MediaWiki and image gallery columns – mini-tutorial
Posted on March 16, 2009
I’m mainly noting this for posterity, because I couldn’t find a quick answer online and finally figured it out after a day or two.
Last year I setup a MediaWiki site for work to take the place of a site one of the resident’s had setup. The site’s overall look-and-feel has to comply with standards from the School of Medicine, and this year they’ve redesigned everything. I like the school’s new design concept, since the old one was starting to feel dated. Still, it takes work to convert a site from one theme to another.
The previous design took up almost the entire width of the browser window, which means MediaWiki could easily accommodate 6 columns of image thumbnails. The downside is it’s hard coded into the MediaWiki code. It’s a variable, but not one that’s documented. Normally, variables that are meant to be changed in MediaWiki are meant to be included in the LocalSettings.php file or the includes/DefaultSettings.php file. However, in the includes/ImageGallery.php file is $mPerRow = x; near the beginning of the file, where x is the number of columns. It can be set to whatever is appropriate, so I set it to 4 for the new layout.
The moral of the tutorial is that it pays to look in unusual places if you are hunting for some hidden variable.
Filed Under Code, LAMP, MediaWiki, Net, Open Source, Work | Comments Off
Tagged with: image gallery, MediaWiki, PHP, thumbnails, tutorial
Dequirked
Posted on June 10, 2008
The site had some quirks to go with the redesign and the software upgrades, but I think they are all taken care of now. The comments are back on, so feel free to try it out.
One of the main reasons for getting MediaWiki going is that it should be a good way for me to make notes while I’m doing research for a master’s degree. I keep running across linguistic terms that I’ve seen before, but don’t recall exactly what they mean (like lemma), so it would be a good idea for me to come up with a glossary of terms and definitions. If my understanding of a term evolves, then I can easily change the definition in the wiki. Writing something down usually helps me understand things better, plus I can put them in easy-to-understand (for me) terms, rather than academic prose.
I also formally applied for the M.A. program yesterday, so that’s out of the way.
Finished the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and put the movie next in my Netflix queue. Good book, but short. It was translated from French, but the English was very witty. I assume Bauby’s original text was just as witty.
New design
Posted on June 8, 2008
As mentioned earlier, I’ve been working on a new design, which I was finally able to apply. The redesign of MediaWiki didn’t take as long as thought, but it may have been that I was so into it that time flew by.
There are still some quirks, however. I forgot to add the comment form stuff for WordPress. There’s no convenient way to search on MW or WP. MediaWiki has a ton of different elements I haven’t defined in the stylesheet. I was mainly concentrating on getting the overall design to work, that I didn’t worry about the things that are infrequently used.
It’s a small world after all
Posted on June 2, 2008
Two things: first, I’m reworking the site a bit and trying to develop a look that will work with both MediaWiki and WordPress. I have the WP version started, but not yet finished, which can be seen over here. Given the architectures of MW and WP, the overall look will have to be coded separately for each piece of software. It still has a way to go yet, and there is a glitch in viewing it in Firefox 3 RC1, though it seems to look okay in Firefox 2, Opera, and Safari.
[edit: it's finished now and looks fine in Firefox 3 RC1]
Second, coming in this morning I saw bicycle commuter coming in a door I was passing by. However, what caught my eye was the bike jersey he was wearing. I saw the logo of Bristol Brewing’s Laughing Lab Scottish Ale and did a double take. I’ve never seen Bristol beers here in Indy, so it was strange to see the jersey. I stopped and talked with the guy for a few minutes, and it turns out his brother works for Bristol Brewing as a QA person (what a job that must be :-D)
Pappa’s got a brand new bag
Posted on May 12, 2006
I usually try not to blog about work. Mainly because when I get home, I don’t want to think about work, but also because of privacy issues associated with working in the health industry. However, there have been a few things going on at work that merit a little bit of bloggage.
As of May 20, 2006, I will have been an employee at IU for five years. They sent me a note a week or so ago, reminding me of this, and they said I should be getting a booklet or something from which I can choose a gift. Kinda neat, although I spoke with one lady who said when she got her five-year thing, she chose a pin, which she said she never received. OTOH, she also said when she got her 10 year gift, she chose a small tent, which she didn’t expect to get. I guess Murphy’s Law came into effect, because, since she didn’t expect it, she got it. She said she didn’t really know what to do with it, so she kept it for her grandkids when they come over to visit. Anyway, I haven’t gotten the booklet yet, so I don’t know what there is to choose from. BTW, this is the longest I have ever worked at one job. My previous personal record was something like three years at Fiberlok.
The other thing worth blogging about is I’m getting a promotion of sorts. Most departments at IU have a person called the LSP or Local Support Provider. Basically, the computer person. If the computer breaks, it’s their job to fix it. Some departments have a full-time LSP, but the ophthalmology department has one who does it part time, in addition to other duties. Until recently, that has been one of our ophthamic photographers. He would do LSP work three days a week, and photography two days a week. However, he recently got offered a teaching/research position at the IU School of Informatics, working with Maya, but teaching Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya, etc. It’s a good job for him, but that left the department without an LSP. Me, being fairly geeky, got offered the job. Technically, this is on an interim basis for a few reasons, by mutual understanding.
On my side, I will still be doing some secretarial work, so I have to find a “happy medium” that allows me to do my normal duties, in addition to the LSP work. Also, I wanted to make sure this is something I can do, or want to do. On the surface, it sounds like a good deal. If I accept the position on a regular basis, I will get a promotion and a raise, but I don’t know how much work is involved. I’ve been doing some of the work this past week since he has been on vacation, so I’m getting an idea, but there is still quite a bit to learn, I’m sure. For the department, although they didn’t say anything, I imagine they want to make sure I can do the job to their satisfaction. I hope they realize that I will still be training in this job, so there will be some bumps in the road, so to speak.
РуÑÑкий
Posted on March 21, 2006
Many years ago, when I lived in Colorado Springs, I attended Pike’s Peak Community College. I took a wide variety of classes, just checking things out to see what interested me. One of the classes I took was Russian. PPCC had the usual laguange offerings of Spanish, French, and German, but they had some others as well. While I don’t remember all the others, I do remember I took Russian and got a B in the class.
Cruftiness
Posted on March 2, 2006
Cruft, for the non-geeks out there is a semi-technical term used to descibe added features of dubious utility. The term is usually applied to software. For a long time many people in the computer industry looked at GUIs as cruft. A more modern example of cruft might be all those features of office suites (software) that you never use. I’ve never used a macro. I rarely use mail merge. In the modern, net-connected world, I think websites can be some website can be thought of as crufty. If it’s hard to navigate, that usually a good sign of cruftiness. On this site, I try to keep the cruft down with varying degrees of success.
