UMWiki http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/ en Copyright 2009 Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:53:06 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.25 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss OIT Customer Appreciation & Technology Fair Please join us for the OIT Customer Appreciation and Technology Fair,
Friday August 28 from 1:30-3:30 p.m. on Northrup Plaza.

This year's event will include vendor and OIT display booths and ice
cream from Ben & Jerry's.

Vendors who will be attending include


  • Aastra Intecom

  • Adobe

  • Apple

  • CDW-G

  • Cisco

  • Dell

  • Hewlett Packard

  • T-Mobile

  • Trapeze Networks

This invitation will serve both as the ticket for Ben and
Jerry's ice cream and as the entry for our many prizes.
Please fill it out and bring it along!
Winners will be notified after the event.

For a map of the Northrop Memorial Auditorium area, please see
http://umn.edu/twincities/maps/NMA

In case of inclement weather, the event will be held in the Northrop
Auditorium Atrium.

]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2009/08/oit_customer_appreciation_tech.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2009/08/oit_customer_appreciation_tech.html Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:53:06 +0000 Short Notice UM Wiki Outage Sunday May 3rd
Starting at 5 a.m. on Sunday May 3, 2009, for up to 12 hours, centrally supported U of M applications, including UM Wiki, will be unavailable for use.

PROCESS

After all systems are shut down at 6 a.m., the leak in the cooling system will be repaired. When repairs are complete, all systems will be brought back online. Updates will be available at https://systemstatus.umn.edu/view/Main/OutageInfo, as well as on System Status pages for the affected systems.

EXPLANATION
The cooling system for the WBOB data center has developed a leak. To maintain operation of the data center and the applications housed within it, this leak must be repaired. This repair will require a complete facility shutdown, resulting this outage.

We thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience this causes. If you have any questions call 1-HELP at (612) 301-4357
]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2009/05/short_notice_um_wiki_outage_su.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2009/05/short_notice_um_wiki_outage_su.html Fri, 01 May 2009 20:27:59 +0000 Foswiki Since its creation, UM Wiki has been based on the TWiki wiki platform. TWiki has many advanced features and is very extensible. Although the learning curve has sometimes proved difficult for our users, the overall experience has been a good one. Recently there were some disputes among the TWiki developer community. From a U of M perspective the dispute is less important than the result which is that the vast majority of critical developers forked(definition) forming the Foswiki project.

Currently the Foswiki development community is very active and working on a host of bug fixes and new features we'd like to take advantage of for UM Wiki. One little-known fact is that the System Status site is also based on TWiki. The Office of Information Technology is currently testing a new version of system status based on Foswiki 1.0 and we are pleased so far with the results. If the new software performs as well in production as it does in test, we hope to move UM Wiki to a Foswiki base sometime in Summer of 2009. This will hopefully be after the official Foswiki 1.1 release which will include many usability and performance improvements over the current UM Wiki code base.

]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2009/03/foswiki.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2009/03/foswiki.html Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:32:35 +0000 Changing the Title of your Topic (page) Recently you may have noticed %TOPICPARENT% showing up in the breadcrumbs along the top of some UM Wiki pages.

Due to a bug in the editing add-on we use for UM Wiki the "parent" for a page was being changed every time the page was saved regardless of whether or not it changed. In some rare cases the parent was also being changed to odd values such as %TOPICPARENT%. The best solution we were able to come up with was to remove the "Settings" tab from the edit page. As the only setting was the broken topic parent setting. You can still change the topic parent by clicking on the "More topic actions..." link at the bottom of every page in UM Wiki.

]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2009/03/changing_the_title_of_your_top.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2009/03/changing_the_title_of_your_top.html Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:08:28 +0000 EDITPREFERENCES (Fixed) Update: Fixed!

So by "next few days" I must have meant to say September to October. Group forms are once again working per design.

Users will see the following line on group pages for the next few days: %EDITPREFERENCES{TWiki.GroupForm}%

The Preferences Plugin which we rely on to create the group management form is not saving changes to groups. We are working to fix this and decided to disable the plugin until we have it resolved.

While this is going on you can still edit your groups:

  1. Click the normal Edit button in the upper right corner of the page (do not use the WYSIWYG editor for group or preferences editing)
  2. Look for the line
    * Set GROUP = Main.internetid, Main.x500, Main.etc
  3. Continue adding Internet ID's or WikiNames to the line above. Make sure to put a comma between each entry and to start each entry with "Main." while keeping them all on one line.

We'll get the plugin back up and running as soon as we can. Thank you for your patience.

]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/09/editpreferences.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/09/editpreferences.html Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:12:33 +0000 Wiki Error on Save Update: The problems have been resolved and we are looking into ways to avoid this incident repeating itself.

UM Wiki is currently experiencing RCS errors when saving a topic causes a new revision to be made. To put that in something closer to english:

When you make a change to your page you'll get an error message and the History page won't include your changes. Your changes will get added to the most current version of the page.

We're working to resolve this as quick as we can but its related to some other systems UM Wiki sits on top of so it may take a while to get this tracked down and resolved. It is a good idea to stop editing UM Wiki until we post an all clear here and on System Status. We appreciate your patience while we resolve these issues.

