Talk:Main Page

Wiki Tip of the Moment

In an effort to make people more knowledgeable about the many features of this Wiki, I've decided it would be a good thing to have a Tip of the Moment on the front page. People should change this tip once in a while. Make sure to archive the tip in VOCWiki:Tip at the same time as you place it on the front page. Possible future tips :

• Advantages of creating an account
• How to upload a photo

Lots more I'm sure, but I've got to run to TA now!

Chris Michalak 16:36, 29 Mar 2004 (EST)

The wiki tip of the moment stuff has gone mostly unused. It may just be clutering the front page. Perhaps some of you keen Wikiers (Champagne, Webster?) can make a decision on if we want to keep it. If so, perhaps you could come up with some tips to populate it. At this point you guys know more about this stuff than I do. If not, feel free to just take it off.

Chris Michalak 01:16, 13 October 2006 (MDT)

I do like the wiki tip of the moment feature - perhaps we can rotate through some of the old ones if there's nothing new to add. New members who are also new to the wiki don't have the benefit of having been exposed to all the old tips. I'm going to update it with a new tip on using Categories

Scott Nelson 12:38, 13 October 2006 (MDT)

Uploading Files

Chris, I want to upload some Brew Hut autocad files, but uploading to the wiki seems to be disabled. Help!

Scott Nelson 01:01, 4 Feb 2005 (EST)

There is a security vulnerability in the upload handling of the mediawiki version we are using. In fact, this got exploited by a script-kiddy back in December. Therefore I've disabled uploads until I get around to upgrading the wiki software. I guess I should get on that...

I'm not sure if we want to upload files other than images (viewable in a web browser : png,jpg,gif). I can certainly see the usefulness of the autocad files, but where do we draw the line? People may start upload some MS-Office files, full of virii and so on... Therefore, it may be best to not place the autocad files here. If you like I can place them in the "Misc Docs" portion of the static webpage. Just send them to me.

Chris Michalak 02:07, 4 Feb 2005 (EST)

Uploading images should now work again, since we've updated the Wiki software. Also note that you can do all sorts of fancy things with images. For example, you can place a thumbnail in the page with a subtitle that links to the full image. You don't need to generate the thumbnail yourself. It all happens automagically. For an example, have a look at New Brew Trail. As always, have a look at Wikipedia for other advanced formating tricks (they run the same software we do).

Chris Michalak 16:37, 7 Feb 2005 (EST)

Tips Page

The main page is starting to get a bit cluttered, so I thought it might be nice to roll a few things together into a page called tips. This would eliminate a few links from the main page in order to streamline it in the same way we streamline trip ideas. This page would have links to things like gear ideas, recipes, photography tips and ski Maintenance. Also, on the idea of decluttering the main page we could move the Constitution link off the main page into the Executive area.

Scott Nelson 15:08, 25 September 2006 (MDT)

I definately think it is a good idea to keep the main page uncluttered, but I think that people other than the executive might want to read the constitution, and they might not know to find it under executive. Scott Webster 12:06, 6 October 2006 (MDT)

Columns!!

I've just finished adding a bunch of Templates for creating column text. Only the Col-begin, Col-break and Col-end work (you don't end anything else anyway). An example can be seen hereTemplate:Col-break -Christian Champagne(talk) 17:51, 12 october 2006 (PST)

Navigation Bar

Is there any way we can customize the Navigation bar of the left side? Many of the links don't go anywhere - Community portal, Donations. Current Events links to the Trip Agenda by a redirect, but it would be nice to have simply "Trip Agenda" on the menu. Other popular general pages like Huts and Gear rental could go on this navigation bar instead.

Scott Nelson 12:51, 13 October 2006 (MDT)

Good Question. I don't know at the moment. I'll will check it out but Chris must know. Champagne 12:58, 13 October 2006 (MDT)

Yeah, I'm sure I can figure out how to change it. I don't think it's something that can be done through the Wiki interface. It's probably some template file I need to edit. So... What do we want on the bar:

• Main Page
• Trip Agenda
• Recent changes
• Random page
• Help

Anything more/less?

