News archive
From KayakWiki
May 12, 2008
Hardware upgrades went slower than planned - my Dremel died when I was cutting the server case for a new fan opening. But it's up and running with a few hiccups to be resolved.
--Michael Daly 03:36, 12 May 2008 (EDT)
May 10, 2008
Hardware upgrades planned for Sunday May 11, 2008. The outage will take whatever it takes to do the changes. I'm hoping it's less than one day.
Sorry for the short notice.
--Michael Daly 19:06, 10 May 2008 (EDT)
May 03, 2008
Upgraded to MW 1.12.
--Michael Daly 16:28, 03 May 2008 (EDT)
May 01, 2008
The ISP switchover took around 19 hours and the telco took advantage of the work to screw things up. Otherwise, it would only have taken about an hour. Sigh.... However, we now have a static IP and, hopefully, a more reliable supplier, so fewer outages should occur.
I didn't get to upgrade to MW 1.12, so that will occur in the next few days - possibly the weekend.
--Michael Daly 13:42, 01 May 2008 (EDT)
April 25, 2008
Due to a change of ISP, KayakWiki will be offline on April 30. The exact time of the outage is not known. It could start any time after midnight, April 29 (EDT) and restart any time during the day.
During this time, some minor upgrades to the server may take place.
Sorry for any inconvenience. --Michael Daly 02:20, 25 April 2008 (EDT)
March 27, 2008
DSL Finally fixed!
It only took the telco four years, but they've finally replaced the defective line to my house. Now the DSL connection is four+ times faster and is stable. With luck, this will mean that KayakWiki will stay up and running reliably for the first time in months and will continue to do so for quite a while. --Michael Daly 14:07, 27 March 2008 (EDT)
February 23, 2008
Extended outage
Sorry about the extended outage. Kayakwiki was offline from Feb 1 to Feb 22 inclusive due to serious problems with the local telco supplying my DSL internet connection. Not only did the line go down for a long time, but it took out my modem in the process. I now have a rewired connection and new modem. Unfortunately, there are still a few outstanding problems, but they shouldn't cause extended outages. There will be some short outages over the next couple of weeks but nothing longer than an hour or so at a time.
--Michael Daly 11:14, 23 February 2008 (EST)
January 28, 2008
The bug in the pool wiki has been fixed. Please report any problems and I'll look into them ASAP. --Michael Daly 01:13, 28 January 2008 (EST)
January 27, 2008
KayakWiki has been upgraded to Mediawiki version 1.11. There will be a few problems, as there is a bug in the pool wiki database (pool wiki is where the images are stored). I will be fixing this shortly. In the meanwhile, I believe that most of KayakWiki will work fine. --Michael Daly 03:09, 27 January 2008 (EST)
October 12, 2007
Due to recurring problems with spam, I have implemented a Captcha extension on KayakWiki.
Under certain conditions, you will be asked to verify that you are a real person and not a spam program. For example, when you log in, you will see a Captcha dialog. It will display two words that are not readable by machine. You must type the two words into the input field in the dialog box to verify. I realize that this is a bit of an annoyance, but it will greatly reduce the spam problem.
Michael Daly 01:11, 12 October 2007 (EDT)April 27, 2007
More outage problems.
I have been investigating the outages that have been too frequent and determined that they are the result of a flaky power supply in the server. I just replaced the server's PSU with a Corsair HX520W and hope this will solve these problems.
I have fixed some software problems with the way Apache interacts with PHP and the PHP errors have disappeared.
Michael Daly 03:37, 27 April 2007 (EDT)
April 22, 2007
Extended outage - April 21-22
A mysterious problem kept the wiki down for several hours on Friday and then a power failure knocked out the server on Saturday through Sunday. I was out of town and couldn't fix. Sorry for the inconvenience!
I'll be implementing some changes to alleviate the problems this coming week.
Michael Daly 21:49, 22 April 2007 (EDT)
April 17, 2007
I've made a few changes to the look of KayakWiki - the skin KwSkin has been changed to fix a couple of minor problems. Most of the significant changes in appearance will show up in Firefox - Internet Explorer does not support some of the features I've put in.
I've tested the changes with Firefox and with IE 7.0. Older versions of IE may have some problems as I made the changes but can't test them. If you have a problem, I'd suggest upgrading to Firefox or to IE 7.
Michael Daly 16:34, 17 April 2007 (EDT)
April 11, 2007
A new, beta version of <imagemap> has been installed. This one supports both inline map definitions and map definition files. Details are at pool:Imagemap and pool:File Imagemap.
Michael Daly 19:45, 11 April 2007 (EDT)
March 3, 2007
Well, it's finally here - KayakWiki is now bilingual. All the software has been upgraded and it's running on a new server.
Problems currently known:
- Image maps don't work
- The old version of Imagemap is not compatible with the new release of Mediawiki. The new version of Imagemap uses a different syntax than the old (See pool:Imagemap). I'm working on it.
- Occasional blank screen when saving an edit
- The latest version of PHP has a bug that brings it down. Bug report submitted to PHP.net.
Michael Daly 16:42, 3 March 2007 (EST)
February 10, 2007
On Sunday, Feb 11, 2007, I will be switching this wiki to read only mode for several days while I move the wiki to the new server. This will be done to ensure that there are no updates made on the old wiki that are not transfered. It may take a couple of days to move the data, update the wiki and bring up the new server's version. As they say, "Sorry for the inconvenience". Michael Daly 15:04, 10 February 2007 (EST)
January 29, 2007
As per the notes in Looking forward, we are approaching the day for upgrading the server and software for KayakWiki. The server is built and installed and the software is currently being configured. This note is being added from the new server; I've been using it exclusively for several days now and it's been stress tested for reliability.
