I’ve finally got the wiki language down enough to where I can edit a page without having to reference the help section! I’ve discovered how to edit the main navigation panels on the left hand side, although at this time I have left them at the default because I’m really not sure how I want them to look.

Tonight, I have finally figured out how to change the colors of the wiki to actually fit in with my web site. So, for those who frequent my web site, they now can have the same color scheme when they go to my wiki. Well, I still need to figure out one thing but I have got most of it working.  I think it just helps to integrate it into my site! (That one thing is changing the colors of the frame around my pictures. I’m sure I will get it eventually!)

I’m not a master of wiki yet but I am learning and that is a good thing. I’ve always told my friends who think I am some kind of computer expert that I only know what I have taught myself because I needed to know it. I don’t always have the answers but they are usually able to be found somewhere!

I hope nobody is bored with this. I just enjoy sharing my learning experiences with everyone!

I want to offer you all a chance to see how my wiki is looking. Understand that I am still very much in the infant stages but you should be able to see just how I hope it will work. There isn’t a lot of info but there is enough to see just how smooth it could flow as you go through some of the pages.

I am linking to my father’s page on my wiki. There isn’t much info but there is enough. My main focus for you is to see how easily you can navigate to each page and pay attention to how I was able to create a page for the cemetery my father is buried in and tell a little about it and how many of our family members are buried there.

I still have such a long way to go but I have made such great progress in the last few days that I thought I would share some of it with you all.

So, tell me what you think and feel free to offer any suggestions. I haven’t made it public to anyone yet (until now) but I am still fiddling with how I want it to look.

Here’s the link: David Isaac Spangler

Today, I played around with some of the format of my surname pages. I’m currently working on the Spangler surname page and it is starting to look a little better. I’ve finally figured out how to make an external link and still have it say what I want it to! I’ve created several pages of family members and have played around with different options to see how they would look.

I also learned today how to make sure that anyone who wants to post or edit a page will have to register in order to do so. I thought about it long and hard and realized that there is a lot of opportunity for mischief if I left it all up to the honor system. I have made it so that you have to register, confirm your email and then you can have access to the site and can edit and such. Of course, as administrator I can still enforce stricter sanctions if abuse occurs.

All in all I am really happy with what I see. I believe this will be just what I need to make my site a little more interactive for all my visitors.

Yesterday I wrote about my problems with getting my wiki to recognize .svg files. I was really getting frustrated and finally just had to give up. I thought I would never get this done!

I went to work, did my 8 hours, came home and messed around with some other things and then decided to take another look. Isn’t it strange how things work. I didn’t do anything different as far as coding. I simply clicked on the image I wanted to save and chose save as and got the same message I had been getting. Instead of getting frustrated I looked at it again and tried one last thing. I clicked on the picture and it opened up a web page with just the picture showing. I right-clicked and there was no “Save Image As” but there was a “Save Page As”. I thought to myself that this was weird. However, I chose to save the page as and it came up with the dialog box and wanted me to type a name, but wait! In the file type it said Scalable Vector Graphics. What was this?

It turns out that you don’t save the little image on the web site, you simply click it and save the page as the SVG file! But how was I to know this? I simply lucked out I guess!

Nonetheless, my problem is solved. My help menu now has the two SVG files sitting there just so pretty. Now I just have to figure out how to link to an external file using my wiki!

The saga continues!!!

Today, I thought I would import the help pages from MediaWiki into my wiki so my users would have a place to find help without having to leave my wiki! Everything was going great until I came to the point of trying to get it to recognize .svg files. For the life of me I can’t seem to get this to work at all!

My first reaction was “Why do they have to make it so hard? Why can’t they just use a .jpg or .png file?” I mean it would be so much better to just stay with one format. Why in the world is it so important to have 2 of your images in the help file be in the .svg format? Unfortunately, I have no control over that and the powers that be have dictated that these two images shoud be in this format. I just have to live with it.

Now I have to figure out how to get my wiki to recognize .svg files. I’ve followed several suggestions from sites found by using Google but have yet to be able to do this. So, I am still trying to figure it out.

Of all things, my biggest problem right now with my wiki is trying to get the help pages imported. How ironic is that?

More later!

I feel like a newborn baby trying to take his first steps!

Of course, I’ve never dealt with a wiki before. It took me quite a while to figure out the actual install but I finally got that. Then it took me about 30 minutes to figure out how to change the logo. It took me about an hour to figure out how to add new pages. It’s an entirely different world to me!

I am definitely not ready to unveil my wiki to the world right now. I am still piddling with it and will probably be piddling for a while. When I get a general outline and some semblance of a sane and readable “thing” then I will ask opinions of others.

For now, I just wanted to share with everyone my excitement at being able to just get the thing to show up on my site! It has a very definite appeal to it and I am very excited about what it can bring to my site. I can add as much info as I have but can also allow others to share their info by just typing it into the wiki. It has some very nice potential.

So, I’m off to try to take a few more “Baby Steps”!