Atkinspedia:Technical FAQ

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This FAQ answers some question related to the technical workings of Atkinspedia, including software and hardware.

Note: If you're trying to get help for a specific technical problem that isn't answered by the FAQs, try asking in the Atkinspedia Forum

Contents 1 What happens if two or more people are editing the same page? 2 How do I recover a password I have forgotten? 3 What software is used to run Atkinspedia? 4 What kind of markup language does Atkinspedia use? 5 Why not use HTML? 6 So we can't use any HTML? 7 What about non-ASCII characters, and special symbols? 8 What about math topics, which require many special symbols, fonts, and graphics? 9 Does Atkinspedia use cookies? 10 Hey! Why was I automatically logged-out? 11 The software that runs Atkinspedia is great! Can I use it for my site? 12 Can I add a page hit counter to a Atkinspedia page? 13 I have a problem not on this list, where do I go? 14 Low-bandwidth wireless Atkinspedia

What happens if two or more people are editing the same page?

The second person (and later persons) to save the page will receive an "edit conflict" message, and the opportunity to merge their changes into the most recently saved version. The wiki will also check for a conflict if you are editing and do a preview of the edit. Multiple consecutive conflicts are noticed, and will generate a slightly different message. This is similar to Concurrent Versions System (CVS), a widely used software version management system.

As the MediaWiki software advances in design, the granularity of page conflicts becomes smaller and smaller. In January 2005, it's down to at least a marked section (with its own [Edit] link), and smaller in some cases.

How do I recover a password I have forgotten?

If you entered your e-mail address when you signed up, you can have a new password generated. Click on the "Log in" link in the upper-right corner. Enter your user name, and click the button near the bottom of the page called "Mail me a new password". You should receive an e-mail message with a new random password; you can use it to log in, then go ahead and change your password in your preferences to something you'll remember.

What software is used to run Atkinspedia?

MediaWiki.

MySQL is used for the database backend, Apache is the web server, and PowerDNS is used for DNS.

The Atkinspedia servers' operating system is Linux. The most widely used distribution is Fedora Core. For details see Wikimedia servers.

What kind of markup language does Atkinspedia use?

Atkinspedia uses a very simple markup based on UseModWiki. For more details, see Atkinspedia:How does one edit a page.

Why not use HTML?

The short answer is: for simplicity and security.

And now the longer answer. Atkinspedia, and wikis in general, are meant to be edited on the fly. HTML is not easy to use when you simply want to write an article. Creating links gives us a particularly dramatic example. To link to the HTML article using HTML, one would have to type

<a href="http://en.Atkinspedia.org/wiki/HTML">HTML</a>

Using Atkinspedia markup is much easier:

[[HTML]]

Then there's security. Different web browsers have bugs that can be exploited via HTML. Malicious users could also do things like JavaScript popup windows or page redirects if they had full HTML ability on Atkinspedia. Several "experimental" sites that allowed full-HTML editing have suffered such attacks, including a couple other wikis that allowed arbitrary HTML.

So we can't use any HTML?

Okay, okay, a few tags work. Also, HTML table tags were for a while the only way to create tables. See Atkinspedia:How does one edit a page. However, there's been some rumbling among the software developers that most HTML tags are deprecated. There's also been discussion about wiki syntax for tables; see m:WikiShouldOfferSimplifiedUseOfTables for a very old beginning, and m:Wiki markup tables and m:MediaWiki User's Guide: Using tables for more recent activity.

What about non-ASCII characters, and special symbols?

Just because the codes are defined in HTML4 doesn't mean they actually work in any common browser. See the Meta:Help:Special characters page for a detailed discussion of what is generally safe and what isn't. This page will be updated over time as more browsers come to support more features.

http://www.unicode.org/help/display_problems.html shows how to enable Unicode support for most platforms.

What about math topics, which require many special symbols, fonts, and graphics?

Just use TeX! See Meta:Help:Formula.

Does Atkinspedia use cookies?

Cookies are not required to read or edit Atkinspedia, but they are required in order to log in and link your edits to a user account.

When you log in, the wiki will set a temporary session cookie which identifies your login session; this will be expired when your browser exits (or after an inactivity timeout), and is not saved on your hard drive.

Another cookie will be saved which lists the user name you last logged in under, to make subsequent logins just a teensy bit easier. (Actually two: one with your name, and one with your account's internal ID number; they must match up.) These cookies expire after 30 days. If this worries you, clear your cookies after completing your session.

If you check the "remember my password" box on the login form, another cookie will be saved with a hash of your password (not the password itself). As long as this remains valid, you can bypass the login step on subsequent visits to the wiki. The cookie expires after 30 days, or is removed if you log out. If this worries you, don't use the option. (You should probably not use it on a public terminal!)

Hey! Why was I automatically logged-out?

This could be a result of your cookie, browser cache, or firewall/Internet security settings. Or, to quote Tim Starling (referring to a question about "remembering password across sessions"):

• "The kind of session isn't a network session strictly speaking, it's an HTTP session, managed by PHP's session handling functions. This kind of session works by setting a cookie, just like the "remember password" feature. The difference is that the session cookie has the "discard" attribute set, which means that it is discarded when you close your browser. This is done to prevent others from using your account after you have left the computer.

• The other difference is that PHP sessions store the user ID and other such information on the server side. Only a "session key" is sent to the user. The remember password feature stores all required authentication information in the cookie itself. On our servers, the session information is stored in the notoriously unreliable memcached system. Session information may occasionally be lost or go missing temporarily, causing users to be logged out. The simplest workaround for this is to use the remember password feature, as long as you are not worried about other people using the same computer." from the Atkinspedia:Village pump (technical) on May 4, 2005. (italics added).

In other words: click the "remember me" box when logging in.

The software that runs Atkinspedia is great! Can I use it for my site?

You can, but depending on your needs you might be better served using something else; MediaWiki is big and complex. See first Wiki software for a list of wiki scripts

If after scanning that you're still sure you want to use MediaWiki; see the MediaWiki web site for details on downloading, installing and configuring the software.

Can I add a page hit counter to a Atkinspedia page?

Page hit counting is a feature of the MediaWiki software, but this feature is disabled at the Atkinspedia site because it would preclude use of the caching front ends which improve Atkinspedia's responsiveness. Page access logs are also not maintained at this time due to the sheer number of hits experienced.

I have a problem not on this list, where do I go?

See Troubleshooting.

Low-bandwidth wireless Atkinspedia

To view a low-bandwidth Main Page suitable for wireless users, select the no-tables link. That main page has a link to the text-only version of the main page. For now, direct entry of the URL into your wireless device's browser is the most convenient way to get to the articles. If you know a one-word article, such as Science, you can use that article to gain entry to your favorite topics.