]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/09/wiki_error_on_save.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/09/wiki_error_on_save.html Tue, 02 Sep 2008 23:10:33 +0000 The Move is Over We've Moved

https://wiki.umn.edu is now on its new home. Some users of outside DNS servers may see the old server for a while yet. The old server is read-only and will have a broadcast message at the top. We'll bring the old server down completely once we're sure DNS records have updated completely. Bugs and feedback should continue to be emailed to wiki@umn.edu. Your help finding issues and suggesting improvements is appreciated.

What's Next

Once UM Wiki is settled into its new home we'll get back to the business of updating plugins and fixing bugs while looking at what features we can add later this year.

]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/08/the_move_is_over.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/08/the_move_is_over.html Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:27:52 +0000 No Section Edit? The excellent SectionalEditPlugin provides some much needed functionality to UM Wiki allowing us to break up articles into sections and edit one piece of a wiki topic at a time. Unfortunately the currently installed WYSIWYG plugin on the new wiki server has a conflict with the version of section edit we're running forcing us to disable one or the other. At this point we've chosen to keep WYSIWYG on and are planning to test updated versions of both plugins after we're done with the move tomorrow night (August 26, 2008). For those of our users who depend on the SectionalEditPlugin our apologies. We'll have it back up and running as soon as possible.

]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/08/no_section_edit.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/08/no_section_edit.html Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:07:00 +0000 UM Wiki Move Scheduled August 26 at 8pm On Tuesday, August 26 at 8pm UM Wiki will move to its new server. This process should take roughly an hour during which the wiki will be alternately read-only and unavailable while we copy data and point the wiki.umn.edu address at the new server. We're still very interested in your feedback on the new server.

]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/08/um_wiki_move_scheduled_august.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/08/um_wiki_move_scheduled_august.html Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:54:16 +0000 Button Madness Due to instability with the new WYSIWYG editor we've moved the default back to the enhanced TWiki editor. This was the default behavior. The WYSIWYG editor is still there and still works great for basic pages. It's only when you get into advanced TWiki variables that the editor begins to have difficulty translating between html and TWiki markup. Feedback on any of these changes is much appreciated.

]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/08/button_madness.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/08/button_madness.html Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:48:16 +0000 A New Server for UMWiki We have finished our initial setup and testing on a new server for UMWiki. UMWiki's new home is up and running at wiki-new.software.umn.edu and has a copy of the data from wiki.umn.edu as of last Friday August 1, 2008. Any changes made on wiki-new will be lost when we do the final move from the old wiki server to the new one in a few weeks. Between now and then we still have a few more plugins to update and test and some documentation to finish updating.

In the meanwhile we'd like you to test the new setup and send us feedback before we go live. In addition to faster hardware we've added the following features:

  • WYSIWYG - You've been asking for it and we've finally been able to install it. Please test the WYSIWYG edit extensively. We will be providing an option to disable it where complex TWiki Markup prevents it from working properly.
  • Updated TWiki Editor - New shortcut functions.
  • Updated look and feel - We now have some more choices for how UMWiki looks. Instructions will be forthcoming if you prefer the old look as well as some other alternate new appearances.
  • Updated Plugins - Several of the TWiki Plugins we rely on were in need of an update. Any help you can provide in making sure these new versions haven't broken anything is appreciated.

Please test wiki-new and making sure all your content still looks right and that plugins are all working as they have in the past. We have done internal testing but we are always grateful for your help in finding anything we miss. Please send feedback to wiki@umn.edu. Our plan now is to finish our short list of remaining changes--more updates will appear here as they happen--and fix any new bugs that you report to us. Once we're satisfied that wiki-new is ready to become production, we'll copy the data over one last time and point wiki.umn.edu to the new box.

]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/08/a_new_server_for_umwiki.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/08/a_new_server_for_umwiki.html Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:00:49 +0000 Wiki Basics The University Technology Training Center is offering a new and improved Wiki Basics course on Wed. Jul 23, 2008. Here's a brief list of topics covered:
  • understanding the advantages of wikis
  • exploring good wiki design
  • structuring content into Wiki Topics
  • using wiki shorthand for text formatting
  • controlling access to a Wiki Web
  • requesting a new Wiki Web
]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/07/wiki_basics.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/07/wiki_basics.html Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:43:20 +0000 Access Controls One of our biggest support issues with UM Wiki is how to set and maintain access controls. Towards that end we have updated our documentation with a handy new guide to access controls. Please feel free to send email to wiki@umn.edu or leave feedback in a comments on this post about how we can further improve this document or where we're light on guides.

]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/06/access_controls.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/06/access_controls.html Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:40:22 +0000 Wikis in Plain English Michael Daum:
Wikis in Plain English.
A nice run down of why wikis are neat. ]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/04/post.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/04/post.html Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:33:49 +0000 UMWiki Availability We get a number of requests everyone once in a while regarding the reliability of the UMWiki, so I thought it would be good to post it on the wiki here. The answer is provided by the wiki project manager, Liz Wendland.

]]> http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/02/umwiki_availability.html http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/umwiki/2008/02/umwiki_availability.html News Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:26:44 +0000