh, saying I might have a switch done over the weekend was optimistic. My weekend is going to be taken up with painting; I've got a house to sell .....
Having actually looked at the PDF generation API in php (<5.0 though) I'd have to say that it's exceedingly ... tedious. It wouldn't surprise me if the PDF generation was a variant of the html generation in the wiki -- that is, instead of rendering to HTML, it renders to PDF. If that's the case, and depending on how the articles are set up to be formatted (ie, do the articles and the wiki use the same formatting code ...) then it may actually be the equivalant of starting over to generate the pdf code for articles. It's hard to tell.
Articles and Wiki use the same formatting code, from what I've been able to tell.
have you noted any speed issues? I'm reading a lot of complaints about the speed of TikiWiki ... indeed, I've rejected a couple of CMS's in the past because of their speed issues .... the more modularlized the php components end up, the slower they tend to be, it seems. I've seen CMS systems that, with a fully configured/set up home page, will hit the database a good 25-50 times (at least) on a front-page load. Using different connections.
Basically, efficency is a concern. Athas.org is currently a virtual host on a shared box.
DarkHelm.org is a currently a virtual host on a shared box too. Albeit, DarkHelm.org doesn't get the same amount of traffic, but...
Honestly, I haven't seen any speed issues. Especially after telling tikiwiki to enable gzip compression support. Older version of TikiWiki had this issue apparently, but the version I am using -- 1.9 is no problem. Now -- I have noticed that my hosting service has had some recent issues, but that hasn't been TikiWiki causing it. Just a word of caution -- don't install the dictionary module component (which is a separate download) -- this totally corrupted my database horribly, and forced me to track down, remove bad tables, back up what I had, reinstall the database, and then load in the good tables that had survived.
Aside: Oh, saying I might have a switch done over the weekend was optimistic. My weekend is going to be taken up with painting; I've got a house to sell .....
My weekend is currently being taken up with having to do another Art review for class, study King Lear in detail for other class, sign up for new classes, and talk with my VA case worker who apparently wants to ask about something with my classes (if I don't talk to him, I don't get my monthly payments). Somewhere in there, I have various other little chores I need to do, plus a few errands I need to run around town. Gonna have fun trying to get a few minutes to myself it looks like.