Tim's dashboard

Tim asked a question in PBwiki on March 26, 2009 18:12:

front page is just a mess

http://elothtes.pbwiki.com/FrontPage

Now that we've been forced to upgrade to pbwiki 2.0, our frontpage is just a mess, with the comments on the front page lengthening that page incredibly, and the navbar showing up waaaay at the bottom below that..

given that this is the first page people see, it's really a mess... anybody have any suggestions as to how one would fix this?

Tim replied on March 02, 2009 22:12 to the question "Overfull Folders wrecking Nav-Bar. Solution?" in PBwiki:

yeah.. out of control man.. out of control...
http://centuryoffire.pbwiki.com/Aedna...

Tim replied on December 12, 2008 19:46 to the question "Which PDA will allow me to edit PBwiki?" in PBwiki:

hey.. just so you know.. PDA access has been added as an alpha feature, so it shouldn't be long before you can expect to be able to edit these things from your mobile device.

good news for us all!

Tim replied on December 03, 2008 18:41 to the question "How to upload to pbwiki by ftp" in PBwiki:

if pbwiki were just a free 2gb ftp account, I'd imagine that it'd attract a whole lot of people that don't have any interest in running a wiki. :)

Tim replied on November 28, 2008 04:46 to the question "Which PDA will allow me to edit PBwiki?" in PBwiki:

1.0 or 2.0?
I don't off the top of my head know about any mobile devices that can edit 2.0 wikis, but most can edit 1.0 wikis.

Tim replied on November 26, 2008 02:31 to the question "Can PBWiki software be installed on our server (Unix/PHP/MySQL)," in PBwiki:

pbwiki is a hosted solution because the backend is both robust and proprietary.

You still own all your own data, and their login methods are secure, so it's a fine solution from that standpoint.

If you want interoperability with a proprietary backend within your system, you can supply a custom user authentication routine, as well as using the pbwiki API to exchange information between your databases and the pbwiki servers.

A comment on the idea "orphaned page report" in PBwiki:

just uploaded a new version that doesn't reference that library – Tim, on November 20, 2008 23:55

A comment on the idea "orphaned page report" in PBwiki:

oops... I thought I stripped all the references to ICSharpCode..
that is the one, but it doesn't actually do anything..
(in the version that I didn't post it will read from a backup zip in addition to directly from the web site) – Tim, on November 20, 2008 23:50

Tim replied on November 20, 2008 16:55 to the idea "orphaned page report" in PBwiki:

feel free to grab my source from:

http://centuryoffire.pbwiki.com/f/ott...

it's got a pbwiki abstraction layer which manipulates the version 1 and version 2 apis through the same function calls.

Tim replied on November 20, 2008 16:32 to the question "Naughty javascript not working!" in PBwiki:

I created a javascript widget for adding yourself to a wiki (before you could set your wiki so that it could be edited by anybody) and I made it generic this way:

<div id="admin_key" style="visibility: hidden"><small>lcq3C4wqh9g2I6Ui4ks6</small></div>
<p><img class="pluginslug" contenteditable="false" src="/plugin_helper.php?plugin=googlegadget&html=%3Cscript+src%3D%27http%3A%2F%2Fcopytest3.pbwiki.com%2Ff%2Fsignup.js%27%3E%3C%2Fscript%3E&w=200&h=50" isapbwikiplugin="1" /></p>

the signup.js is generic because it reads the page specific text from the admin_key div..

(not sure how this html is going to post on getsatisfaction)

Tim replied on November 20, 2008 16:21 to the question "is the non wysiwig editor still available?" in PBwiki:

log into this wiki:
http://copytest2.pbwiki.com/bobbo
then click the "classic edit" on the right...
this is essentially what I was talking about.

Tim replied on November 14, 2008 17:58 to the question "is the non wysiwig editor still available?" in PBwiki:

If you've upgraded to 2.0 then there isn't an available non-wysiwig editor.

If you're ambitious, you can add some javascript to your page that gives you the ability to edit pages with simple pbwiki 1.0 markup.
(I've got an example of this if you're interested)

Tim replied on November 11, 2008 20:08 to the question "Naughty javascript not working!" in PBwiki:

I was able to get around this by putting my content into a hidden div and then reading it out through the javascript. that way, I could still modify the content in FCK but got the javascript functionality.

A comment on the question "Can you go back to 1.0 from 2.0?" in PBwiki:

this is a great video.. for something of this length, you wouldn't want to say anything that would raise any red flags for people. You might have an FAQ that you encourage people to view next that prepare them a bit more for the changes. It'd be nice to have a couple of side-by-side screenshot with "where do I find my... X" information.

Also, an FAQ could address the issues the a small minority of people would have with the transition. The "easier" login is certainly simplified, but it actually removed some of the features of 1.0 (largely because they were clutter, right?)
The new required WYSIWYG editor also blocks access to people that may use mobile devices to interact with their pbwiki 1.0 wiki...

Additionally the greater security leads to less flexibility (css and javascript limitations over what was available before)...

Increasingly, pbwiki 2.0 is really becoming the solution for everybody, but given the mountain of work you guys still have in front of you, it's still going to be at least a year or two before that's really true. – Tim, on November 11, 2008 20:06

Tim replied on November 11, 2008 19:48 to the idea "orphaned page report" in PBwiki:

Not sure if you've seen this, but I've written a C# app (can be found here http://elothtes.pbwiki.com/Mindless+Otto ) that will do the same thing, but downloads it directly from the wiki (you don't have to have the backup zip downloaded first). It also will post the results back to the wiki if you'd like.. additionally it's linked with the javascript virtual machine so you can put scripts on your page that can access the DOM I've defined internally to represent the full wiki and generate reports, the results of which can also be posted back to the wiki.

I've also got a version that will do all of these things but will parse a backup zip instead...

additionally I've created a copy utility that will transfer pages back and forth between wikis (and will convert between pbwiki 1.0 and 2.0), but that's a whole different story.

Tim replied on November 07, 2008 20:53 to the problem "Can't link to local storage" in PBwiki:

another alternative to this would be to put a very simple web server in your local network and actually use http:// references to those files.

:)

Tim replied on November 07, 2008 20:47 to the problem "A student accidentally deleted an entire page full of information. One, why I didn't receive notification of that change? And, two, is there a way to get it back??" in PBwiki:

does the full backup zip contain pages whose current revision has been deleted?

Tim replied on November 03, 2008 22:51 to the problem "Insert Link Painful for large WIKIs" in PBwiki:

the pbwiki folks are using http://www.fckeditor.net/ in pbwiki 2.0

Tim replied on October 31, 2008 00:56 to the problem "Insert Link Painful for large WIKIs" in PBwiki:

also.. grouping links in the dropdown within their folders might help a bit to make it easier to insert links..

as for pasting links into your app.. there must be a way to put a link into your clipboard since you can copy/paste links within the visual editor..

Tim replied on October 31, 2008 00:49 to the question "Can you go back to 1.0 from 2.0?" in PBwiki:

I think that people need to be warned that if they're very happy with 1.0 but just want a few nicer features, that they're in for a very different experience..