User:A.allison/Technical WikiLog

Asher Allison's Page Customise Your Page?		Change Image
Occupation	Veterinarian
Veterinary School	UK - Nottingham
Year of Graduation	2011
Email	-

About Me - Technical WikiLog - To Do - Wiki Development - Content - Extensions - Templates - Miscellaneous

Asher's diary of all technical (non-content) changes being made on WikiVet. Log of work on WikiVet started in July 2010.

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December

18/12/2010

Newsletter update 5

Newsletter has finally been sent out. Next step is to process out of office replies for updated emails as well as processing all bounces.

14/12/2010

Newsletter update 4

Newsletter template has undergone some further modifications. Continued work on the mailing lsit has now eliminated all incorrect addresses and corrected last few faults before import.

'Mystery Girl' plug-in to deal with bounced emails has now been installed and configured.

08/12/2010

Newsletter update 3

Method for constructing emails and sending them has been modified to make the process easier and more uniform. Draft of the December newsletter has been sent out to a variety of people to test this new format as well as how the WikiVet newsletter looks across browsers/clients/platforms.

Mailing list has now been complied. List extracted from database are users known to not want to receive the newsletter were removed. Remaining list of first names and emails addresses was then processed to remove corrupted names, replace single letter with appropriate alternatives, make name lower case with capitalised first letter, remove names with no email and fixed corruptions occurring during import.

November

30/11/2010

Newsletter update 2

Newsletter folder has been setup on the server ready for mailings and test emails have been sent.

21/11/2010

Cron update for search

Despite a number of attempts over the last week there has been no success in being able to fix the automated update of the wikis search terms. This will have to continue to be run manually for the foreseeable future.

20/11/2010

Newsletter Update

Application to drive the newsletter mailings has been finally setup, now needs to be tested before going live.

13/11/2010

Increased size of search box

Size of the search box (top-right) has now been increased to improve the search experience with long words. See here for modification made.

October

07/10/2010

Increased file type support

The wiki will now accept .mp3 and .mp4 files.

Mediawiki Player Extension

Now added to support the playback of more files. Specifically .flv, .mp3 and .mp4 files.

Extension updates

Extensions: ParserFunction, Replace Text, Category Tree, Title Key

Breadcrumb extension

Previous modification to reduce the extensions footprint has now been reversed due to problems on screens with smaller resolutions.

Local Settings

Main configuration file for the wiki tidied up.

Favicon

Corrected issues where favicon may not be displayed and a "ghost page" appears in the breadcrumb relating to this, usually in user account under sub sections.

Confirm Account Extension

Extension has been updated (now version 2.30) to allow 'email confirmation' emails to be sent to users who have not confirmed their emails and may have lost the original email. This will allow the backlog to be cleared, either through users confirming addresses or the confirmation that the user doesn't wish an account as email is generating no response.

06/10/2010

phpMyAdmin & Webmail

Webmail and phpMyAdmin have now been setup for access that doesn't require the central administrative account.

05/10/2010

ImageMagick

Latest version of ImageMagick is now installed in order to resolve thumbnail created of images.

MWSearch Extension

Now installed to allow the wiki to use the lucene search. Fully working and will bring improved search results as well as suggestions if no results found etc.

Lucene Search

Installed & confirgured on the wiki. Build takes ~50s. Currently database rebuilds nightly, may change in near future.

WhiteList Extension

Slight modification made to the way the extension addresses the .csv file it is writing to.

Confirm Account Extension

Now at version 2.20. Modification made to ensure that it would work correctly on new server.

Read only removed

Wiki can once again be edited.

SiteNotice

Now removed as new server.

Sever moved

Mediawiki installation has now moved server and is fully functional.

04/10/2010

Read Only

Editing of the wiki is now prohibited to protect content loss during the transfer of the database between servers.

SiteNotice

Site notice has now been update from '-' to a message alerting users that the server upgrade is taking place.

External Links

External links now open in new windows/tabs rather than in the windows in which WikiVet is being viewed, example [1].

September

25/09/2010

New Server

The new server for wiki has now been setup and indexing service has been configured. Move to this server should occur in the next two weeks.

19/09/2010

Help page for user pages

Help page has finally been written to assist users that wish to modify or add the information box to or on their user pages. The pages can be found here.

Template (Frontpage) change

Template modified to accept two columns in the content body section.

August

21/08/2010

Upload Form Fixed

Following the 1.16 upgrade the structure of the page Special:Upload has changed rendering previous modifications useless. To circumvent this problem changes have been made directly to the file until an alternative solution can be found. Changes have been logged here. Old code has been removed from Mediawiki:Common.js (removed content archived here) and Mediawiki:Upload-url has been deleted as no longer required.

