Difference between revisions of "Super User Guide"

Revision as of 11:37, 22 February 2007

This is a basic how-to. Although all of these things are very simple to do, most of them are anything but intuitive. I have been trying to figure out how the ftp accounts work so you would be able to really dig around and fuck things up on your own. I'm going to try to explain it so that you can do exactly that, but I expect that you will need further clarification. That being said, here is how these things are done.

A. Log into the server using FTP. There are several ways to do this, but this is the only way I've been able to get it to work for an add on ftp account:

In windows XP:

1. Open "My Documents"
2. Type "ftp://ftp.esoterum.com" in the address box, when you press enter you will get a "windows cannot access this folder" error
3. Click OK, then pull down the file menu and choose "Login As"
4. Use the username "flan@esoterum.com" and the password "flan" (I will have to change this password, but unfortunately I don't think you can)
5. When you press enter you should be looking at the contents of www.esoterum.com/flan with "ftp://ftp.esoterum.com/" in the address bar.
6. You can now view and transfer files from the website onto your machine and vice-versa. Unfortunatly the only way to actually change files using this method (as far as I know) is to copy them to your machine, make changes, delete the old one on the server, and copy the new file back to the server (all of this copying can be done by dragging and dropping files to your desktop or wherever)

B. All the rest of this stuff:

1. enable subpages on flan.esoterum.com

This is done by adding this line to the file /mw/LocalSettings.php

$wgNamespacesWithSubpages[NS_MAIN] = true;

I swear this is the third time I've typed this, but I placed a copy of the LocalSettings.php file from esoterum.org into your folder with the name LocalSettings_Baker.php so you can see some of the other changes I have made there. Everything I have added to the local settings is in the block of extensions at the end. I can make most of these changes for you, but it's good for you to get an understanding for how this stuff works too.

2. put a logo in the upper left hand corner

Replace the file /mw/skins/common/images/wiki.png with another .png file no larger than 135 x 135px. You can use another file format, but this requires adding a line to LocalSettings.php to change the path to the logo.

3. increase the size of file that can be uploaded

Is there a limit? I was looking through the MediaWiki user's guide and I think the default limit is 8MB. There is also a default warning size which is 150KB. This can be changed by adding this line to /mw/LocalSettings.php and replacing 150 with something else, but I think it's best to just ignore the warning when necessary, and try to use it as a guideline:

$wgUploadSizeWarning = 150 * 1024;

It's important to note that in many cases documents (at least for my work) can be directly linked somewhere on the web without uploading them at all. I think this is preferred, unless it's a document that isn't necessarily commonly available (like many research papers are). Also, there is not really a limit on the size of files that can be uploaded via ftp and linked from the web page as in http://flan.esoterum.com/favicon.ico or http://www.esoterum.com/flan/favicon.ico (these both refer to the same place).

4. add a logo similar to Spare Tire's head on the latest version of Internet Explorer

Replace the file favicon.ico with your icon. You can turn just about any image into a .ico file here:

http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/

5. add/delete stuff to the navigation bar on the left hand side

This is done by modifying the "MediaWiki:Sidebar" page. In your wiki, type "MediaWiki:Sidebar" into the search box. This page is edited like any other page in the wiki, only it defines the sidebar (above the search box). It can be a little quirky, so it might help to look at the user's guide:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Sidebar

You can look at this page in the other wiki's and even copy the contents directly into your page.

6. make my project good? (this one is rhetorical)

This is actually quite simple, just spend every waking moment that might have otherwise been productive fiddling aboot that damned website.