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Experiences on a Wiki Farm

Katherine Bouton
Centre for Global Atmospheric Modelling
Department of Meteorology
University of Reading
Reading, United Kingdom

My Wiki Farm experience

I have recently (7/05) moved from three separate wiki installs (of version 1.x) to a WikiFarm using the latest versions of 2x as it comes out. As a novice I have learned ALOT from the fast response of members of the PmWiki/MailingLists and through searches of that list at http://search.gmane.org/search.php?group=gmane.comp.web.wiki.pmwiki.user

You can see my my Wiki Farm Experience and see if it helps in your set up.

My biggest hint - use Blocklist2 - can't tell you how many mornings I'd return to a site full of nasty 'ol links

Things I've learned from the list

Write these answers in your farm/local/farmconfig.php or field/local/config.php file

How do I detect if minor edit has been selected? I only want mailposts sent if its not checked as a minor edit.

 $EnableMailPosts = 1;
 if (@$_POST['diffclass'] == 'minor') $EnableMailPosts = 0;

Or, more succinctly:
 $EnableMailPosts = (@$_POST['diffclass'] != 'minor');

Taken from Pm List Answer Jul 27, 2005

How do I share files across a farm?

 $WikiLibDirs = array(&$WikiDir,
                  	new PageStore("$FarmD/shared.d/\$FullName"),                 
                  	new PageStore("$FarmD/wikilib.d/\$FullName"));

Then if those pages are edited, make sure they are copied to the correct directory

 $group = FmtPageName('$Group', $pagename);
 if($action == 'edit' && $group == 'Shared') 
      				$WikiDir = new PageStore("$FarmD/shared.d/\$FullName");

How do I add the author's name and a link to her profile page to the footer w/o changing the default skin template

 XLSDV('en', array(
     'Page last modified on $LastModified' =>
     'Page last modified on $LastModified by $LastModifiedBy'));

(tested on skins: pmwiki, lean, neutral and evolver)

How do I remove various parts of the page when editing a page -- 1 is show it; 0 is don't show it

 global $action;
 if ($action=='edit') { SetTmplDisplay('PageHeaderFmt', 1);
			 SetTmplDisplay('PageFooterFmt', 1);
			 SetTmplDisplay('PageTitleFmt', 1);
			 SetTmplDisplay('PageLeftFmt', 1);};

How do I add css to pages to create correct for print preview from the browser menu

 $HTMLStylesFmt[] = "
 	@media print {
	#wikilogo,#wikihead,#wikicmds,#wikifoot,#wikileft, #message {display:none}
	#wikitext {margin:.5em}
	body {width:auto;font-family:serif;font-size:14px;margin:.5em}
	} ";

How do I add wikipedia style image to indicate offsite links

 $UrlLinkFmt = "<a class='external' href='\$LinkUrl'>\$LinkText</a>";

How do I use local.css in my farm

Currently the pmwiki distribution of skins.php uses $PubDirUrl rather than $FarmPubDirUrl You can locally configure it to look in FarmPubDir as well with:

 $PageCSSListFmt = array(
  '$FarmD/pub/css/local.css' => '$FarmPubDirUrl/css/local.css',
  '$FarmD/pub/css/$Group.css' => '$FarmPubDirUrl/css/$Group.css',
  '$FarmD/pub/css/$FullName.css' => '$FarmPubDirUrl/css/$FullName.css',
  'pub/css/local.css' => '$PubDirUrl/css/local.css',
  'pub/css/$Group.css' => '$PubDirUrl/css/$Group.css',
  'pub/css/$FullName.css' => '$PubDirUrl/css/$FullName.css');

Taken from Pm List Answer Aug 12, 2005

How do I add a SiteWide LatestNews postit-like note to a page?

Write a Latest News page In your farmconfig.php define a custom wikistyle

WikiStyle['latestnews']['class'] = 'latestnews';

Add to a local.css file (see above) and set style as you want

 .latestnews {
 display: block;
 border: 1px solid #ccc;
 padding: 5px;
 background: yellow;
 text-align: left;
 font-size:smaller;
 width:	200px;
 float:	right; 
 margin-left:0.5em;
 }

Then add to whatever page you want the latest news bulletin to pop up at, where 30 is the numbers of days since it was last modified - ie its no older that 30 days.

Note - it won't show like this on this page cause the above WikiStyle is not defined inthe PmWiki config file.

 (:if lastmodified Test.LatestNews 30:)
 >>latestnews<<
 (:include Test.LatestNews :)
 >><<
 (:ifend:)

On a page by page basis, this style would look like this:

%define=latestnews bgcolor=yellow font-size=smaller padding=5px border=1px
width=200px float=right%
(:if lastmodified Test.LatestNews 30:)
If no text is in the yellow box, edit
[[Test.LatestNews?action=edit|Test.LatestNews]] to make sure it is newer
than 30 days old
>>latestnews<<
(:include Test.LatestNews :)
>><<
(:ifend:)

How do I make a custom format for LastModified ?

I want $CustomLastModified would use $TimeFmt='%b %d, %Y';

Again from Pm

$FmtP['/\\$CustomLastModified/e'] =
       'strftime("%b %d, %Y", $PCache[$pagename]["time"])';

To enable it as markup, you'll also need:

Markup('{$CustomLastModified}', '{$fmt}',
       '/{\\$CustomLastModified}/e',
       "FmtPageName('\$CustomLastModified', \$pagename)");

I have an acronym which is interpreted as a spaced wikiword which I don't want it to be spaced. Onthe forum I just found out that "In version 2.2.0-beta14 (just released), you can now set:

    $WikiWordCount['WikiWord'] = -1;

which in addition to preventing WikiWord from becoming a link will also cause it to ignore any $SpaceWikiWords setting. "

This works great for me (currently using 2.2.0-beta63)

--- Categories: WikiFarms, Layout