Utility: Official release of the unofficial Dominions 3 Wiki

[brxbrx]

Originally Posted by lch

The Dominions 3 Wiki is undergoing updates and has to be offline for some time. After upgrading, a very old bug in the MediaWiki software persistently denies all attempts to fix it. I did manage to circumvent it the past two years by keeping upgrades to the PHP version back and not updating it anymore, which is no ideal solution anyway. Now that those packages have been officially removed, I'll try to upgrade everything to the newest version and to have the Wiki running with that. Sorry for the downtime.

I'd thank your post too because it was very useful and very gracious of you to inform us of this, but I don't want to be a part of the herd.

[legowarrior]

Originally Posted by lch

The Dominions 3 Wiki is undergoing updates and has to be offline for some time. After upgrading, a very old bug in the MediaWiki software persistently denies all attempts to fix it. I did manage to circumvent it the past two years by keeping upgrades to the PHP version back and not updating it anymore, which is no ideal solution anyway. Now that those packages have been officially removed, I'll try to upgrade everything to the newest version and to have the Wiki running with that. Sorry for the downtime.

I think this answers your question. It is 5 posts above what you wrote.

[momfreeek]

Yah, thx lch for the wiki. I can't imagine playing dom3 without it.. I'd be totally lost ^^.

The archives on waybackmachine still seem fairly usable as a reference:

http://web.archive.org/web/http://do...wiki/Main_Page

[Calahan]

I'll add to the eulogising of Lch while I here. It took me a while to get used to using the Wiki, mainly due to getting used to the fact a useful and accurate Wiki existed, but I find it a great reference source now, and often saves me having to sift through my notes or DB when looking for fine details.

So thanks Lch for all the work you did putting it together in the first place, and thanks for maintaining it like you do for all the community (that'd you've been too rare a guest of in recent times )

[Rick L]

I have been a reader and contributor to the Wiki for some time, but for the last few days I get a page not found error when I try to go there. Anyone know what's up?

[Rick L]

I have been a happy user and contributor to the Wiki for a while, but it seems to be down now. I haven't been able to sign on recently. Anyone know what's happening with it?

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Rick L

I have been a happy user and contributor to the Wiki for a while, but it seems to be down now. I haven't been able to sign on recently. Anyone know what's happening with it?

Wow you really have trouble reading don't you? It is still broken like Lch said. You basically asked the same question last week and got the same reply.

Apparently it is a bit harder to fix than originally thought of. Relax, and wait. It will probably be back, ad if it is down for good, well just ask Lch for the backups and try something else.

Also, your message is even incorrect. Not being able to sign on implies that you can reach the page. Which isn't true, as the wiki has been unreachable.

[lch]

I didn't have much time to write something that night, but I'll try to answer some comments now. I'll answer them here to keep all things concerning the Wiki in one thread instead of having it scattered across multiple topics.

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

Apparently it is a bit harder to fix than originally thought of. Relax, and wait. It will probably be back, ad if it is down for good, well just ask Lch for the backups and try something else.

It was mostly lack of time and ambition - look at that pink bog beast pic... I could have and should have left the Wiki in its read-only state, but when I turned the web server off I really thought it was better to provide no service than to provide crappy service. I wasn't sure if the database and system would suffer and might become corrupted while people tried all kinds of things to deal with this, too, which was another reason to turn it off.

Originally Posted by JonBrave

Please don't shout at me for asking this... How/why is the website actually down during "fixing" whatever was decided to be fixed..? Any website you know of, they/owner leave current system up while they make changes for new one, then go live. This baby's been gone for weeks & weeks, what can be so difficult?

You know, that would be exactly what I'd have asked if I was in your situation. There should be a "live" version and a "testing" or "development" version of a website, and changes should only be pushed from the "dev" to the "live" version when they're finished. When I was working on web design things, I always kept things that way. With the Wiki, I haven't done such a setup, mostly because it was overkill and because I am usually not working on the live code, but just install and upgrade code from the official SVN codebase now. When I started on the Wiki, I didn't need such a setup because nobody knew about it and I was free to do whatever I wanted to do without the need to have a working "live" version while I'm developing. Now that there is some customer/user base who needs to access the Wiki even when I'd need to work on it, I would favor and use such a setup, yes. In case I ever intend (and have time) to work more on it, I think I'll work on a cloned version like you have considered, yes.

