DIY FAQ & Wiki - hosting migration

I think the contents page gets that message across more or less instantly.

I'm unsure why you think that imoprtant to a first time visitor. Task number 1 is always for them to be able to read whatever article they want - a list of all the articles does that - as would your list of categories.

If I'm new to the wiki, and I've been given a link from uk.diy to a wiki article, I want to read the article. Anything else is just waffle to me at that point - certainly it has its place, but its not what I want to read first, and if an article listed on the front page addresses what the wiki's about I can read it when I want to - probably after I've got the diy job done that I'm halfway through.

No-one is currently doing what you two want, but I daresay it will happen. Hence I propose to make the main page article redirect to the contents page as an improvement-for-now move, and we can await the appearance of a more structured option.

NT

Obviously!!

As a specialist contributor, you appear to be seeing it from that POV; step back and think about the needs of the wider readership.

No, the main page needs to remain as an introduction as Dave L describes, but it needs a much clearer link to the meat. At the moment, the location of the meat is concealed in the last point "5 See Also".

To correct this is simple: "Wiki Subject Categories" at the very bottom of the page, needs renaming to read "Contents" and moving near the top of the page, and ""Wiki Contents" needs renaming to read "Index" and putting just beneath Contents.

Phil

Sounds good, just done that.

of course. And a list of all articles is ideal for that. If its presented as a list of categories people will read some but die of boredom fairly soon.

I cant agree. Unless I'm mistaken, most people find the wiki by a link in a ukdiy thread, and at that point what they want to read is just that article. Then maybe they get curious, and want to see what else is there. Allpages immediately shows the wide range of stuff the wiki covers, and the amount of info there is.

Then there are those that find it by other means, and want a general read up on diy. Again the same applies for allpages.

A person can get into the wiki from any page, whether its the present main page, allpages, categories, anywhere. It seems from this thread that diferent approaches suit different learner styles, so lets offer them all, and give them a choice of all of them on the Main Page. Lets point them to all of allpages, categories, and a structured page yet to be written.

NT

And if the link doesn't take them to that article it is the fault of the person providing the link not the wiki.

Agreed. I don't know the structure of the categories/sub-categories within the UK DIY wiki well enough to know which ones would make sensible choices for the top level ones to be included into a template to display them in a logical manner, rather than the huge single list of the special page.

Here is some sample code for a wiki template:

'''All Categories available:'''

{|cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" border="0" |- |[[:Category:Electrical|Electrical]]||Things that bangen and sparken |- |[[:Category:Plumbing|Plumbing]]||Splish, splash, splosh! |- |[[:Category:Building|Building]]||Crash, bang, wallop |- |[[:Category:Tools|Tools]]||Ouch! My fingers |- |[[:Category:Heating|Heating]]||Ah, nice and warm... |}

This is easy to change and maintain, bear in mind the top level categories aren't going to change much, if at all. Sub-categories could be entered under the relevant main category and made to look like sub-categories with a bit of simple formating, say by using ... and fontsize tweaking.

Hasn't appeared as yet

I think you're mistaken; grunff has said there is a large amount of traffic on it, so I assume that indicates significant hits from search engines.

and on the 'against' side, it shows a disorganised mish-mash of titles. Personally it would put me off exploring further, in fact it did - I visited the allpages and categories page several times before I deciding I better take the time to see what is really in there, and still find it painfull navigating it.

Agreed, but please use conventional book terms, Contents and Index, not the obscure wiki terms Allpages/Categories. And retain the intro material on the page.

When in a bookshop choosing a book (non-fiction) from amongst several, what order do you look at these - the back cover, the Contents List, the Index? Why do publishers put the index near the back? Is the contents list hierarchical? why?

not seen a change yet :)

Phil

ok, fixed.

What you say just confirms one thing: different people have different learning styles, and we would be best with all 3 approaches in place.

NT

OK, we already have a categories page and an allpages, which I've now renamed 'contents by category' and 'index'. What shall we call this heirarchical access page?

NT

It's not a page but a template to be included in any page. I'd suggest on the somewhere on "main page" and at the top of each main category page.

Like a similar template is used on the IBS wiki:

If you want to change the list you make the edit in the template and the change is reflected where ever that template is used through out the wiki. The IBS wiki has a few templates for setting up tables so they all have a consistent "look and feel" without to remember the details, just include the relevant template.

To include a template use {{}}.

That's better than I hoped for, will make it much more user friendly.

Phil

Seems so. You've fixed 2 of them, and DL's template idea will enable the

Phil

It sounds great, but for 1 big but. Having looked at the categories we have on the wiki I dont see any way they can be shoehorned into a heirarchical system without a great deal of duplication and including things of questionable relevance.

So that leaves 2 options for this heirarchical approach:

1. Keep it simple, but it then leaves half of the articles and (sub)cats out
2. Make it comprehensive, and you get a thing too big to be on anything but its own page.

The other option of course is to do both. No reason why not.