Chris Michalak 15:26, 13 October 2006 (MDT)

I was going to update the sidebar, but I don't have permissions. You need to edit MediaWiki:Sidebar. Instructions here. Scott Webster 17:33, 13 October 2006 (MDT)

VOC History

I can't find any history of the VOC either on the wiki or main page. Maybe we should have one? I don't even know when the VOC was founded, nor can I find that information easily. Maybe I'm blind. There is a History of VOC huts page at least. Scott Webster 18:18, 23 October 2006 (MDT)

Unfortunately, we can't copy and paste Roland onto the wiki. Champagne 18:36, 23 October 2006 (MDT)

Have a look here. Maybe someone should wikify the old VOC Handbook? Scott Nelson

Woh, didn't even know that was in the wiki. Do we still have an non-digital version hanging in the clubroom somewhere ? Champagne 22:11, 23 October 2006 (MDT)

VOC Handbook

As Scott was saying, we should definitely wikify the handbook. I'm guessing that it was created before we had the wiki ? So, should be copy and paste onto a new wiki page and/or paste it into their respective section of the wiki ? Champagne 08:59, 24 October 2006 (MDT)

I was thinking that we should update the handbook, and having it on the wiki would certainly make it easier for people to update.... but I guess it might not be so "official" if everyone was changing it. I think it would be a good idea though. We could copy it back over to the main site once it is fully up to date. Scott Webster 09:57, 24 October 2006 (MDT)

Should we lock the editing to a few people then (Admins and a select few) ? I'm sure Chris could arrange something of sort. If anyone wants to update the page or comment about it, they can post their request on the discussion section. What do you think ? Champagne 10:12, 24 October 2006 (MDT)

No, I don't really think we should lock it. Even the constitution isn't locked. People should realize this sort of thing though, hopefully VOCers 10 years from now don't just take the constitution off the wiki and assume that it is totally correct without checking, since it is probably some sort of legal document. Scott Webster 10:34, 24 October 2006 (MDT)

Main page columns broken in Safari

The main page doesn't show up properly for me at home (Safari 2.0.4). The left column is extra wide, and the right one is off the screen. Scott Webster 10:26, 26 October 2006 (MDT)

Did it work with the old main page or is it just a problem with the new one? (You can pull up old versions of the main page with on the History tab.) How about the wikipediea main page that I think Christian based this main page on? Scott Nelson 11:40, 26 October 2006 (MDT)

When I was building the new page, I had some problems with the columns. It didn't want to properly fit the page. Originally for Wikipedia, the 2 columns together had width="100%" with width="55%" and width="45%" for each column. I was trying to center both for 50/50 but each time, the right column shrank to about half of the 50% planned. After many frustating tries, i just went with width="170%" (I believe?) and it worked out.

I'm guessing the 170% width is why the columns appears off the screen. I'll have to got and try again to fix it (I thought that I fix the damn thing!) Champagne 12:13, 26 October 2006 (MDT)

Seems fixed now, thanks. Scott Webster 20:30, 26 October 2006 (MDT)

Colours

I'm trying hard to like the new main page, but I don't. I think it might be the colours. Scott Nelson 19:13, 27 October 2006 (MDT)

I don't like the "light cyan" colour for the "Welcome to the VOC Wiki!" I think the others are ok. Scott Webster 19:10, 29 October 2006 (MST)\

I took the colours off Wikipedia's main page, except for the "Welcome to the VOC Wiki!" box. I can't find a good colour for it. You can change it with an Hex Code colour palate in the code i.e. #FFFFFF for white(?). Champagne 23:33, 29 October 2006 (MST)

The color is specified as Red Green Blue intensity levels (ranging from 00-FF). For a more visual approach, you can use this java applet to pick a colour and get the code for it.

Personally, the colours don't offend me. But I'm really a functional kind of guy, so I'm pretty indifferent about these aesthetics issues. Chris Michalak 13:33, 30 October 2006 (MST)

Well, it has a more halloween-y feel now! :) Scott Webster 14:03, 30 October 2006 (MST)

Very Flashy ! Champagne 14:18, 30 October 2006 (MST)

Please make the orange go away. It scares me. Dan E 12:15, 1 November 2006 (MST)

I made it obnoxious orange on purpose to encourage people to change it. Please try to find a better colour. You can use the page that Chris linked to above to choose a colour, then edit the main page. The orange is the colour "FFB413" on the first line... change that. Scott Webster 13:51, 1 November 2006 (MST)