Originally Posted by brxbrx

This is excellent news. Has anyone thought of transferring the wiki to a free wiki farm? We'd have to deal with advertisements, but otherwise it would be both faster and free (like this one).

I have considered hosting the Wiki on a free Wiki farm when I started building it, of course. None of those that were around at the time seemed to offer what the Dom3Wiki demanded, though. Usually "free" either means that you have to live with a limited, crippled version of usually an upgradeable (for a cost) package, or something that makes money from advertisements. Since many things that I used on this Wiki have always been very experimental, which included Semantic MediaWiki at the time, I couldn't use a host that doesn't allow full control over the system, and one that makes money from ads was out of question, too. The StrategyWiki was the example of what the Wiki might look like then, and even the people that build up the Dom3 section of the StrategyWiki, like Horst F. Jens, have been very unhappy with the amount of advertisements that is exposed there now. Sure, you won't see most if you use a good ad blocker, but not everybody has that. I rather want full ownership and full control of my site than having to live with a contract that I don't like. Before the StrategyWiki was there, people asked Shrapnel about hosting a Wiki themselves, I have heard. But they would need more staff to be able to do that, which means that they won't do it, because they can't.

I have considered to have the Wiki hosted on a free webspace provider, too, of course. Why I didn't use one is mainly the same reason why I am cautious of free Wiki farms: I don't trust them to live very long. I am into Web hosting since a little over 15 years now, and I've used some very cool free web hosts during that time. I've seen dozens of those free webspace providers fall and vanish over time. Very large ones, too, with ten thousands of users and many more sites. There is no such thing as a free lunch, there has to be a way to pay the bills, and at some point a free web space provider might decide that it's no longer possible to keep things free, might it take one year, two years, five years or more. Even Wikipedia regularly has to ask people for money from donations to be able to sustain itself, and it's a lot of money that they need.

I would want that the Wiki would be more performant, of course, and I'd have been really glad about the offers for hosting it that I got from people here now when I started. What I want most, though, is that the data is safe, and by now I very much want to have physical access to the box in order to ensure that. Maybe the Wiki will be transferred into the hands of somebody else who I can entrust with it later. I hosted the Wiki from a Pentium III in my office in college at the start, I have since upgraded it to a notebook that I had left over, stored in the cellar at my home. How fast or slow the Wiki is might either be because of the hardware, be it CPU or memory, or because of my DSL connection. I don't have the spare money to upgrade it to something better, and I won't hold it to ransom to force people to cope with those costs. It is, as somebody else wrote, solely there out of goodwill. If I would consider the productive time alone that I put into creating it, it should never have seen the day of light. That would surely have been better for me. As you might have noticed, I am very much retired from the Dom3 scene. The Wiki still is still far from being as cool as I wanted it, and unfortunately I'm lacking the time and dedication that I had as a bachelor to make it much cooler. But I'll keep the Wiki up and support it as long as I can, and I'm especially thankful to those community members that spend their time to expand and update it and make it better. Seeing that it is being used like that is even better than any thanks or donations thrown my way.

[Vanguard X]

*CHEERS!,YAY!* Thanks a bunch!

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by lch

You know, that would be exactly what I'd have asked if I was in your situation. There should be a "live" version and a "testing" or "development" version of a website, and changes should only be pushed from the "dev" to the "live" version when they're finished. When I was working on web design things, I always kept things that way. With the Wiki, I haven't done such a setup, mostly because it was overkill and because I am usually not working on the live code, but just install and upgrade code from the official SVN codebase now. When I started on the Wiki, I didn't need such a setup because nobody knew about it and I was free to do whatever I wanted to do without the need to have a working "live" version while I'm developing. Now that there is some customer/user base who needs to access the Wiki even when I'd need to work on it, I would favor and use such a setup, yes. In case I ever intend (and have time) to work more on it, I think I'll work on a cloned version like you have considered, yes.

Dear Mr Ich,

I think some people didn't like how I asked! I'm glad to see you take it the way it was intended

Here's what I don't get/is sad. Your Wiki is, or should be, 99.9% static text. No offence intended, but as I recall it's just clicking on links to other pages (little if any interaction) --- which is fine, and as it should be. A few years ago, as I recall, the site would have been some pages & links, and that could be plonked anywhere. Nowadays, it seems, you all need "engines" & "scripts" to deliver your sites. Hence all the issues about your site being "down". That's the bit I don't get? Let (suitable) pages be just static content, or if necessary generate it at some point and save/offer that?