Hi all,
I'd like to add a calendar facility to one of our wikis which will allow the usual booking of events, display of group calendar and notifications to a mailing list of events due (meetings, anniversaries etc).
There are several calendar extensions listed at MW; does anyone have any experience or would care to make any recommendations?
On 12/03/07, Mike Maughan mike.maughan@procuratum.com wrote:
There are several calendar extensions listed at MW; does anyone have any experience or would care to make any recommendations?
Why don't you try them out for yourself? It's typically trivial to install an extension and usually straightforward to uninstall after a limited trial if you don't like it. You could also set up a small wiki for testing these things out so your main wiki's data wouldn't become "tainted" in any way.
Other people's recommendations are good, but one man's treasure is another man's...
Rob Church
On 12/03/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/03/07, Mike Maughan mike.maughan@procuratum.com wrote:
There are several calendar extensions listed at MW; does anyone have any experience or would care to make any recommendations?
Why don't you try them out for yourself? It's typically trivial to install an extension and usually straightforward to uninstall after a limited trial if you don't like it. You could also set up a small wiki for testing these things out so your main wiki's data wouldn't become "tainted" in any way.
Just (lack of) time and the associated mental space ....
Why don't you try them out for yourself? [snip] Other people's recommendations are good, but one man's treasure is another man's...
Sure, but a quick test would a) usually not be that quick (even a quick test takes time) b) not reveal any long-term issues.
Why not benefit from other people's experiences - that, too, is part of the wiki concept...
Though Rob does have a point; even recommendations need to be checked against your needs before implementation.
-- F.
On 12/03/07, Frederik Dohr fdg001@gmx.net wrote:
Though Rob does have a point; even recommendations need to be checked against your needs before implementation.
My point was rather hastily made, but it does stem off a classic irritation I have - and it's the one that is caused by people picking MediaWiki when it's not appropriate for their needs.
MediaWiki is a wiki engine that's designed to scale to meet the needs of...hey, look, deja vu. Point is, it *does* have a lower limit, and it *doesn't* implement a lot of things that some people have come to expect us to implement out of project scope.
If MediaWiki doesn't do what you want, *and there is something which does, or is more likely to*, then pick the right software for the job! Just because MediaWiki is popular, and just because it powers the largest wiki farms in the world, doesn't mean it's suitable for a fifteen user internal site on some corporate LAN.
Rant over.
Rob Church
My point was rather hastily made, but it does stem off a classic irritation I have - and it's the one that is caused by people picking MediaWiki when it's not appropriate for their needs.
Yeah, thought so... ;)
Speaking of frequently recurring issues: A lot of mailing lists have a weekly FAQ or (n)etiquette guide. Something like that might be useful for this list as well - if only to keep people from creating new threads by replying to an existing one...
-- F.
Rob Church exclaimed:
If MediaWiki doesn't do what you want, *and there is something which does, or is more likely to*, then pick the right software for the job!
And for those wondering what that might be, you might want to glance over TikiWiki:
It's a wiki *plus* workflow *plus* trackers *plus* maps *plus* surveys *plus* quizzes *plus* calendar *plus* forums *plus* image galleries *plus* blogs *plus* newsletters *plus* .... etc. etc. etc.
I personally use MediaWiki because a plain (but world-class) wiki engine is *almost* what I want, and I'm prepared to do the work to make it go the extra few yards. For people who want a wiki plus tons of other stuff, all pre-packaged and ready to go, TikiWiki looks like a worthy candidate. MediaWiki's extensibility is great, but if you're trying to develop a site where the wiki is only a small part of the eventual software, then it's probably the wrong way to go.
(I'm sure there are others, too, but TikiWiki is one I happened to come across. I haven't tried it, use at your own risk, yadda yadda yadda.)
Ian
On 12/03/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
My point was rather hastily made, but it does stem off a classic irritation I have - and it's the one that is caused by people picking MediaWiki when it's not appropriate for their needs.
[snippage etc]
The last thing I want to engage in here is an energetic debate about the Tao of MediaWiki :)
I am in a situation arrived at via several pragmatic choices, in that the wiki in question is becoming a shared home for a social group (membership is small - less than 20 - but worldwide) to which I have belonged for some 14 years.
I have been looking at wikis for some time and am very keen to use them further. I have some strong development ideas for building upon a wiki platform but do need to learn more about the practicalities of wiki management & development, so by combining these objectives with the above need I have a good opportunity.
I rented a raw Debian linux virtual server with the intention of playing wiki until I found one that best fitted my model. What I have learned so far is that my Unix skills are way too out of date for such a project without considerable work, and I don't actually want to become a Linux sysadmin again. I accordingly went looking for a 'leg up' and was recommended to dreamhost, who happens to offer MW as a one-click install. Answer to a maiden's prayer ...
So whether MW is truly 'appropriate' to my needs, or merely 'sufficiently functional, convenient & available' is perhaps another debate, but that is why I am where I am and asking for more experienced users' opinions about MW & its extensions.
