Tolkien Gateway:Updates

From Tolkien Gateway
Revision as of 07:45, 25 February 2007 by Hyarion (talk | contribs) (Slightly modified skin)

Tolkien Gateway:Updates features updates and news specific to Tolkien Gateway.


Site Updates

  • 2-24-07 - Max width for the layout has been removed. Users with larger monitors should now see a lot less whitespace on the sides.
  • 1-15-07 - Support for OpenSearch has been added and Firefox users can now add Tolkien Gateway search to their browser by clicking the down arrow next to the Google search box and clicking "Add Tolkien Gateway".
  • 12-1-06 - Just in case you guys prefer Google Video to YouTube I've added a Google Video extension as well. Again, it's pretty simple, just insert something like <googlevideo>8119893978710705002</googlevideo> where that long number is the ID found in the Google Video URL.
  • 11-29-06 - I've gone ahead and added a YouTube extension until I can perfect our own video embedding scheme. To embed a video from YouTube just use the follow code <youtube width="200" height="200">pISzxdEgDCU</youtube> Where the jumble of letters is the video code on YouTube (found in the URL). We definitely don't want to abuse this and have tons of videos jammed on every page but I think it will help on some articles.
  • 10-21-06 - Dang, just noticed we passed 1 million page views a while ago, congratulations!
  • 10-20-06 - Had a bit of downtime this morning and quite a bit this evening but we think we've resolved the issue, sorry about that folks.
  • 10-17-06 - Looks like the site had a small hiccup while I was sleeping and a few database tables were corrupted. The problem has been resolved and luckily the specific tables didn't hold all the content for the site. I'm going to switch from weekly to daily backups just in case it happens again.
  • 10-16-06 - We've had the cavendish skin installed for a while now and I think it is overall better than the old Monobook skin so I've gone ahead and made it the default. You can of course always change your skin by clicking the Preferences link when you're logged in. This new skin will still undergo some changes as we definitely need to add more of a Tolkien-theme to it.
  • 9-27-06 - We will be migrating to a new server on Sunday, no downtime is expected and the server will feature PHP5 which will allow us to get back to upgrading to the latest versions of MediaWiki, something we have been unable to do for the last few months due to only having PHP4. I'm hoping with the new server will also come TeTex/LaTeX/WikiTeX/TengTex which will allow us to dynamically generate the Tengwar like I promised.
  • 9-27-06 - Moving the Community Portal to Tolkien Gateway:Updates as this seems a more proper place. The community portal definitely has its place but for now I think I'll just remove it.
  • The Poem extension has now been added. To utilize the new extension simply encase your poem between <poem> and </poem>. No more line breaks required after every line or using the pre tag.
  • I'm proud to announce Tolkien Gateway has just passed 3,000 unique visitors in one day. We have all of the dedicated contributors to thank and at this point I think it's just a matter of time before people realize the potential of the site.
  • Small skin changes. I've been playing around with the skin a lot of today so I'm sorry if anyone saw anything odd. I've added the A-Z links to the top center and removed them from the left where they were taking up way too much room. When we finalize some "Portal" pages such as the Gallery and maybe a Characters portal or something I'll throw those links on the left. Let me know what you guys think.
  • thrasher7 has provided us with a new extension, the Special:Editcount/TopEditors extension which lists the top editors. Hopefully this will give us an extra incentive to keep editing. You can include your total edits in your user page by using {{Special:Editcount/Hyarion}} for example. Let the race to #1 begin!
  • Kristine Kastle has written a critique of Tolkien Gateway for her class. We received 1.5 out of 4 rings.
  • The left navigational A-Z links have been fixed. Prior to the update they used Special:Allpages/A which would show a couple hundred pages starting with A but it might continue on through B and C. Now when you click A you will only see articlces starting with A.
  • The upgrade to 1.6.3 is now complete! New Features. Please let me know if you see any bugs that I might have missed.
  • We have planned to upgrade from MediaWiki 1.5.4 to 1.6.3 today. This includes an added feature which forces people who edit anonymously and have a link in their edit, to type a random word. This should prevent pretty much all the vandalisms. If you find anything wrong after the upgrade, please let us know.
  • If you haven't noticed we have converted our Community Portal discussion to a forum-like atmosphere over on the Council forums (a link is also present on the left navigation).
  • It seems we have surpassed over 200,000 page views as well as over 200 registered users. Congratulations everyone.
  • Over 500 articles and a day later I've now completed the redirect pages. Searching or even making a Numenor link will redirect to the correct accented article.
  • I'm still debating switching the main page to be simply a Search Page. I like the idea of having a simplistic Google-like look, but I think the lack of news/information on the main page might not be liked. What do you guys think?
  • I think I've decided to go through every article that has an accent and create a non-accented redirect to it. Search results do not display the correct results for something like "Numenor" since there are technically accents on the word. Creating the redirects will allow someone to search for "Numenor" and simply be redirected to the correct page. I've whined to the MediaWiki staff about creating an extension but it's just going to be too much work to do it like Google and even Wikipedia uses the redirect idea.
  • Congratulations everyone, we have now surpassed 10,000 edits!
  • I've altered the left navigation menu to display only alphabetical links. The old links were not fully completed even though the articles were written. I think this way people will be able to see how large our database is more efficiently. What do you guys think? Feel free to post on the discussion page.
  • Unfortunately the last couple days we've had some MySQL issues which has caused some downtime. This is not viewed lightly and we've done everyting possible to prevent anymore downtime in the future. Sorry for the inconvenience.
  • Congratulations to everyone who has worked on the Encyclopedia, we have now surpassed over 100,000 views.
  • We have founded our own Tolkien News website.
  • A new skin has been added. To switch to that skin permanently just go into your preferences once you are logged in.
  • I've added a page for editors to discuss Tolkien Gateway.
  • Tolkien Gateway is now offering free website hosting and IRC chat services to selected Tolkien websites, please email hyarion [at] hyarion [dot] net for more details.
  • After a bit of downtime we now have successfully relocated to the new server.
  • You can now View recently uploaded images. If you have an account, feel free to Upload your own images.