Talk:Main Page

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Archiving
I moved a tonne of other stuff to the archive page. 06:30, 27 Jul 2005 (EST)

Hosting
Hey folks, sorry for the silence on my part, been hectic here at zerohq. Anywho, good news! We're gonna be moving the site to a seperate account on the web host, and it's going to be totally free! The tip jar will go away, and be replaced by a little icon or something saying "hosted by", in an unobtrusive way. The wiki is also on task to break 7 gigs of bandwidth used this month, so the free hosting is going to kick ass. I'm going to keep what is left of the donations in the paypal account in case its needed later for domain name registering or so on. Will keep you posted as to when the move will take place. Downtime should only be 10 or 15 mins, tops. Gravewit


 * Oh right, this is really good news :) Is there any catch though? ;) hehe. 21:09, 22 Jul 2005 (EST)

GuildWiki.org active
I just typed http://www.guildwiki.org and got the wiki :) good stuff! Unfortunately it redirects to a quite unsightly URL, http://www.guildwiki.org/guildwars/index.php/Main_Page. Could we change this before the guildwiki.org domain becomes established? I'm not sure what the setup is yet, if anyone could confirm the situation we can make plans to improve the url, by either changing the root directory or using apache rewrite or both :) 07:51, 6 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * It doesn't matter much since a mod_rewrite rule will be transparent to the user should links to the old style get googled, etc. Based on the email I received from Gravewit earlier, I expect he'll be putting in the appropriate rewrites soon enough. Oh and I should also mention that guildwiki.net, guild-wiki.org (and .com/.net), and guildwarswiki.org all point to the server as well. Just in case there's confusion. :) MartinLightbringer 10:37, 6 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Grabbing all similar domains is a smoove! (smooth move) :) --Karlos 11:03, 6 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Yeah Martin, I know how mod_rewrite works, I'm just applying gentle pressure to make sure it get's done ;) Also, it makes a difference on whether the guildwiki.org is hosted on a different server to zerolives.org or on the same server to zerolives, since a simple mod_rewrite rule such as

RewriteRule    ^([a-z0-9A-Z]+)/$ /guildwars/index.php/$1    [L]


 * will work on a new, clean host, but if it's on Gravewit's original host then it would mean that his root site would be inaccessable. (I'm aware the the rewrite rule is incomplete, since it doesn't handle punctuation, but I can't remember my regex syntax :P) Really, what would be ideal is to type "guildwiki.org/Unyielding Aura" and to get the article. 20:47, 6 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * It is on the same host as zerolives.org (given that the IP address brings up the zerolives.org blog). But RewriteRules work in a vhost context so even a rewrite rule like the above wouldn't affect other sites hosted on the same box. "guildwiki.org/Unyielding Aura" would be a pain though (and not just because of the space) because you don't have anything to anchor to to make determinations about how to reform the destination url since you'd probably also want "guildwiki.org/Yak's Bend" (or whatever) to work too. If you want short jump urls then something like "guildwiki.org/skills/Blah" and "guildwiki.org/locations/Blah" would be easier to setup rewrites for. Something like:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/guildwars/index.php RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /guildwars/index.php$1    [L,NE]


 * might resolve the simple rewrite case without causing infinite loops. Although I think reconfiguring MediaWiki might be a more simple solution and then you could just turn around the Rewrite to "^/guildwars/index.php(.*)$ /$1 [L,NE]" to send any bookmarks back to the new layout. MartinLightbringer 23:33, 6 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * I've just been doing some tests on my own web server using the rewrites posted by Martin, and I don't think these will work either, at least not without some more tweaking! I'm using...