Sidebar changes

Upload link moved from "toolbox" to "development" mainly to facilitate the new upload form. To remove the upload link from the toolbox section Mediawiki:Common.css had to be changed. See here for change.

Reviewed Template

New template created for pages that have been reviewed. Template page is here.

09/08/2010

Usability Initiative Extension

Uploaded the latest build from the subversion and changed the parameters and configuration of the extension. This should hopefully now correct a number of the problems being experienced by the authors trying to edit pages using the new editor.

07/08/2010

ImageMagick

A new installation of ImageMagick has now been installed (Version 6) to correct the problems that were occurring with image thumbnails since the update. All issues with this should now be resolved.

02/08/2010

UsabilityInitative

Has now been upgraded to the latest build to solve solve problems with copying/pasting and text formatting. Also introduces a number of other changes across the board.

ManageCategories Extension

This extension has now been disabled due to incompatibilites with the new editor. Due to the javascript based editor.

01/08/2010

Extension SyntaxHighlight

Now installed on the wiki to support the highlight of different languages syntax to make things easier. Example of this can be see here. Help page for this new extension is found here.

Side bar & Vector Skin

Changes made to sidebar. Modified css so that contents and learning portlets are always expanded by default, while leaving development and toolbox portlets collapsed by default. Changes to '.css' file noted here.

July

31/07/2010

Confirm Account Extension

Updated so bar alerting bureaucrats to registered users now changed from grey (to suit monobook) to white to suit the new skin 'Vector'. Colour scheme when reviewing applications also updated to match WikiVet colours.

Breacrumbs Extensions

Modified the extension so that it occupies less real estate on each page (reduced the amount of white space around the breadcrumb trail).

30/07/2010

Version 1.16

WikiVet is now running the latest version of mediawiki, version 1.16. This provides a number of enhancements the one of particular note is the new skin called 'vector'., This is cleaner than monobook and gives the wiki a much more modern and clean look to it. The usability extension can now be installed and this provides some outstanding new features to help editors on the site including previewing changes without reloading the page, warnings if moving off an edit page without saving, more WYSIWYG type tools.

Usability Initiative Extension

Now installed as this extension required mediawiki 1.16 and the vector skin. This provides a fantastic new feature set for the wiki, particularly editors, and is a huge advancement on previous incatrnations of the wikis softwares user interface.

CharInsert Extension

This extension has now been removed from the wiki. Its functionality is superseded by that brought in under the usability initiative extension which is more tightly integrated with the edit box.

27/07/2010

Main Page

'Main Page' the previous home page for WikiVet has now been renamed to 'Veterinary Education Online' in order to give the page a more meaningful title as well as a better title for search engine indexing.

24/07/2010

Registration Form

Fixed a problem with year not been displayed for nurses that have applied when reviewing their application.

19/07/2010

Template:Frontpage

Now updated so that it will accept text in the right hand box, rather than just an image/logo. See page for further details.

16/07/2010

EditTools Feature

Now has been updated to change the skin of the buttons and update tools to its latest version.

15/07/2010

Copyright Completion

All copyright licence templates have now been completed and the structure of the upload process has been changed. Modifications to the wikis main javascript file now also mean the the information template is always placed inside the upload forms summary box.

User Profiles

Nurse and student nurse pages are now identical in order to mirror change made to the registration form. Blank page template now existing for users who do not want there page automatically populated.

Registration Form

Form has once again been changed.

• Wording is now more specific as to what a 'schools list'
• Nurse section has been changed with place of training and graduation year standard for both student and nurses
• Opt out option added for automatic user profile population
  • Population details changed for non-vets and non-nurses
  • Blank template used on opt out individuals
• Categories associated with user's school now accommodate graduation year as well

14/07/2010

Upload Page

Upload pages have now been rebuilt to accommodate licences and to make the experience more intuitive. New template (information is now introduced as well to give the wiki true likeness to wikimedia projects.

Copyright Licences

All appropriate licences for image/file copyright have now be added to the wiki. The licence option has now been enabled on the upload form as well. See the new setup here.

13/07/2010

User Rights Changes

In light of the recent removal of page protections as well as a much needed spring clean a number of user have now had their rights downgraded in order to maintain a small pool of active users as sysops and bureaucrats.

Unprotecting pages

Finally we have now unprotected all content pages on the wiki (donkey section aside). This means that all users can edit pages including the main page and section main pages as well. This has now been instigated as previous issues regarding protection of the wiki's pages have now been resolved.

Image Rights Templates

First stage of the new copyright system for images on the wiki has been implemented. The information template is very similar to that used on wikipedia and is going to be supported by other templates such as cc-att-2.0 as well as tighter intergration into the upload form.