Drupal Module Tracking

[Nick]

I think it might be a good idea to log our adding of modules. So if a problem arises we can look back and see what might have been installed around the time the problem started. And just because there are so freaking many of them!

To start off; I just installed two modules:

Advanced Statistics	Advanced setting for statistics that stops authors from increasing 'reads' on their own articles and webbots from logging in the page views.
Browscap	Provides statistics on browsers and a replacement for PHPs get_browser() function. (Similar to the wurfl thing) Added to enable advanced statistics to recognize user agents.
rlimg	(needs a better name) Provides inline embedding of gallery images using simple BBCode style syntax. Use by putting [rlimg node_id] in your article text.

Just checked and google can still see the site.

[zourtney]

So, what's the word on the wiki modules? I think that'd be a worthy addition.

Oh, is the title of the topic supposed to be "Drupal Module Tracking?"

[Nick]

Yes it was

I like mediawiki. There is a bridge to use the drupal accounts with it. It would have to be a separate area though, like the forums are.

[zourtney]

That's fine, and seems to be a somewhat common implementation. I say we make a new virtualhost and serve it from wiki.randomland.net, if that's plausible.

Then we can rebuild the site layout under the wiki system.
    wiki.randomland.net
        /motors
        /rec
        /tech
            /project1
            /project2
            ...
        /about

I suspect that most of those pages will be dummy pages, but it makes sense to standardize URLs between sites. That will be a pain in the butt to maintain, of course. 

[Nick]

Why will it be hard to maintain?

[Brad]

Is there going to be any content under the wiki for the most of Randomland sections? I mean you're basically duplicating the entire site (which we don't have a huge amount of content for anyway) on the wiki. The tech project sections are going to have the documentation for the individual projects so that's content for them... But what are you going to have for the motors, rec and about sections? Isn't most of the content for those sections going to work better in a blog style post like what we have on Randomland already?

Wikis allow you to link to non-existent pages (it'll take you to a page asking you to create the content which was linked to) so you can certainly create empty links or dummy pages to the other sections. That just seems to make a lot of extra maintenance work for something we aren't going to use. It's not like we don't have the possibility of creating those other sections in the future if we have content for them.

What do you guys think?

[Nick]

I was thinking we could have short dictionary/encyclopedia style blurbs about Francine (A crap truck purchased for $100 etc.) and SURI and the like. The is no need to duplicate the whole site, just make a complementary guide giving the basics to what things are. Less of an entertaining story format and more of a dry factual format (not that that excludes humor. Just use dry humor )

And it would be a great place to have a completely random section on  swampdiving, what it is(n't), and where/how you can('t) do it.

[Brad]

Ahh... I see. OK then, if you got some content then it makes sense to duplicate the layout.

[zourtney]

I'm getting confused already what content should be where. Since we are the only authors, we really aren't gaining anything...other than authoring syntax.

Hmmmm

[Nick]

Content goes on randomland. I think if we put anything other then info about games and software on the wiki it should only be short factual blurbs about things. So, for example, if you are writing a thing about francine and want people to know what that is, but don't want to force them to read the entire francine adventure you could just link to francine wiki and they could read a brief history about a crap truck.

Brad was thinking that you were talking about copying all the content on the site and reposting it into the wiki, duplicating it all. I was saying that I like the above idea better. Making it more a glossary of terms then a bunch of long articles. (Think what wikipedia calls stubs, thats what we would have)

Unless that is no one wants to do this. Then that is fine. The wiki could just be bradsgame-wiki.randomland.net and only hold information about the game. 

[Brad]

I wasn't thinking you were going to copy the entirety of Randomland's content onto the wiki, rather I was thinking you were going to duplicate all the sections. I just don't really know what you are going to put in the non-tech sections which wouldn't be better put into Randomland's blog format.

And it isn't just my tech project which could benefit from a wiki, your media tracker or any other software project which needs documentation would also benefit. Any sort of programming project too detailed to fit into a blog post would work well in wiki format.

Unless you were going to create an encylopedia of Nick's beater cars or something. That'd be good in wiki format.

[Nick]

Unfortunately I haven't gone though enough beaters cars to warrant that yet

I think we are all confused about what the others are thinking. What do you both think should go into a wiki if we had one?

[zourtney]

I opine:
pretty much nothing, other than dry documentation for programming projects. And probably a single, top-level page for each section of randomland.

And I only suggest this so that we you can do:
    randomland.net/tech/bradsgame (insert flashy graphics here)
but keep the boring stuff at:
    wiki.randomland.net/tech/bradsgame (insert boring stuff here)

If the URL were different, it'd be weird and not predictable (to me). That's all I was really getting at.

[Brad]

Hey! I was going to put the gameplay documentation up along with the technical! Then I was going to sprinkle it with crudely drawn artwork and decidedly unfunny jokes.

[zourtney]

Wait, what?