From Miller Farm

Table of contents

1 Key Tasks of This Committee 2 To Do List 3 Miller Farm Administrator Info 3.1 Quick Links 3.2 Tutorials 3.2.1 Editing a Web Page with MediaWiki 3.2.1.1 What is a Wiki? 3.2.1.2 Opening a Page for Editing 3.2.1.2.1 Logging In 3.2.1.2.2 Editing 3.2.1.3 Basic Editing Techniques 3.2.1.3.1 1. Use MediaWiki's hierarchical headers. 3.2.1.3.2 2. Hit return or enter twice between paragraphs. 3.2.1.3.3 3. Use MediaWiki's linking mechanism to link between pages. 3.2.1.3.4 4. When appropriate, organize pages hierarchically. 3.2.1.3.5 5. Use MediaWiki's formatting bar. 3.2.1.3.6 6. Use HTML code within your pages directly. 3.2.2 Uploading Pictures to DAlbum 3.2.2.1 Uploading Image Files with SFTP 3.2.2.2 Reindexing the Images in DAlbum

Key Tasks of This Committee

• Educate and motivate other farmers to use and contribute to the web site
  • Make sure everyone knows how to edit pages, upload photos, etc. Assist those who don't want to create/manage committee web pages themselves.

• Create and organize more general web site content, such as:
  • The Main Page - make sure that it links to relavent sections of the web site, based on the time in the year (e.g., add a link to housing information at the beginning of the spring semester)
  • Current events - update the meeting times for Farm Day & Ag Meeting on the current events page
  • Maintain the internships page (remove old posts and enter new ones as they come in)
  • Housing information - keep the information on the housing page, including the application or questionnaire, up to date
  • Other more general content that does not pertain to any particular committee

• Manage the farm's numerous mailing lists (farmers, farmday, and gardens). This involves:
  • Perhaps most importantly, making sure that current and future farmers (when known) are subscribed to both the farmers and farmday lists)
  • Making sure that you (or another current farmer) are an administrator for each of these mailing lists
  • Educating farmers about usage of the mailing lists
  • Facilitating communication between the community gardeners and farmers by making sure that at least one farmer is subscribed to the gardens list

To Do List

• Get and upload pictures for gardens, greenhouse, and other committees
• Make a "meet the farmers" page with pictures and fun bios
• Make a "compost services" page that outlines what we can do for the Earlham/Richmond community as far as compost pickup goes (Ryan, this sounds like you!)

Miller Farm Administrator Info

Quick Links

The username/login for the sites below, if one is needed, is admin. The password is the same for all the sites as well. Contact Ryan (mailto:woodbry@earlham.edu) if you think you deserve administrator access (you probably do).

farmers list (http://lists.earlham.edu/mailman/listinfo/farmers) - house planning list for current and future residents only

farmday list (http://lists.earlham.edu/mailman/listinfo/farmday) - general farm news, especially concerning ag meeting and farm day

gardens list (http://lists.earlham.edu/mailman/listinfo/gardens) - coordinating list for the community gardeners

miller_farm list (http://lists.earlham.edu/mailman/listinfo/miller_farm) - even more general Miller Farm community list (not sure who manages this one; we don't have administrator access)

webmail (https://webmail.cs.earlham.edu/src/login.php) - SquirrelMail access to 'millerfarm ATT cs.earlham.edu' (this address isn't published anywhere and isn't used much; it mostly receives administrative messages from the CS department). Not high priority.

photo albums (http://www.millerfarm.org/dalbum/login.php) - DAlbum, our photo album management software (for reindexing, etc. -- to upload files, use fileman below)

fileman (http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~millerfarm/fileman/fileman.cgi) - web-based file management software (can be used, e.g., instead of FTP for uploading files)

mediawiki (http://millerfarm.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Special:Userlogin) - MediaWiki, the main web site (administrator access is needed to modify the core pages, other pages can be modified by anyone)

Tutorials

Editing a Web Page with MediaWiki

For more extensive editing help, check out the MediaWiki Users' Guide (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide#For_editors).

What is a Wiki?

"[A] wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. [A] wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly.

"[A] wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself.

"Like many simple concepts, "open editing" has some profound and subtle effects on wiki usage. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users." (from http://wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki)

Opening a Page for Editing

Some pages at millerfarm.org are "protected" and others are open to editing by anyone. Pages such as Main Page and Housing are protected because they don't change very often and/or there's no reason for anyone without administrative access to edit them (so we might as well forego the risk of unwanted editing by unknown persons). Pages like Community Portal, on the other hand, are open to editing by anyone.

