Oolite Bulletins

As I sort of started this debate, I suppose I should chip in a bit.
Firstly, the BB seems fine to me. It works well and does everything it should, so far as I can see.
The Wiki is a bit of a problem. I feel we should continue to use the Elite Wiki as now, as we naturally fit in there rather well, and the Oolite section is now very large and moving it just doesn't strike me as a good idea. Access is the main problem. Am I right in thinking Ahruman also has similar powers to Winston? If so, could one of you not canvass one or two trusted BB regulars with a view to giving them admin powers as well, specifically so they may grant access to prospective users, as this is the real sticking point.
As for Oolite.org, which is where I started this discussion, again why not recruit some help? I for one would be happy to give over a little time to updating the site, and feel I have the ability to do this - most of you will have seen my smivsonline oolite page and Xeptatl's Sword website.
We have a large and vibrant community here, and I'm sure between us we have the time, ability and resources to continue to improve these sites which will benefit us all.

I'm not promoting CHANGING the wiki - the wiki itself as structured and conceived is fine and can be moved around with very little effort. The problem with the wiki is that only one person has access to the web server itself and the database server. No-one but Winston can access those servers. When I say "move the wiki" I mean move the exact structure and content lock stock and barrel to a more accessible server where more than one person can access the "hardware".

For example.
- A. Nonymous sets up web hosting (or donates an area of their web hosting) on lave.com.
- The wiki code and database content are backed up from the alioth.net servers and a copy made available to A. Nonymous, who then installs these to his own hosting, changing the configuration as necessary.
- At this stage, the wiki exists in two places - wiki.alioth.net and lave.com
- A. Nonymous distributes the FTP and MySQL database passwords to the selected administrators of the wiki as well as the project leads (Giles and Jens, for example) who are allowed to give those passwords to whomsoever they choose.

No actual visible change to the wiki (other than the web address used to get to it) but now there is access to the back end of the system to install updates and plugins via more than one source.

Take it one step further and oolite.org and the wiki can be "served" from the same location. If the wiki's code is installed to a subfolder of oolite.org (e.g. oolite.org/wiki) then we have consolidated oolite.org and the wiki into one place.

Going yet another step, if oolite.org runs via a content management system, presenting a user interface for someone to change content live via their browser, then anyone who had a login and was willing to help could change the site content and add new content without the need to upload files or images to the site (as I believe is the requirement now).

I think this all would be relatively easy. For my elite site (and my main site) I use a CMS called gpEasy, which uses flat text files to configure everything and allows editing very easily though the actual website itself. I've installed a test dev site at http://hughesd.co.uk/oolitedev with an almost-suitable template to play around with. My idea is that the top wavy image could be replaced with the cool navigation thing that exists on oolite.org (if it's possible) and then use the CMS to add further content. It allows the creation of self-contained image galleries and file uploads via the browser.

As I say, I'm just bandying ideas around and not trying to step on anyone's toes. If it's all too much then let me know and I'll return to my dark corner.

Selezen wrote:

Can the wiki be ported or mirrored? Could we transfer the content and/or database to another server that more than one person can have admin access to?

Yes. Two options:

• The Comfortable One: as you suggested further up, dump the DB from the wiki and import it into a new one. Requires server access which currently only Winston has who is not as available at the moment as much as some of us would wish.
• The Tedious One: MediaWiki has an export option which lets users export pages by name or by group. Unfortunately this only works for text, even including history, but not for media. Getting the text is not such a big problem, in fact I have already done it for about 90% some weeks back when I had enough time on my hands to setup my own Wiki, import the stuff, and play around with plugins. Images and the odd OXP which is hosted on the Wiki have to be downloaded and re-uploaded one by one and you lose the history. It's that last bit which makes it tedious. Lends itself to be distributed amongst an army of volunteers though.

Quick update - since I was bored this lunchtime, I copied all the content on the current oolite.org site to the http://hughesd.co.uk/oolitedev test site. It took about 40 minutes (including some of the stuff I did yesterday), and that included modifying the template.

If a team want to do it the wiki migration, then I'm sure it would be a worthy endeavour in the end, as it would in my opinion make future updates and maintenance much easier and would save Winston being bothered by anything to do with it. It's either that or we beg hem to please be involved one more time and do a full backup and give it to someone.

I wouldn't mind taking care of a Linux (preferably SuSE as this is what I am most familiar with) or OS X based server, provided I'm not the only one. In fact, I have a Linux VM with a dedicated IP address hosted already for quite some years, I would just need to have its memory upgraded first and would not mind setting it up such that others can maintain the MediaWiki installation as well.

So, first question: who would volunteer to help and knows his way around Linux maintenance? Second question: is there someone who has a good link to Winston and could ask him to dump the DB? If this doesn't happen then third question is: who would volunteer to help downloading media off the current wiki And upload it on the new one? I could take care of the pages. I will likely miss some, so fourth question would be: who will do quality assurance by checking what is missing?

No-one?

Hm. I'm tempted to say that I'll maintain a separate website with some content from the forum on there for reference to users. I'd be sanguine about trying to port over some of the tutorial threads (if they haven't been done on the wiki) so that there's a one-stop beginner's guide to getting into Oolite and getting into OXP creation (linking to the relevant places on the wiki and forum).

The other thing maybe worth mentioning is amalgamating the website and the wiki into one entity on oolite.org (or elsewhere if the so-far silent majority suggest it). I've been discovering pmWiki at the moment and it looks like a simple, non-databased alternative to MediaWiki that might just be good for creating a front end to preserve the oolite.org content and have the main wiki content behind it. TV Tropes uses pmWiki and it does look like a powerful tool, as it allows multiple content groups to be created easily and maintained easily.