HTML named colours also work. Intead of "#FFB413" put a colour name like "red" See here for colour references Scott Nelson 15:47, 1 November 2006 (MST)

So, do you like the look of the page now? Did you like the old one? I didn't like or dislike it really... it was just plain. I think this new page is an improvement. Scott Webster 16:42, 1 November 2006 (MST)

Trip: Namespace

What do people think about putting all the temporary trip organization pages into their own namespace? This would allow for easier maintainance in the future - for example system admins could delete articles in the Trip namespace that have not been updated for over 1 year. Recurring trips like Longhike still get their own page that would not be in the Trip namespace. Here is an example: Trip:Brew Hut March 1-2 2006. now I'm not sure if this can actually be done. See here. Scott Nelson 19:32, 5 December 2006 (MST)

Sounds like a good idea, but as you seem to have noticed, you didn't actually create a namespace called "Trip" yet. I think Chris has to edit some file to do that with our version of mediawiki. I'm not sure if this matters though, maybe we should just "pretend," using the Trip: prefix, and then later when they add the namespace manager we can convert it to a real namespace or something. Scott Webster 21:38, 5 December 2006 (MST)

Ok, the instructions on how to hack the code to add namespaces are here. I can do this. My concern is that regular non-geek members will not create new pages in this namespace but continue placing them in the regular name space. Also, the definition of "recuring" trips is a bit vague. Some things are recuring to various degrees (let's say the annualish Needle Peak trip, where does that go?). But yeah, maybe it's a good idea, I can't decide. Chris Michalak 11:23, 6 December 2006 (MST)

Looks like new versions of wikimedia software now support custom namespaces without any sort of hack - just modifying the configuration files. As for the recurring trip argument, it seems that most recurring trips now get 2 pages (i.e. Glacier school which has all the long lived info and Glacier School 2007 which has all the organizational stuff in it. Scott Nelson 14:18, 14 September 2007 (PDT)

I finally came up with a somewhat compelling reason to do this - when looking at the wiki "what's new" page, there are a lot of edits. Nearly all of them are people signing up for trips. However, it would be nice to be able to filter these out to see edits to non-trip pages, because the noise of trip sign up edits tends to hide edits to the wiki core pages. On the special:recent change page there is an option that allows you to exclude certain name spaces. If there was a trip namespace, you could exclude it in order to see all the non-trip changes to the wiki. Scott Nelson 18:58, 18 October 2007 (PDT)

I say we just do it. If the message board can be reorganized, certainly the wiki can too... I guess "we" = Chris :) Scott Webster 23:22, 18 October 2007 (PDT)

On a somewhat unrelated note, recently a couple people have "signed up" for trips that have already occurred. Apparently they didn't read the date correctly, but perhaps once an event has passed we could add some sort of high-vis template box at the top that indicates it is a past trip or something. Scott Webster 16:00, 21 October 2007 (PDT)

Done. See template:Trip date. Now we just have to get trip organizers to use it. Scott Nelson 11:33, 22 October 2007 (PDT).

Cool! I guess it could be an idea to make the template display something, such as the trip date, or time remaining before trip, before it actually happens... this might make people realize they should use it more, because adding a template to a page that does nothing when you add it might seem odd. But people like "us" could always add it whenever, even after the trip is over for clarity. Scott Webster 16:30, 22 October 2007 (PDT)

Anyone had any more recent thoughts on this? The exec has been discussing various record-keeping measures recently. If we decide to make the new namespace and organize things better on the wiki it would be nice if we could easily search through the old trips. Maybe even just being able to sort by date. This could possibly work if we had a standardized title? Eg: Trip:Name_standard-date-format or something. Maybe the date embedded in the tripdate template would be good enough somehow. Scott Webster 14:12, 15 December 2007 (PST)

New Links

I'm not sure the new links roland put up on the main page are all for the better. Do we really need a link to the club constitution from the front page? Also I think the titles are excessively descriptive and clutter the front page too much. There are now two links to annual club events. I think it's worth keeping the links to the Membership faq, but personally I would revert all the other changes. Changes to important pages (like this one, the main page) should probably be proposed and discussed on the talk page first. Scott Nelson 18:33, 16 September 2009 (PDT)