Village Pump

From Unofficial BOINC Wiki

Contents 1 Village Pump 2 Configuration Problem 3 TOC to the right 4 Domain Names 5 CPDN wiki links

[edit] Village Pump

This space is for general discussion. It's sort of a Talk page for the whole site.

[edit] Configuration Problem

There's a problem with the Special:Allpages page, at least for the Main namespace. It gives errors that suggest that it needs some disk space for temporary working space. --Eric Myers 13:56, 29 September 2007 (BST)

[edit] TOC to the right

One thing I found useful on the Pirates@Home wiki which I'd like to see here is making the Table of Contents float to the right (at the top of pages which have them). This allows the text to start at the top of the document, but the TOC also displays along side of it. The current default puts the TOC first, without such a float, and if it is long it can take up the whole top of the page, so that you have to scroll down even just to see the beginning of the page content.

Doing this is simple, but requires a mod to the Monobook skin. In the MediaWiki top directory (where LocalSettings.php lives) cd down to skins/monobook and edit main.css. Find the style for "content styles" (around line 348) and insert "float: right". I also added some margin. The one now in use on Pirates is:

/*
** content styles
*/

#toc,
.toc,
.mw-warning {
       border: 1px solid #aaa;
       background-color: #f9f9f9;
       padding: 5px;
       font-size: 95%;
       float: right;
       margin: 10px;
}

The benefit should be obvious the first time you look at this page when you try it. --Eric Myers 13:00, 4 June 2007 (BST)

Well, obvious once I edit the chat to keep it from extending into the TOC. It looks nice, and should be more useful all over. Thanks. --Eric Myers 20:21, 4 June 2007 (BST)

Nice improvement :) How about adding it to the MediaWiki source? -- Lee Carré 12:16, 5 June 2007 (BST)

It caused some funky things near the TOC on this page. Under the Display remote RSS feeds section, the text is appearing above the TOC but the box is going underneath it. It might be causing some similar situations on other articles but I haven't seen it yet. This is viewing it on Firefox 2.0.0.4 on 1280x800 resolution. This style for the TOC definitely looks better with or without this quirk, well done. --AlphaLaser 16:45, 5 June 2007 (BST)

Yes, the IRC chat extended out into the TOC. I edited it to break some lines to make it better, but that is one possible problem whenever quoting code near the top of the page. --Eric Myers 17:21, 5 June 2007 (BST)

That's probably down to the order they appear in the markup, and lacking some CSS clearing, try {clear: both} on the #toc, .toc declaration. Or try absolutely positioning the TOC box and fix it in place. -- Lee Carré 17:43, 5 June 2007 (BST)

Good news! There is an even easier way to do this, and it will survive a software update with absolutely no effort required of the administrator (except the initial setup). Here's how it works. Edit the page MediaWiki:Monobook.css and put the style definitions above, and any other custom CSS, in that page. This is automatically appended to the CSS of that skin when it's sent out to the browser. This has worked at least back to MW 1.6, but I only just discovered it recently when I was upgrading the Pirates@Home wiki and then had to restore my edits to the CSS file. --Eric Myers 14:02, 29 September 2007 (BST)

[edit] Domain Names

...on that note it might be a good idea to get the boinc-doc domain and redirect URLs to the new equivelent (not just the home page - ie http://web.site.tld/sub/path/etc/ --> http://new.web.site.tld/sub/path/etc/). This would help the many users looking at older posts (which can't be edited) and various other links which may still exist, also bookmarks of users who don't know about the move etc. (basically it's a complete unknown after you publish a URL). -- Lee Carré 06:35, 3 June 2007 (BST)

I would register a domain, if I had a credit/debit card. If somebody wants to register a domain, let me know and I'll tell you how to do it. I'd prefer you used 123-reg, because I know their system well (I've set up domains before, just they aren't registered to me!). It involves a few DNS settings. --Chris 03/06/2007 12:29 BST

What domain do you want registered? I have to do a few soon and I could use an excuse to try 123-reg if you like it. I've lately been using godaddy and the rates are good but the management interface is just "OK" if you want to do something other than just registration, like DNS managment. --Eric Myers 01:51, 4 June 2007 (BST)

I also thought about this recently. I would even donate a couple of dollars for a new domain like www.boincwiki.org. This should be perfect for the future. --Torben Schreiter 04:28, 4 June 2007 (BST)

