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I'm pleased to say that this site is now running on MediaWiki. Here's why, and how.
| I needed to turn an old PC into a cheap, dedicated, browser appliance. The cleanest choice is a Linux/Firefox boot-from-CD; the hardware demands are minimal, and it's impossible for users to make any permanent changes. After a little research, I decided to go with SLAX, a small and beautiful Linux operating system which fits on and runs directly from a CD-ROM disc. With the addition of Firefox 2, a Firefox kiosk mode extension module, and a little fiddling with xinitrc, I was able to create a small, clean kiosk boot CD that works on practically any PC without changing the hard disk at all.
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| The DynamicSkin MediaWiki extension allows the skin layout and content to be defined using normal wikitext articles instead of PHP script files, and to be modified dynamically depending. Menus, styles, navigation can change depending on the contents of the page being rendered. i've published the extension on MediaWiki.org and a description of the InfoDabble skin which shows how a derived class is used to further customize the skin for this site.
I've also published the BreadCrumbs2 extension which generates "breadcrumbs" to help users navigate around the wiki, highlights the active navigation link and/or tab, and optionally changes the site logo based on page categories.
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| As part of its web application framework, Google provides the Google Data APIs, a set of web services for read/write access to google applications. Even better, the Zend Google Data Client provides a PHP 5 component to execute queries and commands against the Google Data APIs. And that's all you need. Unless you're using GoDaddy as a cheap host. You get what you pay for ... With low cost comes great hoop-jumping responsibility.
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| The EmailForm MediaWiki extension is used to create email response forms. Both the input form and the results, which are defined on the same wiki page, can be fully formatted using standard wikitext. The extension has been published to MediaWiki.org and is used for the Contact me form on my web site.
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| I like to think of GoDaddy as the McBurgers of hosting and domains - they're huge, they're everywhere, they're relatively cheap, and they're utterly consistent. Just don't ask for anything that's not on the menu. Fortunately, MediaWiki fits with just a little trim...
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| The (not the) Apollo 17 Flight Journal is back in business - new, improved, and much fuller. The site is also a showcase for how to use MediaWiki as a platform for project documentation and research.
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