Open PM to Rounder About Wiki Software under PostNuke
I sent this PM to rounder after doing some checking into wiki software for PostNuke (see post titled "Road Work Next 25 Miles").
I've been doing some research into PostNuke-compatible wikis via the PN website and Google, and the results are, unfortunately, very disappointing. Most of the wiki modules seem to be inferior to the WikkaWiki software we are using now.
The leading wiki in use with PN is called pnWiki, and unfortunately is not suitable for use. It does not store page edit histories, which is absolutely required for wikis, as it allows content that has been accidentally deleted or vandalized to be recovered. This also means that edit comparisons are not possible. On top of that it seems to be some sort of shareware scheme.
Another leading PN-integrated wiki software is PNphpWiki, which is a PN port of phpWiki. We did try phpWiki at the very beginning (when the wiki. domain name was created) and rejected it due to its stunted capabilities. (No user names, for one, which makes it difficult to keep track of who's doing what.)
There was a post at http://forums.postnuke.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&p=163835 where someone said that they were in the process of porting Wikka to PN, however they offered no links except for the central development repository. There appear to be no MediaWiki (my preferred software, in use at all the Wikipedia and related projects) ports to PN.
So my recommendations are to either:
- Port WikkaWiki or MediaWiki into PN ourselves.
- Try to get a community project going that would have the programmers in our community collaborate to build a PN-compatible wiki from scratch (obvious problems with this one of course, but it could be a valuable learning experience and prove that Cody is a fraud)
- Leave the wiki alone and simply link to it as part of the PN module list.
It seems that by using the prebuilt wiki solutions to PN we would take a large step backward in terms of features and usability. I would really prefer that we leave the wiki alone, as the few users who have learned to edit it get to retain the familiar UI and wikicodes. However, if we are to integrate the wiki into the PN framework it looks like we're going to have to do quite a large amount of work ourselves. 
Please comment back if you've got any recommendations.
Deletions for 1 Aug 05
The following pages were speedy deleted:
The pages were deleted because they are no longer needed; the deletion procedure now goes through RFA.
Road Work Next 25 Miles
Greetings, Those of you who frequent the forums at ReAnim8ed should have discovered that the construction on the new .org is under way. The forums have changed to a new software called PNphpBB2. Two questions you might be wondering: 1) Why? 2) Will this affect the wiki? Well, we'll start with #1 first. See, the new .org will be centered around some software called PostNuke. This will not, as the name suggests, destroy your forum posts, but rather create a unifying framework for all the .org projects: forum, wiki, gallery, uploads, and such. That means logging into one will affect all; searching will search all.
The recent forum software switch was to change from the standard phpBB software to PNphpBB - a modified version of phpBB that will work with PostNuke (hence the "PN" in the name). This led us to our current situation.
Regarding whether it will affect the wiki: if you've been paying attention, you'd realize that it will, because we will have to find wiki software that will be PostNuke compatible. Other than the new software - and I will have to tool around with stylesheets and stuff to get the classic Anim8or look and feel - the content and policies will remain the same.
In other words, same wiki, new building.
In other news, I've created a boilerplate that will distinguish bureaucracy pages (content/admin pages) from regular pages and create links to all the others. I simplified the policies to create one central grounds for contacting the admins: Requests for Administration, or RfA. This is where you can request moves, deletions, and boilerplates. Hopefully should the need to admin something arise, the community will know where to go.
Blog and Account Lock-out
For convenience's sake, I moved the wiki news page to this blog. This will also be a log of all administrative actions taken under the new deletion policies, which I'll write soon.
There the rather large problem of a snafu causing some people to not be able to log in has been fixed. As it turned out, the problem was that the user pages were not being correctly identified as such and were causing conflicts with the user accounts that creating them. To create a user page, you need to have "~&This page is a part of CategoryUsers." at the bottom of the page (without quotes). This will let your user page work the way it should.
Minor CSS Change
I thought that I had screwed up the wiki when I first attempted to implement this. But as it turns out, I was editing an old version of the CSS, so I was really baffled when the background color screwed up.
Anyway, the new CSS now has support for the Linux font Bitstream Vera Sans - that's the font that the wiki will be displayed in if Verdana is missing. This means that the wiki will look nicer on systems which are missing Verdana. Of course, if you're missing that too, then it displays in Tahoma.
Also, I changed it so that links pointing to missing articles now appear in red, the same as they do on Wikipedia and many other wikis. Hopefully this will draw attention to articles that we need.
I'm working on an image uploader so that you won't have to have webspace to put images in articles. Only logged-in users will be able to use it, though. This shouldn't be too much of a concern though - most of the community has an account at ReAnim8ed.
