website

[gusl]

I've just finished wikifying my website: http://www.optimizelife.com. It was painful going through all those notebooks, but now it's done.

There are only 3 pages remaining in optimizelife proper: the front page, my CV, and my spam-policy page. I may wikify them too once I figure out how to make wiki pages uneditable.

I think I should make the look & feel of the wiki consistent with the front page. Does anybody have experience with MediaWiki styles? I should create a skin... I'm thinking of a 4- or 5-color gradient sort of thing. Any suggestions?

Comments

[mauitian.livejournal.com]

Dude! I knew I friended you for a reason, and just didn't know what it was yet. ;)

I'm also currently in the process of uploading my brain to a wiki:

http://physicswiki.org

I tried out MediaWiki first but found it too bulky for a personal wiki -- so I'm using Tiddlywiki. I hacked on the interface until I liked it. Tiddlywiki is a remarkable thing -- it all consists of one javascript/html page. The whole thing -- code, entries, everything.

I'm a bit worried about eventual assimilation with the larger wiki world. But figure I can always write some python to convert my entries to other wiki formats. And for now it's pretty nifty.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Cool. Did you install WikiTeX yourself?

[mauitian.livejournal.com]

Yes, the first time I did it (on a mac) the biggest pain was first installing texvc and ocaml. Then I realized just following the wikitex readme instructions was easier.

But I dumped MediaWiki and WikiTex when I started using Tiddlywiki.

jsMath is SOOOOOO much prettier for TeX!

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Can I use jsMath on MediaWiki?

[mauitian.livejournal.com]

Hmm, hasn't been done yet, as far as I know.

But I'll bet you can, yes.

It's pretty easy to set up. Download the jsMath folder from:
http://www.math.union.edu/~dpvc/jsMath/
then make a small web page to test it.
Then see if you can put the same jsmath calls in your MediaWiki template page.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Is MediaWiki "bulky" as in consuming too much space on the server?

[mauitian.livejournal.com]

It's "bulky" in several different ways -- which, of course, is the nature of "bulky."

On the setup side:
It requires MySQL, and a bunch of MySQL configuration.
Also needs PHP.
And a LaTeX environment for math.
Now get all these to work together with MediaWiki...
It was doable, and I did it, but a pain in the butt.

By comparison, setting up Tiddlywiki consists of:
Download this javascript/html file to your local disk.

MediaWiki also seems bulky on the interface side. If you play around with my physicswiki you'll see that the only words on the screen are content. It's clean -- or getting there. :)
Plus you can have multiple short entries up at once.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Re: Interface
Yes, I would like to get rid of most of the stuff on the left panel, and recenter the page.

[mauitian.livejournal.com]

Go to my physicswiki and hit the two buttons on the upper left corner.

(Simon Funk made me do that -- he kept complaining about the clutter)

:)

[mpnolan.livejournal.com]

What's the purpose of the wikification? If stimulating discussion is one goal, how do you want that to be organized? An explanation page for people not you would help then.

It is a wiki and basically the world's to modify now, but I'd guess that you feel some sense of ownership.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Much of the purpose was for me to be able to modify it myself from anywhere without needing an HTML editor, FTP connection, etc.

For discussion, I would ideally like to have something like patrissimo's SOCS, in which you can leave a comment at the place you want it... almost as if were writing comments with a pen on a printed sheet. But he never got back to me.

Maybe MediaWiki has a permission setting in which people can only leave comments at the talk page. If so, I should do that on several pages.

I'm actually somewhat afraid of mass vandalism striking at once. Would you know how to revert everything back to a certain date & time?

[mpnolan.livejournal.com]

almost as if were writing comments with a pen on a printed sheet.
That sounds like the structure that's evolved on the c2wiki (just click a few pages at random and you should get some idea). I think MediaWiki could do the same just fine.

I'm actually somewhat afraid of mass vandalism striking at once. Would you know how to revert everything back to a certain date & time?

Installing a CAPTCHA system that tests (1) when creating an account and (2) when an anonymous user is editing a page, should take care of all bot attacks, at least. It stopped all spamming on moacad.com.

I don't, off the top of my head, know how to do a mass-revert.