Oolite seems to have a large user base and one of the most vibrant and friendly forums (on ANY side of Reidquat) and I worry that once the movers and shakers maybe move on (like Winston seems to) then we'll have less and less effective or relevant content on the site or wiki...

As I said above, I am happy to help where I can. I have no knowledge or experience of server admin, and have never used CMS although I understand it's very easy to use. My web design has always been done the old-fashioned way, using HTML and CSS.
As for merging and nesting things, as I stated before I'm happy to see the wiki stay as part of the 'greater' Elite wiki as I feel it belongs there, while accepting that there are serious problems with access at the moment. The BB is fine in my opinion. Oolite.org was the thing that started this discussion, and I'll repeat what I said about that...it's an under-used resource and has been left to stagnate, which I think is a shame.
I appreciate these comments are pretty useless as they offer and suggest no way to improve things, but I'm optimistic that with the skills, talents and drive available around this board, something positive will come out of this.

I have a question, while not entirely relevant I think it could fit in.
Would it be possible to put Oolite on Steam?

It would make the game available to a vast amount of other people and would also greatly assist DLC (aka OXPs) which would be easily downloaded and put in the right place.

just how doable this is I don't know (and I'm not entirely sure if Steam allows you to publish games for free, if so then this idea is quite clearly down the drain)

just my ideas...

@Staer9: I for one would resist a move to Steam as I have issues with Steam's policy for updating itself on computers and possibly causing issues outside its own software. For example people I know have lost game updates and addons, had Windows problems and had to reinstall because of Steam problems.

It sounds on occasion that they release untested patched that cause corruptions then have to release another patch to resolve that problem, by which time it's too late for the poor user. And that just relates to the client, not the games on it.

So no. I'd rather Oolite remain standalone. For whatever my opinion's worth.

@Smivs, I'll PM you the username and password for the oolitedev test site and you can have a play and see what you think. I think you'll be impressed how easy it is to modify even without any instructions.

I started reinstalling my server. Will let you know an IP as soon as I have the wiki running there to see how resource usage develops.

Thanks Selezen...PM received. I'll have a look

MediaWiki is up and running on http://maikschulz.de/mediawiki/

Give it some hits, I need to know how it holds up. Note that there is no Oolite related content there yet, only the bare MediaWiki installation.

maik wrote:

MediaWiki is up and running on http://maikschulz.de/mediawiki/

Give it some hits, I need to know how it holds up. Note that there is no Oolite related content there yet, only the bare MediaWiki installation.

Nicely done, maik! I see you have added security up the wazoo! Can't create pages, login or create an account!

Question: are you OK with distributing the database and ftp server login details to a central "security administrator" (e.g. Ahruman) to allow decentralised maintenance if you stop using the forum?

Selezen wrote:

Nicely done, maik! I see you have added security up the wazoo! Can't create pages, login or create an account!

I know Right now, only I can create accounts.

Selezen wrote:

Question: are you OK with distributing the database and ftp server login details to a central "security administrator" (e.g. Ahruman) to allow decentralised maintenance if you stop using the forum?

Sure. That's the whole point of the exercise, isn't it? Though there is no ftp nor telnet, only ssh/scp. Right now I only did a quick and dirty job and installed everything as root. I'd create separate users for MySQL and Apache before I distribute everything. Should be enough for maintaining the Wiki.

According to my hoster I even have unlimited bandwidth. So there is no bottle-neck there. The server has one dedicated core, 512MB of guaranteed RAM (2GB max), and 25GB storage space. I tend to think that this is enough given my expectation of our Wiki traffic (mostly read, rarely write, hardly any concurrent access).

Awesome all over the place!

Now we have (I think) two proof of concepts that are running well. We have an option for a wiki location that can be maintained by multiple administrators with a hoster that is sanguine about permitting the ssh details to be distributed to the commoonity. We also have a concept for an easily maintainable website.

If the greater forum population approves and the Oolite Management (Ahruman, Aegidian etc) are in support, then is there a possibility of carrying this out?

The options for the wiki are 1: see if Winston will carry out one last job for us and give us a backup of the MediaWiki database to be installed on maik's version or 2: manually port the content over. Obviously 1: would be vastly preferable, as the work involved in 2: will be astronomical and possibly non-practical...

The website code can be ported from the current location to any other PHP-enabled location as long as that location meets the requirements for gpEasy installation (very low requirement set) and a small modification to the config files will get it working without the need to even do an installation.

As said before, I'm not sure if the fancy navigation thing at the top of oolite.org can be ported to the CMS-snabled format due to the tricky javascripting that goes on and the change of header from the main page to the sub-pages. If anyone with PHP/Javascript knowledge can work it out then that would be the last piece of the puzzle.

As far as I see it the benefits of both are:
- allows maintenance of both wiki and website by multiple users (both wiki and site).
- makes modification of content easier (website only).
- allows installation and configuration of updates or plugins (both) such as a blog (website), hit counter (website) better user management (wiki) content export options (wiki) and so on.
- more effective management of problems and errors (both) due to multiple admins
- if maintainer of site and/or wiki removes themselves from the forum/community, then the management of either does not stop.
- makes Ahruman's life easier (because we stop badgering him)

And all this from a relatively intense burst of activity, hopefully meaning much less administrative headaches for the community as a whole.

If the current host for oolite.org supports PHP5 then the gpEasy site can be ported over very easily. The wiki in its current location can be accessed cleanly from the site via a redirect script from a subfolder (i.e. oolite.org/wiki) and could perhaps be contained in an invisible IFRAME to preserve the URL. Alternatively the wiki could (with maik's help) be transferred to the oolite.org site but retain the links to the database. Alternatively again, ownership of the oolite.org address could be transferred to maik to host both site and wiki in one place. Or whatever else anyone can think of.

All up to the management to decide, of course.