Appropedia:Devlog

This page is Appropedia's development log, by User:Sophivorus. Latest changes on top.

Rewrite and repurpose mw:Extension:Metadata to replace the mw:Extension:SemanticRESTAPI and some of SMW itself
Create Template:Topic notice and add it to relevant pages in Appropedia:Top
Deprecate "type" parameter in Template:Page data
Install Extension:MediaSearch for advanced media search, see Special:MediaSearch
Create signup form for the newsletter and add link to the home page
Improve WikiEdit tool with a checkbox to mark edits as minor and a field to input an edit summary
Improve read aloud feature to highlight what's being read and to allow jumping anywhere with a click
Add rule to .htaccess to fix accidental requests to /wiki, see for example https://www.appropedia.org/wiki/Water
Disable mw:Extension:PageForms
Fix backend issue that delayed edit requests
Fix errors in Extension:Antispam and Extension:DiscussionTools
Fix https://dev.appropedia.org/
Add support for up to 50 items to Template:Bill of materials
Refine spam protection to improve performance
Fix email sending
More improvements to WikiEdit, now it can edit many other elements besides paragraphs
Improve new edit feature for paragraphs (and now also list items), see MediaWiki:Gadget-WikiEdit.js
Enable mw:Extension:Gadgets

April 2023[edit | edit source]

Add new edit feature, see little [edit] button when hovering over paragraphs
Add "Skills" to search filters, see Special:Search
Create Category:Pages with no parent
Update MediaWiki from 1.39.1 to 1.39.3, see Special:Version
Migrate stuff in the MediaWiki namespace to Extension:Appropedia, see remaining stuff
Delete unused Modules, see remaining modules
Add messages of Extension:Appropedia to translatewiki.net, see translation project
Fix and improve mw:Extension:StandardWikitext
Document and simplify data structure, see Property:Type
Add "Papers", "Books" and "Literature reviews" to search filters, and remove Location filter, see Special:Search
Request that Extension:Appropedia gets added to translatewiki.net, see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T334684
Add custom interface messages to Extension:Appropedia

March 2023[edit | edit source]

Improve Appropedia:Admin panel
Deploy Extension:Appropedia
Fix and improve Template:Set reminder
Create Extension:Appropedia to clump together all PHP, JavaScript and CSS Appropedia-specific
Fix and improve Appropedia:New page on mobile
Fix mw:Extension:DiscussionTools, again
Mark edits made by bots so they don't appear in recent changes
Fix and improve automatic translation script, see MediaWiki:Translate.js
Add coordinates parameter to Template:Place to reduce requests to https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org
Fix and improve Template:Set reminder
Develop and deploy mw:Extension:StandardWikitext
Reduce and simplify semantic structure
Create Template:Set reminder and improve and simplify the "persistent notice" system (now called "reminders")

February 2023[edit | edit source]

Create Template:Search results
Create mw:Extension:SearchParserFunction
General improvements to all databoxes
Remove or limit styling parameters in most templates because they don't work well with dark-mode, mobile and other site-wide styling
Improve styling and behavior of Template:Header
Improve Template:Page data, see "creation", "last edit", "automatic translations" and "what links here" fields
Improve MediaWiki:Translate.js
Create persistent notices system, see Template:Persistent notice and links thereof
Improve mainpage gallery
Improve mw:Skin:Poncho with fixed table of contents and many details and improvements under-the-hood
Improve automatic translation script
Disable mw:Extension:Antispam for autoconfirmed users
Search results now show the "display title" rather than the title, which is crucial for automatic translations, see this
Deprecate "keywords" parameter in Template:File data
Delete obsolete notices and improve existing ones
Rename notices in Category:Notice templates so that all end in "notice"
Again improve logo handling of mw:Skin:Poncho

January 2023[edit | edit source]

Update to SemanticMediaWiki 4.1 to get rid of deprecation errors
Replace 99% of mainspace calls to parser functions for appropriate templates
Fix mw:Extension:MyVariables, see https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/MyVariables/+/873502
Improve logo handling of mw:Skin:Poncho
Update mw:Extension:NumberFormat, see https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/NumberFormat/+/880467
Simplify.htaccess
Use mw:Extension:HitCounters to track impact instead of mw:Extension:Metadata
Update hit_counters table with data from Google Analytics
Rebuild semantic metadata to fix duplicated entities bug
Fix, update and improve all widgets
Enable GoogleTagManager
Clean database by removing obsolete tables
Fix DiscussionTools by reverting to 1.35 version
Create https://dev.appropedia.org to debug DiscussionTools and for future development and testing
Install mw:Extension:QRLite and create Template:QR code
Install mw:Extension:QuickInstantCommons
Debug and fix job queue

December 2022[edit | edit source]