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/mediawiki-1.4.0/index.php (as suggested by Martin) RewriteRule  ^(.*)$  /mediawiki-1.4.0/index.php/$1  [QSA,L]


 * ...to rewrite the url and I have index.php inside a directory to mirror this site. You can see the result on http://wiki1.baxter.ath.cx/Test, which links to an article 'Test' on my sample wiki. The main problem is, as you can see, the url for the stylesheets is also rewritten (duh)! So it looks like you are right Martin, hehe. I don't know enough about mod_rewrite to say for certain though!
 * I don't think using "guildwiki.org/locations/xxx" is much better than using "guildwiki.org/guildwars/xxx", so if we can't manage "guildwiki.org/xxx" then a rewrite to remove index.php would suffice imo :) 01:15, 7 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Just poking around the mediawiki code, it looks like the best way to do this would be to do one of:
 * Set DocumentRoot to be /whatever/.../guildwars/ and change $wgScriptPath to be '/' and change $wgScript to be $wgScriptPath and make sure apache's DirectoryIndex has index.php in it and set $prettyURLs on or
 * Reinstall mediawiki with the appropriate changes above and point it at the existing db of stuff (backing it up first of course :))
 * It's also possible that just setting $prettyURLs would be enough to get it to "guildwiki.org/guildwars/Main_Page" or whatever.
 * Note I haven't tried any of these things yet so I could be way off base. I'll try and do some tests while I'm at work (if i can find some time in between actually doing work :) ). MartinLightbringer 03:06, 7 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * So after playing around with it, with no success, I had the bright idea to actually read the docs. wikimedia.org has a nice FAQ on this. Eliminating index.php from the url or even better Using a very short URL are two ways of doing this. If possible I think we should go with the second option. MartinLightbringer 05:24, 7 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Yeah, the second method seems the best! For some reason I never thought to look at the meta wiki!! The 'kludge' way seems the most probable course of action, since I imagine it would cost some money to have the webhost patch apache. Might be worth a try before we rule it out. 06:35, 7 Jul 2005 (EST)

To make clean URLs
This is a summary of what must be done according 'Using a very short URL' on meta wiki, presuming that no patch can be applied to Apache.

In .htaccess: RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(stylesheets|skins|images|config)/ RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(index|redirect|texvc).php RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/error/(40(1|3|4)|500).html RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(favicon.ico|robots.txt)
 * 1) Don't rewrite requests for files in MediaWiki subdirectories,
 * 2) MediaWiki PHP files, HTTP error documents, favicon.ico, or robots.txt

RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ /index.php?title=$1 [L] In MediaWiki:

Function getLocalURL in includes/Title.php:

- $url = "{$wgScript}?title={$dbkey}&{$query}"; + $url = "/{$dbkey}&{$query}";

Function view in includes/RawPage.php:

- if( strcmp( $wgScript, $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] ) ) { + if( 0 and strcmp( $wgScript, $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] ) ) {

In LocalSettings.php:

$wgScript = ""; $wgScriptPath = ""; $wgArticlePath = "/$1";

Please could someone verify that this is correct? 06:53, 7 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Yes, that works. With the caveat that DocumentRoot for the www.guildwiki.org vhost will need to be changed to be the directory that MediaWiki is installed (/guildwars/) in. Either that or its contents will need to be moved to the DocumentRoot directory. See Test Wiki to view it in action. This is a clean installation of MediaWiki 1.4.5 with the recommended Kludge directions above applied. MartinLightbringer 09:35, 7 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Can you change DocumentRoot in .htaccess? If so that could be included in the directions above. 20:36, 7 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * DocRoot is only set in a server/virtualhost context, so no. If Gravewit doesn't have access to the httpd.conf file on the server then worst case we have short urls that look like http://www.guildwiki.org/guildwars/Main_Page etc instead of http://www.guildwiki.org/Main_Page. Or you can accomplish the same thing by installing MediaWiki into the DocRoot rather than a subdir. MartinLightbringer 22:56, 7 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Well if Gravewit is hosting zerolives.org in www-root/ or whatever, and guildwiki in www-root/guildwars/ then he won't be able to move index.php to the parent dir, since that will overwrite his blog. The host would surely be able to change the document root though, so this might not be a problem. 23:18, 7 Jul 2005 (EST)