Given that neither myself nor Rytis have the means I.E. payment methods, required to register a domain, I'd be grateful if somebody would offer to register the domain for us and keep it running. I'll bear the thought in mind.... and work something out with Rytis. -- Chris 06:56, 4 June 2007 (BST)

We were looking into domain names yesterday. The best one would probably be boinc.info, but it's registered by some domain squaters. the original boinc-doc.net is also unavailable. We could get boinc-doc.info, but I am not a fan of dashes in the domain names. I'd say we should get boincwiki.info (I think that .info TLD is better for a documentation project). As for the registrars, domainsite.com is much less expensive than 123-reg. Primegrid.com is registered there, so I know it works :) One thing to note if using it - select the package for $7.99, because $6.99 is just domain parking without any control. Anyway, if you choose to register a domain name, make sure the registrar offers full DNS record management. --Rytis 09:45, 4 June 2007 (BST)

If boinc-doc.net is unavalable then go with whatever you like, but I'd advise against having "wiki" in the name because you may not always be using the mediawiki system (make it technology independant, hence "BOINC documentation"). Google for one interprets dashes ("-") as word seperators, so dashes are good (but not underscores ("_") ) -- Lee Carré 12:00, 5 June 2007 (BST)

I just purchased boinc-wiki.info,.net and .org, as well as boincwiki.info, .net, .org and .com. I used godaddy since I already had an account there and had to do something else with them anyway. It will take a day or two until I can edit DNS and point these to the existing site. Chris, you can modify your server to accept all of these (as virtual hosts) and redirect to the one name you prefer. I personally like the hyphen, as it makes the word more readable. (I originally wanted spyhill.net but had to settle with spy-hill.net, but in the end I like what I got better). --Eric Myers 16:50, 4 June 2007 (BST)

Thank you Eric. Most appreciated. When you edit DNS, please use CNAMEs to point at "boinc-wiki.ath.cx.", note the extra dot at the end. I'm not on a static IP, so you must be able to CNAME otherwise it involves a lot of hassle every time. I'll get the server set up now. --Chris 17:17, 4 June 2007.

A bit of background for those interested in DNS; an FQDN (Fully Quallified Domain Name) requires a "." at the end, because this denotes the root (remember DNS names are a reverse hierarchy, the first part is the lowest descendant), all non-FQDN names are assumed to be within the local domain (if set, such as domain-name.local.). Using FQDNs speeds name resolution especally when a local domain is set. Most users omit the trailing "." out of habit, but thankfully DNS recovers quite well by defaulting to querying the root servers (x.root-servers.net. where x is A to M inclusive) -- Lee Carré 12:08, 5 June 2007 (BST)

There needs to be redirects from other URLs to a single main URL (ie HTTP redirects). I think google peanalises sites with multiple domains pointing to the same content. Besides, you'll defeat caching with a dozen domains, caching is a good thing. -- Lee Carré 17:46, 5 June 2007 (BST)

[edit] CPDN wiki links

Is there a Village Pump or something similar for chat?

There is now :-) --Eric Myers 13:56, 29 September 2007 (BST)

Just wanted to mention something and wasn't sure where to put it.

The mods at CPDN have finally got CPDN to do some linking to this Wiki from the CPDN preferences pages. Not exactly what I wanted but a small step.

I wanted:

<list>

Application Preferences see [url=http://www.climateprediction.net/board/viewtopic.php?p=66108#66108]Link for further details[/url]

Application [url=http://www.boinc-wiki.info/Slab_Model]Slab Model[/url] (UK Met Office HADSM3)

Prefer this type of model Selected/not selected

Duration 45 model years

Estimated WU Completion Time @ 2.5 Seconds/Timestep computational average 22 Days (of 24/7 operation)

Supported Platforms Windows, Intel Mac(architecture) & Linux

Application [url=http://www.boinc-wiki.info/Transient_Coupled_Model]Transient[/url] (or [url=http://www.boinc-wiki.info/Control_Model]control[/url]) [url=http://www.boinc-wiki.info/Coupled_Model]Coupled Model[/url] (UK Met Office HADCM3)

Prefer this type of model Selected/not selected

Duration Variable up to 160 model years

Estimated WU Completion Time @ 2.5 Seconds/Timestep computational average 120 Days (of 24/7 operation)

Supported Platforms Windows, Intel Mac(architecture) & Linux

</list>

crandles 20:06, 9 August 2007 (BST)