Maybe you 2 could help with heiraching the present categories, as I looked and couldnt see how to do it. Here's what we have on the wiki today:

Access (3 links) Adhesives (10 links) Appliances (21 links) Bad Ideas (13 links) Basics (16 links) Bathrooms (14 links) Batteries (9 links) Building (24 links) Car (1 links) Cleaning (12 links) Clothing (1 links) Computing (7 links) Construction (18 links) Cooling (6 links) Damp (6 links) Decorating (7 links) Domestic Hot Water (18 links) Doors (5 links) Electrical (73 links) Energy Efficiency (26 links) Fault Finding (18 links) Fire (9 links) Fixings (16 links) Floors (15 links) Furniture (8 links) Garbage (3 links) Glazing (8 links) Glossary (3 links) Hard Surfacing (5 links) Heating (34 links) Humour (7 links) Insulation (4 links) Kitchens (10 links) Laundry (4 links) Legal (8 links) Lighting (24 links) Links Pages (53 links) Masonry (1 links) Materials (15 links) Metal (16 links) Mortar (12 links) Noise (10 links) Paint (12 links) Paths (1 links) Period Property (13 links) Pests (3 links) Plastering (4 links) Plastics (16 links) Plumbing (39 links) Projects (13 links) Public domain images (128 links) Repair (7 links) Review (5 links) Roofing (5 links) Safety (12 links) Save Money (12 links) Security (5 links) Sheds (2 links) Shelving Units (2 links) Software (2 links) Solar (5 links) Stone (1 links) Storage (9 links) Substandard (1 links) Supplies (4 links) TV (8 links) Tiling (1 links) Tools (44 links) Wiki (4 links) Windows (8 links) Wood (51 lin

Now I can spot some immediate high level ones, such as:

Construction or building Wood Decorating Supplies Tools Electrical Storage Roofing Projects Plumbing Heating Glazing Fault finding or repair Electrical Hot water Damp Cleaning Appliances

But how would you distribute the other cats as children of the above parent groups? And what would you do with the cats that dont really clearly fit anywhere in particular on a heirarchy?

NT

I just looked too, and its a mess!! 380 odd articles. A good number have been allocated to categories, but hardly in a hierarchical way. There are also a number of redundant/empty or near duplicate pages, eg Thermal Store, Thermal Stores, Thermal store. Also DHW and Domestic Hot Water. I suppose it IS possible to delete the surplus ones?

Doesn't matter if the contents list is big. I envisage it will need scrolling down to see it all. I'm hoping sub-sub-categories can be implemented somehow.

Dave L, can we nest your templates inside each other?

OK, I have spent a couple of hours looking at it. If you look at the doc I referenced previously, and you are MS Word compatible, you can view it in Outline Mode (sorry I should have mentioned that earlier - it makes more sense when you set it to view just the top 2-3 levels).

I have copied the all cats list into one doc, and it easy (but tedious) to drag each from there into the correct place in the outline doc, and easy to re-organise the hierarchy as you go.

IF nested templates are possible its then a trivial (but tedious) job to convert the word doc hierarchy to a wiki page. If not, I'm not sure what to do, maybe resort to html?

My doc starts at an even higher level :)

Hopefully sub-sub-categories.

That means your top level hierarchy is inadequate.

See my doc

Phil

Unfortunately I cant view the .doc for some reason. I think we may be talking at cross purposes here though. I dont see too much difficulty in creating a heirarchical page structure, where I see the problem is in deciding what subcats go where. If you think its easy, go right ahead :)

NT

There is also a pdf on the site at

I'll email you a copy of the Word doc, and also the one I'm working on if you give me a valid address - send it to the addy above. I'm using Word 2003 but it should open in earlier ones, in fact I think the one on the site was Word 97.

Phil

Yerk I haven't looked that closely, those pages need merging and the redundant ones deleting, yes pages can be deleted but perhaps not a normal user access level.

I think a template can call another, I've not tried. However I'd sort of try an avoid that as it could easily make maintenance difficult. Lets start with just the top level categories and if it's felt that sub-categories would be useful they can be added later. Remember any category pages shows the sub-categories of that page.

I'm also wary of getting to deep with levels. A sort of rule of thumb of when a sub-category might be required would be if the article list section of a category page could not be shown completely. People don't scroll pages unless they really have to.

I'm happy to take a hierachy and produce a wiki template from it. Let me know when it has stabilised. B-)

Does the fully expanded one actually include real article titles? It looks as if it does. I can't really imagine that there are a dozen or so pages relating to Central Heating > Design, Installation, Setting up > Pipework

I should think the category levels can stop at Pipework.

Nice one.

Phil's pdf looks like a great start. Personally I'd like to limit the depth of the levels, and probably not list any individual articles but end up directing the user to the applicable wiki category. More or less everything on that list has a wiki category, and new cats can always be created.

Phil I can dl your doc file no prob, but opening it things go wrong. If you wanted to post it in plain text I'd be happy to work on it, see if we can move toward the finished article.

NT

That is the idea, it's just an index to the categories and possibly sub-categories.

My view at this stage is no more than 3 levels deep, any deeper to my mind indicates to much refinement. The idea is to build a trail for people to follow down to get to a category with up to a dozen or so articles on that topic. If a category only has 2 or 3 articles in it then that category may not be required or could be combined with another.

For now, i'll just mark those as needing to be sorted out.

I don't quite see what your getting at, the whole idea of making it a hierarchical structure is to have things nested. I can't see how putting one template call inside another will create a huge problem, but if it does the same thing can be done in html, in fact that may be easier with an html savvy editor to make it clear whats within what.

See response to your other post. I agree we don't want text for any level sprawling over several screens. OTOH we don't want to artificially sub-diivide a chapter to limit its content to 1 screen. A good hierarchy would balance those points.

Great, thanks, will do.

Phil