Your Simple Skins are AWESOME

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janeR4R
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Your Simple Skins are AWESOME

Post by janeR4R »

Hey paul... your skins are terrific. I am completely new to CMS and webpage building, and the amount of anxiety i get just by looking at MediaWiki makes me sick -- and then to think how im gonna get rid of all that useless clutter makes me sicker. I dont know what any of that clutter does, and frankly i dont care. Not interested. All i wanted was a simple site that does simple functions!! Thanks for providing plenty great skins. (now ive got to figure out how to install it!)

I have a suggestion for you too. You obviously know how to make complex things simple. While I was searching the bottomless pit of the internet for non-techie instructions on how to build my own site with MediaWiki, i found nothing. Some things came close, but nothing ever could answer the question of all questions:

Q: Ok, so you tell me to type in "yadieyadie" in the localsettings.php file to change this to that. How do i get to the localsettings file??? what is it??? Why do i have to type in CODE to just get rid of a menu item???


Basically, no one has ever been attempted to explain, or chart out, the format/process of MediaWiki. Whats a php? what language do i need to know (and how do i learn it) in order to use a php?? (why cant mediawiki just get a regular user-friendly interface?? can you tell im frustrated? agh.)

ok! thanks for your work! let me know if you need a test dummy to see if things are sufficiently "dummied down"
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Paul
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Re: Your Simple Skins are AWESOME

Post by Paul »

You have a good point here, since we assume you all have basic mediawiki knowledge, but many newbies doesn't know much and get lost.

Since I was busy with skins and extensions development and updates, I haven't had chance to do some other things. But it's worthy to have such dummy instructions, I will split some time to make these up on my wiki.

Thanks for great feedback and comments. :D
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BRotondi
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Re: Your Simple Skins are AWESOME

Post by BRotondi »

We could begin with links and add minimal text between:

- All internet-pages are written in a special language: HTML (http://selfhtml.org for german and french, don't know similar in english)
- To generate a changeable page like a wiki we need a programming language which generates this HTML: PHP. The php code will be executed by the server which returns html. (http://www.php.net)
- Thanks to PHP the server can be told to get settings from other files: LocalSettings.php e.g. has some main-settings for your wiki and is located on the server itself. Only if you installed your own wiki on your "own" server, you can change something here.

- Someone had the idea to simplify formatings in HTML. He invented CSS which give the ability to format text simply by adding class"format123" wherever you need this special format after defining it only once. (instead every place you need it)

Now: First step is perhaps Wikipedia, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html: You don't have to read the whole article. Read the intro, click on every interesting link ... and then go to sleep, allowing your brain doing housework over night.

You can go further into html, php, css or even set up your own local server at home and begin install your first personal wiki: http://www.apachefriends.org/de/xampp-windows.html

... :) and never forget: We all lost thousand of hours to get into this stuff. You will at least use 100, so ... enyoj it :D

You will always find people interested to help you and a lot of sites have their own "dummy-pages".

Most things already have been explained somewhere. MediaWiki has his own wiki and forum: http://www.mediawiki.org and http://www.mwusers.com/forums/index.php ...you have a lot to read ... use google to find it!

Nice greetings from Switzerland
Bruno
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Paul
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Re: Your Simple Skins are AWESOME

Post by Paul »

Thanks for tips...

I will reorganize them and make them as simple as possible, so any type of users can follow.

I'm thinking of screen shots will be good idea too. :D
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BRotondi
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Re: Your Simple Skins are AWESOME

Post by BRotondi »

But don't loose too much time ;)

More important than simple text ist simple navigation: Can I find this information (your starting point, the wiki-dummy-page) if I'm not really searching it? Once found the trace, can I follow it? (good managed Links)

...

Bruno
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Paul
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Re: Your Simple Skins are AWESOME

Post by Paul »

Right now, I put them into "manual:How Do I" page ... :)
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sojib
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Re: Your Simple Skins are AWESOME

Post by sojib »

Basically,no one has ever been attempted to explain that format. I have a suggestion for you too. You obviously know how to make complex things simple. While I was searching the bottomless pit of the internet for non-techie instructions on how to build my own site ., i found nothing. Some things came close, but nothing ever could answer the question of all questions.
Thank You.
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