Signature times?
It's not important, but I just noticed when I use the auto-signature thing the time it inserts is... wrong. It doesn't match the edit time listed in the history/recent changes and it doesn't match my local time, though the time is marked as my time zone. I'm EST and it appears to be showing (at least, to me) a time 14 hours ahead. My timezone preferences are correct and the history times shown are correct. It's just the times inserted by the signature. --Fyren 06:13, 8 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Well, I just edited the previous section and it came up with the time 8:42, it was 23:42 when i posted it here, and I am British summer time, GMT+1. Someone else can figure out if that is right or wrong :P 08:45, 8 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * Well, regardless of where you are, the signature is marked with a time zone but the time doesn't match it, so something is wrong. Do signatures on your end show up as EST also?  Or GMT+1?  (Or something else?)  --Fyren 06:01, 12 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Everything on the site shows up as EST time for me. 06:31, 12 Jul 2005 (EST)

SQL errors
What about the database errors when trying to access articles with templates, will that be fixed anytime soon? Roland of Gilead 01:14, 25 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * Gravewit said he spoke/is trying to speak with the guy running the hosting. --Fyren 05:06, 25 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * I doubt it is related to the host exactly. Seems like something needs repairing. He should be able to run "Repair" from an admin tool, like phpMyAdmin. Maybe not though, I'm not well up on these things. He could be speaking to the host about a backup, that would be a big help. 07:03, 25 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * (Repasting part of what I left in User_talk:Tanaric) At $dayjob I manage mysql servers with several hundred gigs of data so I might be able to help with whatever is going on. Also re: Backups, someone with shell access should setup a cronjob of "mysqldump --quick --add-drop-table -u root --password='$password' > /path/to/backupfile.txt" on a daily basis. I'd also recommend an offsite sync of that data (which I'm more than happy to contribute server space for). Anyway it's definitely a table corruption issue. I'd recommend stopping mysql and running mysiamchk -r on the appropriate table (or run REPAIR TABLE while mysql is running). As an aside does anyone know what version of mysql is running here? MartinLightbringer 07:49, 25 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * Martin: Yeah, that's pretty much my dayjob, too. I'm a mySQL/PHP/Python/(X)HTML/CSS/XML/etc programmer/hack person. Anyway, have run all the repair commands I can think of, doesn't seem to be helping. I run an offsite mySQL backup each week, but since the wiki has gotten so popular, daily is definately a better idea. Also, you can always find the version of mySQL, PHP, and MediaWiki here Special:Version Gravewit
 * Have you done a myisamchk -r with mysql not running or just the REPAIR TABLE? I'd suggest the myisamchk -r, if you haven't done it already. If that doesn't work, my next suggestion would be to upgrade to mysql 4.1.13 and try again. Also Mediawiki could use an upgrade too. :) There were security fixes in 1.4.5, 1.4.6, and 1.4.7. MartinLightbringer 12:41, 26 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * Just to add to Martin's point, you might have to contact the host for this Gravewit, but I'm not sure. 21:01, 26 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * I usually am in contact with the host, as he's a friend of mine. I've tried all of the above, not sure what to do here. I am going to try a couple more things tonight and look at what sort of data I get from dumping the database to a text file. 68.251.127.146 04:47, 27 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * And booya, it seems to be fixed. Gravewit
 * Indeed. I've tried a handful of the pages I remember giving me errors and they seem to work fine now. Excellent news. What ended up being the fix? Dump and reload? MartinLightbringer 03:56, 28 Jul 2005 (EST)

Search Box
Maybe it's just me being blind, but why does the search box not offer a convenient link to create a new article if no matching article was found for the search string? Shouldn't it be trivial to implement this? Roland of Gilead 04:18, 27 Jul 2005 (EST)