A pretty simple way to handle this is to make an extension that puts an iframe in a wiki page, and have that iframe include a Google calendar or a phpicalendar page. Note that you specify the url for the iframe, so it is not a generic iframe extension with associated security issues. IIRC, Google calendar gives you a url that even tells you what size to make the iframe fit just right.
Here's some code you can play with (adjust the output as needed):
<?php # iframe. Modified from: # CSO_iFrame - MediaWiki Extension # CSharp-Online.NET (C) 2006 Chang & Wagers Associates # The text between the tags is used as the properties of an iFrame tag. # Usage: <iframe_embed>iframe-properties</iframe_embed> # # To activate the extension, add this line to LocalSettings.php: # include("extensions/iframe.php");
$wgExtensionFunctions[] = "wfIframe";
function wfIframe(){ global $wgParser; $wgParser->setHook ("iframe_embed", "iframe_embed"); # tagname, callback }
# the callback function for converting the input text to HTML output #function iframe_test ($text, $argv, &$wgParser) function iframe_embed ($text){ $output = "<iframe src="; switch (strtolower($text)){ case 'phpicalendar': $output .= "http://phpicalendar.org/ phpicalendar"; break; case 'cnn': $output .= "http://cnn.com"; break; default: $output .= "http://hulab.tamu.edu"; } $output .= " width = '100%' height = '800'></iframe>"; return $output; }
===================================== Jim Hu Associate Professor Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics 2128 TAMU Texas A&M Univ. College Station, TX 77843-2128 979-862-4054
On Mar 12, 2007, at 3:00 PM, Mike Maughan wrote:
On 12/03/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
My point was rather hastily made, but it does stem off a classic irritation I have - and it's the one that is caused by people picking MediaWiki when it's not appropriate for their needs.
[snippage etc]
The last thing I want to engage in here is an energetic debate about the Tao of MediaWiki :)
I am in a situation arrived at via several pragmatic choices, in that the wiki in question is becoming a shared home for a social group (membership is small - less than 20 - but worldwide) to which I have belonged for some 14 years.
I have been looking at wikis for some time and am very keen to use them further. I have some strong development ideas for building upon a wiki platform but do need to learn more about the practicalities of wiki management & development, so by combining these objectives with the above need I have a good opportunity.
I rented a raw Debian linux virtual server with the intention of playing wiki until I found one that best fitted my model. What I have learned so far is that my Unix skills are way too out of date for such a project without considerable work, and I don't actually want to become a Linux sysadmin again. I accordingly went looking for a 'leg up' and was recommended to dreamhost, who happens to offer MW as a one-click install. Answer to a maiden's prayer ...
So whether MW is truly 'appropriate' to my needs, or merely 'sufficiently functional, convenient & available' is perhaps another debate, but that is why I am where I am and asking for more experienced users' opinions about MW & its extensions.
-- Regards, Mike _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
If MediaWiki doesn't do what you want, *and there is something which does, or is more likely to*, then pick the right software for the job! Just because MediaWiki is popular, and just because it powers the largest wiki farms in the world, doesn't mean it's suitable for a fifteen user internal site on some corporate LAN.
Rant over.
Rob Church
The best way to handle this dilemma is, of course:
* To write a drop-dead easy FAQ that even your _Mom_ can 'get' right away -- covering all these, uh... FAQs.
* Make it REAL easy to access -- and refer to too -- in these situations: so it doesn't distract you, as you constantly steering people to it.
* And resign yourself to giving-over a certain part of your time to handling these cries for help. But then, that's what you're resigned-to already, isn't it?
Point is, I doubt very much that your present FAQ setup is quite up to this job. Nor your present structure of division of labor.
- -- grok.
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I know. Rob is right.
However where I work we have selected MediaWiki as the best tool for what we require. And then it is a good idea to integrate some calendaring functionality into the Wiki (as in, preferable over using another tool).
I have found the calendar extension very useful (wikicalendar by Christof Damian. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Cdamian/calendar).
On 3/12/07, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/03/07, Frederik Dohr fdg001@gmx.net wrote:
Though Rob does have a point; even recommendations need to be checked against your needs before implementation.
My point was rather hastily made, but it does stem off a classic irritation I have - and it's the one that is caused by people picking MediaWiki when it's not appropriate for their needs.
MediaWiki is a wiki engine that's designed to scale to meet the needs of...hey, look, deja vu. Point is, it *does* have a lower limit, and it *doesn't* implement a lot of things that some people have come to expect us to implement out of project scope.
If MediaWiki doesn't do what you want, *and there is something which does, or is more likely to*, then pick the right software for the job! Just because MediaWiki is popular, and just because it powers the largest wiki farms in the world, doesn't mean it's suitable for a fifteen user internal site on some corporate LAN.
Rant over.
Rob Church
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