Category: Web

I was able to have a new theme for the blog activate for people using mobile devices like iPhones or Android devices. It gives a simpler layout that is easier to read on a small screen. I thought it would be nice to find something like that for the Flashlight Wiki as well. Again, the built-in browser for my iPod tends to show a page as if the screen is normal size, shrinking everything down. Then you have to zoom in to read things and pan around to read lines of text. So a simple interface would be nice.

Wikipedia has a special version of its site available that starts http://en.m.wikipedia.org that is meant for mobile users. MediaWiki calls themes “skins” but Wikipedia’s mobile site is something more complicated. A lot of the features of Wikipedia are very complicated, starting with the front page and all of their infoboxes and automatic conversions from or to metric and english units. It looks great on Wikipedia, but it is hard to implement on a personal wiki. So I know it is possible to get good results on a shrunken screen because when I visit Wikipedia on the iPod, I see the mobile version.

But when I visit my site, I get this:

Continue reading “WPtouch for Wiki”

Now that the new blog is in place, it needs people to be able to find it. I looked in the logs and nobody is getting to it via search engines. Jeb was going to set up some redirects at some point to automatically forward people from the old pages to the new ones. Sometimes you will run across a web page that tells you the original page has moved and will transfer you to the new page in a couple of seconds. You can do this with meta tags or with some javascript. But the best way to do this is through a 301 redirect which users won’t even notice and Google and other search engines accept as an official move of your site. The “301” number means the page has moved permanently. If Google was sending people to your old page, when they see the 301 redirect they should keep sending them to the new site. With websites, it is all about keeping your page rank with Google. For instance, on the Flashlight Wiki this month, 3,553 visitors were referred by search engines. 3,296 of those were referred by Google (93%). Second place is Yahoo with 93 referrals (2.6%). Not that the blog is a money making site, but it’s nice to be noticed. Continue reading “301 Redirect”

My cousin, Mary, invited me to be her Facebook friend today and I gladly accepted. On her page she had a link to 2012 as the Year of Code, saying her New Year’s resolution was to learn more code. At the link they had a quote by someone saying:

A young person asked me for advice for “those who aren’t technical.” My answer was “Get technical.”

Continue reading “MediaWiki Extension MetaKeywordsTag”

Recently I upgraded the MediaWiki software for the Flashlight Wiki I made in 2010. I had a list of customizations I made for version 1.16.0, but the upgrade is version 1.18.0. So based on the old customizations, here are the slightly different ones I needed for 1.18.0 and its new skin, Vector (old skin was Monobook). Rather than make a new list every time I upgrade the software, I am just updating this post, so really these customizations are for the current version which is v1.20.4.

Continue reading “Wiki Customizations v1.18.0”

Back in August, I had tried and failed to upgrade the Flashlight Wiki’s software from MediaWiki 1.16 to 1.17. For whatever reason, I thought it would be a good time to try again. Only now they are up to version 1.18. Continue reading “Wiki Upgraded”