Geeklog Forums

Hi,

I'm still a rookie with Geeklog but never the less in general there are a few things I've stumbled upon which could be fixed fairly easy, but it would require community support since it's allot for just a few persons.

As the subject stats, I think it would be good to centralize documentation related to Geeklog. On Geeklog.net there is a nice wiki (Media Wiki) which is already full with allot of information but I also noticed that e.g. the French Geeklog site has allot of English documentation inside their Wiki (DokuWiki), great stuff Ben ^_^, and regarding to plugins information is allover the place, e.g. Navman which still works with Geeklog 1.7.0 has a very good English document, but that document comes with the plugin and all other information for that plugin is in Japanese (I love Japanese but I can't read Kanji ).

So consider this feedback or a call to arms ^_~ Either way, I think it would be a good start to start filling Geeklog.net's wiki with whatever information you can find.

Getting an account for the wiki isn't that hard, check this link for requesting an account:

http://wiki.geeklog.net/index.php/Special:UserLogin

It basically asks you to send an e-mail to Dirk, Blaine or Vinny.

And if writing isn't your main thing then you can always PM me a website or article and I'll help add it to the wiki (I don't mind writing).

So let's get to some documenting 8)



p.s.

Wouldn't it be a good thing to use DokuWiki instead + use the plugin to integrate it with Geeklog? (e.g. how they did it at geeklog.fr)

It would require some effort but in the end I think it would pay off to have the site and wiki nicely integrated, the features that this plugin comes with are pretty useful (especially the search integration).

But that's just me thinking out loud.

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"The Linux philosophy is 'Laugh in the face of danger'. Oops. Wrong One. 'Do it yourself'. Yes, that's it." - Linus Torvalds

I like your enthusiasm

Incidentally, at FrOSCon last weekend, at least 3 different people mentioned in their talks that wikis in open source projects are often in a sorry state. It sounds like a good idea initially (and usually is), but it also needs someone who's looking after it on a regular basis.

This has certainly happened to the Geeklog Wiki as well. There's a lot of useful information in there, but it's sometimes hard to find and not very well structured. Other information is outdated, but updating it would often require to rewrite the article, which seems to intimidate people (as opposed to just adding a few more sentences to an existing article). And of course, there's also a lot of information missing, especially from a user's point of view.

So, if you're interested in helping out here - feel free to start rewriting or reorganizing things as you see fit. Your perspective as a new user can only help, in my opinion.

On a side note, I was recently thinking if we shouldn't also move the FAQ into the wiki. Updating it on here is a pain (due to some formatting issues with the plugin and since you also need special permissions on the site). If it were on the wiki, it would be much easier to keep it up to date. I don't want to lose the existing links to the FAQ all over the place, but that should be fixable with some mod_rewrite magic ... Thoughts?


Yes and no. The search integration would certainly be a plus. On the other hand, the wiki is on a separate server now, taking some of the load away from this site. And then there's the issue of breaking existing links.

Maybe a plugin could be developed that hooks into both sites and displays wiki search results over here? Haven't really looked into the feasibility of this ...

Thanks for you comments!

bye, Dirk

The question is why? I suppose that most projects start with a coder or coder team and just later on they think of marketing and documentation. Geeklog is a mature project, there should be committees for the the various areas. Yes, I think this is a management (Dirk's) task to suggest such things.

E.g. the documentation committee should decide where to put the wiki. In my mind the only way is to integrate it into GL and also drop the FAQ. Loosing links? I wonder how many people are using it or find it useful anyway? If the wiki has to be more or less rewritten for version 1.7 or 1.8 then integrate it now!

Serverload may be a topic but how severe is it really? The wiki works with text files, does it?

There is one more question going through my mind. Is it o.k. that GL is being sponsored and thus binds itself to a "free server"? That is just a thought as I am not a fan of "free" things and managed virtual servers can be found for little money.

I forgot about the wiki begin on another server, that kinda makes it impossible to integrate since either application needs a connection to their database and external connections to the database are usually entirely blocked (or at least they should be).

Obviously like any other project it starts with code, the community grows so then theres a forum and a wiki and things keep growing.

I guess it's fair to say that things need a bit more organizing, or at least now would be a nice time to just straighten out a few things.

When it comes to the server, I didn't know it was free hosting. What's the bandwidth total each month a.t.m. and do you maybe have some numbers from the past? With those numbers it would be rather easy to check for some alternative options regarding to hosting. I would agree with 1000ideen that hosting both a wiki and site at the same server shouldn't be a problem.

Regarding the FAQ and WIki stuff in general, I'm up for helping out on that (as I've mentioned before) but maybe it's indeed a good thing to review the current state and see if we can come up with something better. (content wise, I think we could gain allot when the categories and front page are changed a bit)

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"The Linux philosophy is 'Laugh in the face of danger'. Oops. Wrong One. 'Do it yourself'. Yes, that's it." - Linus Torvalds