Start experiment with cards in search results, see Special:Search/water
Simplify and improve search logic in Special:Search
Add Translations field to Template:Page data
Change "published" for "years" in Template:Page data
Patch Extension:MyVariables to fix Template:Gallery and others
Update mw:Extension:RottenLinks, see Special:RottenLinks
Rename database user from "appropedia_2020" to "appropedia"
Replace all file copyright templates for "license" parameter in Template:File data
Improve Template:Create to replace Widget:Create
Fix issue with Elastic Search due to update to MediaWiki 1.39
Change logo to fix display issue in mobile devices due to update to MediaWiki 1.39
Convert all file pages to simpler standard format
Update mw:Extension:SearchThumbs for compatibility with MediaWiki 1.39
Update Appropedia to MediaWiki 1.39
Update mw:Skin:Poncho for compatibility with MediaWiki 1.39
Add Property:Hardware license and Property:Software license to Template:Device data
Add "navigation-not-searchable" and "searchaux" classes to Template:Databox and other templates to improve search results, see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:CirrusSearch#Exclude_content_from_the_search_index
~~Add snippet to LocalSettings.php that adds Template:Page data automatically to all content pages that don't have it~~
Update documentation of book functionality, see Help:Books, Template:Menu and Category:Appropedia books
Load MediaWiki:Mobile.css asynchronously to prevent flash of unstyled content
Simplify Special:Search UI on mobile
Merge Template:Book into Template:Menu
Install mw:Extension:CodeEditor
Rethink, redesign, simplify and improve Template:Book
Simplify, debug and improve print mode and book printing
Test Appropedia ZIM file for offline use with Kiwix, see https://github.com/openzim/mwoffliner/issues/1556
Fix bug with Extension:InterwikiExtracts
Improve feedback form
Simplify and improve UI of Special:UploadWizard, Appropedia:New page and MediaWiki:Sidebar
Track clicks to sidebar, search filters and other elements using new Google Analytics 4

November 2022[edit | edit source]

Track custom events in Google Analytics 4
Set allowed values for Property:SDG and fix 100+ pages with typos in their SDGs
Add location filter to user search
Fix backend errors and warnings
Distribute map locations in pages of no more than 50 locations to avoid excessive geocoding requests to Open Street Map
Improve UX and UI based on Hotjar recordings
Update, simplify and organize MediaWiki:Common.css
Delete old temp files and backups to free disk space
Create Template:Search and start to link it from databoxes
Simplify sidebar by moving some links to footer
mw:Extension:Page Forms deprecated and no longer used except for the #arraymap parser function, see Special:Forms
Improve search filters, see Special:Search
Track and fix misc fatal errors that were bringing down the server
Install newrelic.com to monitor server performance

October 2022[edit | edit source]

Improve and simplify search interface
Install New Relic to monitor server performance
Add "info" parameter to Template:Databox and use it in existing databoxes
Update and trim main.htaccess file
Disable mw:Extension:RegexFunctions per no longer used
Improve mw:Extension:InterwikiExtracts with an "api" parameter to specify api endpoints directly
Update, fix and trim all interwiki links, see Special:Interwiki
Improve Template:Wikipedia excerpt and Template:Wikipedia definition so that they get content from the appropriate language Wikipedia
Fix all errors at Special:ProcessingErrorList and Category:Pages with math errors
Increase PHP memory_limit to 256M to allow large file uploads
Simplify, fix and improve collapse behavior in Template:Menu, Template:Horizontal menu and Template:Databox
Develop generateKiwixList.php for generating ZIM files of public Appropedia pages, see https://github.com/openzim/mwoffliner/issues/1556
Merge Appropedia and GSTC logo at Global Surgical Training Challenge
Develop Widget:Civics to embed maps in community action pages
Show resource type in search results, see for example Special:Search/panel
Replace page review script for comment script that runs in content pages after 30 seconds (see MediaWiki:Common.js) because 90%+ of page reviews were empty or useless, see for example Talk:Save the planet board game
Limit custom error reporting to fatal errors, see /home/appropedia/logs/fatal_error_log
Develop first version of custom error reporting, see /home/appropedia/logs/custom_error_log
Create Category:Pages with math errors and fix math errors
Remove edit section links from previous automatic translations using Appropedia:AutoWikiBrowser
Improve MediaWiki:Translate.js so that it doesn't save edit section links and translations render ok in mobile
Disable MediaWiki:Comment.js due to disuse
Fix PHP errors due to recent update to PHP 7.4

Previous[edit | edit source]

Appropedia:Dashboard now gathers all key links and data for admins
Appropedia:UI now gathers all key interface messages and tips
Wikivideos are now available
CERN-OHL-S-2.0 is now the default hardware license
New Template:Tabs for creating up to 9 tabs
Template:Page data now detects and reports page issues automatically
New Template:List for generating dynamic lists of pages
mw:Extension:ExternalData is now enabled, allowing us to query and reuse data from external sites, like Template:Databox/greenweb
New Template:News for creating news as semantic objects that can be listed anywhere using Template:Newslist
mw:Skin:Poncho now features a persistent sidebar (menu icon on the top left), a dark mode and a read mode (eye icon on the top right)