Logging In

As an administrator, login first so that (a) you won't have to do this later and (b) the page history will show your edits as authoritative. The steps are as follows:

• 1. Click the log in link at the top right of the screen.

• 2. Enter the login (admin) and password and click Log in. See the note in the Quick Links section above about passwords if you don't have one already.

Editing

• 1. Navigate to the page you want to edit and then click the edit button at the top of the screen.

• 2. Edit the page in the provided text box, enter a summary of the changes you made, click Show preview, and then, if everything looks okay in the preview, click Save page.

Basic Editing Techniques

You can make a web page just by typing plain text, without knowing any HTML or using any of the formatting capabilities of MediaWiki. A few key tips, however, will help you organize your pages and design them in the same look and feel as the rest of millerfarm.org. For more extensive editing help, check out the MediaWiki Users' Guide (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_User%27s_Guide#For_editors).

1. Use MediaWiki's hierarchical headers.

These control the organization that you see, for example, on this page. Each section has its own level that indicates where and under what it falls on the page. In addition, a table of contents is generated automatically at the top of the page, if it is long enough to make one useful. To use MediaWiki's headers, simply surround your header with some number of = signs, like so:

=Main page header=
Some plain text.

==Subsection 1==
Some plain text.

===Sub-subsection 1===
Some plain text.

==Subsection 2==
Some plain text.

This will give you a page that looks like this:

2. Hit return or enter twice between paragraphs.

If you put only one carriage return between paragraphs, MediaWiki will merge them together.

3. Use MediaWiki's linking mechanism to link between pages.

Links are good; the more the better (to a point). MediaWiki uses two linking methods, (a) to internal pages and (b) to external pages. Internal pages are those hosted by MediaWiki itself only, and external pages are all other pages (even pages hosted on millerfarm.org that are not in MediaWiki, such as the photo albums (http://millerfarm.org/dalbum/)).

To link to internal pages, surround a page name with double brackets, for example:

[[Main Page]]

will provide a link to the Main Page. If you want to customize the text of a link so that it reads better within a sentence, follow the link name with a | and the custom text, like so:

For more information, see [[Miller Farm:About|About Miller Farm]].

This link will appear like so:

For more information, see About Miller Farm.

To link to external pages, use one bracket instead of two and follow the link with the link text that you want to show on the page. For example:

[http://millerfarm.org/dalbum our photo albums]

will appear as:

our photo albums (http://millerfarm.org/dalbum)

4. When appropriate, organize pages hierarchically.

For example, each of the committee pages is positioned "under" the Committees page itself; e.g., Committees:Bees.

5. Use MediaWiki's formatting bar.

Basic formatting can be done with the bar above the editing box:

For example, select some text and then click the B to make it bold. After awhile you'll see how MediaWiki formatting works and can type it in directly instead of using the formatting buttons. For example, surround text with 3 ' to make it bold:

'''Bold text'''

6. Use HTML code within your pages directly.

Most HTML code can be used in MediaWiki pages directly. If the above notes don't give you enough control, learn HTML and use it.

Uploading Pictures to DAlbum

Putting photos in our photo album involves two things: (1) uploading the images via SFTP and (2) re-indexing the albums with DAlbum (this creates thumbnails and other display information to make the photo album use the new images).

Uploading Image Files with SFTP

• 1. Connect via SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) to cs.earlham.edu. The username is millerfarm and the password is the standard admin password. To do this on Windows, use WinSCP (http://winscp.net/eng/index.php). On a Mac, Transmit (http://www.panic.com/transmit/) is a good candidate.
• 2. Open the www folder, then the pictures folder. You'll see a list of all the current photo albums and inside them the images they contain.
• 3. To make a new photo album, just create a new folder with all the images you want in the new album.

Reindexing the Images in DAlbum

DAlbum is the application that manages and displays our photos in a more usable format on the web. It can be found at millerfarm.org/dalbum.

DAlbum does not automatically update itself when you upload new photos, you need to tell it that you've done so. This is called reindexing, and here's how to do it:

• 1. Navigate to DAlbum (http://millerfarm.org/dalbum/) and click Log in in the top right corner of the screen.
• 2. Enter the standard username (admin) and password, and click Login.
• 3. Click Reindex in the top right corner of the screen.
• 4. Select the appropriate method--Fast or Moderate will usually suffice--and click Start.
• 5. Wait for it to finish and then click Go to main page.
• 6. While you're still logged in, click your newly-uploaded photo album in the leftmost column (e.g., Bread Oven).
• 7. Click Edit at the top of the screen near the album name.
• 8. In the resulting page, you can enter information like a full-text album title, give it a date, and give names and descriptions to the pictures you uploaded.