In the near future, KayakWiki will have updates locked out for a brief period. You will be able to view any page; only edits will be prevented. This will allow me to copy a static image of KayakWiki and move it over to the new server. When the data is installed and fully functional on the new server, the old server will be disconnected and the new server will be used with updates permitted.
I will be posting a note on the exact date(s) for pending edit freeze and conversion before it happens.
Michael Daly 16:40, 29 January 2007 (EST)
December 12, 2006
Extended outages Dec 11 and 12.
Unfortunately, there seems to have been a problem with the Internet link downline that had KayakWiki offline for about 8 hours. No one will admit to anything, so I think it was the phone company. Sorry for the inconvenience - I wish I could change to a more reliable connection, but that isn't possible right now.
Michael Daly 02:43, 12 December 2006 (EST)
November 6, 2006
I have added a Creative Commons License to the wiki. You can see this on the bottom of each page. The license is described in KayakWiki:Copyrights
Michael Daly 11:01, 7 November 2006 (EST)
November 2, 2006
[edit] Denial of Service attacks and Kayakwiki availability
Unfortunately, there have been a recent spate of denial of service (DoS) attacks on one of the service providers used by KayakWiki. As such, there have been some extended outages recently. This service provider has been dealing with the situation and I hope the problem will be eliminated soon.
[edit] Spam
We have had a few minor spam attempts recently and the users have been blocked for their efforts. This is considerably better than in the old days and we'll be vigilant in keeping spammers away.
Michael Daly 13:01, 2 November 2006 (EST)
August 14, 2006
Thanks to the efforts of several members, this wiki is being translated into French. This will take some time, since there are over one thousand pages to translate. Two new templates have been added - one to provide a link to a French version of a page and another to provide a link to the English. All categories will have French equivalents so that French users can find related pages listed together. Where a French and English page have the same name (e.g. Kayak polo), the French page has a prefix of Fr: (e.g.).
Michael Daly 15:15, 14 August 2006 (EDT)
July 18, 2006
ImageMap extensions are installed and working. See Places for the current example.
Michael Daly 16:59, 18 July 2006 (EDT)
July 15, 2006
Until further notice, there will be a maintenance shutdown of KayakWiki every day at 07:00 UTC. This shutdown should be typically less than five minutes duration. I realize this will be a minor annoyance for European users who wake early, but it is the only time that it can be run right now and will avoid other problems.
Michael Daly 14:44, 15 July 2006 (EDT)
June 12, 2006
Image upload is working. See: How To Add An Image for information.
Michael Daly 13:46, 12 June 2006 (EDT)
June 10, 2006
I've implemented Parser Functions. These are used in templates for conditional processing.
Michael Daly 00:20, 11 June 2006 (EDT)
May 30, 2006
I've changed the domain from my personal website's to kayakwiki.org. This is a domain that can be passed around to anyone who hosts KayakWiki in the future so that bookmarks and links to the wiki don't have to be changed. This will incur a cost of about $40/yr for someone, but...
I have also implemented the full spam-checking capability that is used in Wikipedia. This checks the site of a person posting to a list maintained by the folks at Wikipedia and rejects an edit if it comes from one of those sources. If you are trying to edit a page from a reputable service provider, you should be ok. If you are using an open proxy, you might be rejected.
Michael Daly 22:15, 30 May 2006 (EDT)
April 21, 2006
Hi!
The original kayakwiki was based on UseModWiki software. Unfortunately, it was old and not too spam-proof. As a result, spammers had attacked it to the point it was almost unusable. For that reason, the decision was made to upgrade to MediaWiki - the same software that Wikipedia uses.
Nick Schade let me have access to his server to load the old pages onto this wiki. Most came across ok and I've fixed the ones that got mangled.
With the new wiki, you'll find a number of changes:
- The pages have a nicer (I think) layout and formatting
- Talk pages are eliminated and a Discussion tab opens a discussion page for each page. Please don't put a "Talk" link on any page.
- Page names are different. Do not use "CamelCase". Names are one or more words separated by spaces. For example "Latest news" but not "LatestNews". Please see Naming Conventions.
- One bit of nastiness was that the transformation utility made all existing page names "Title Case" - all words in the title are begin with an upper case letter. If you find a broken link, before trying to add a page, first check whether the link reference uses title case! I've eliminated most title case page names (I've ignored some in the KayakWiki Housekeeping pages).
- MedaiWiki is fussier about HTML - for example, some closing tags like
- are not optional. Avoid HTML if wiki formatting standards exist.
- Some other formating options are changed; please refer to Help:Editing for a reference.
- Pages can now be in one or more Categories
- I deleted all user pages that were ported over to the new platform (mine included). I felt that this had to happen, since they would be orphan pages and would not link to you if you register as a new user here.
There are other changes; you'll discover them as you play here.
In general, I'd like returning users to try to keep adding to and improving this wiki. New users are welcome to this community. Please, please try to avoid duplicate pages! Use the search (look to the left of each page for a search box) and All Pages features of MediaWiki to find if a page already exists.
I strongly encourage users to register and put a bit of detail (like kayaking interests) on your user page). That allows us to know who we all are and identify the persons doing updates.
All ideas and suggestions are welcome. You can add them to the ideas and suggestions page.
Michael Daly
kayakwiki sysop.
PS until further notice, kayakwiki is running on my server, not Nick's.
