User talk:Strider820

DreamHost Apps

I think creating all those new pages with ambiguous titles was a big mistake. As a longtime contributor and sysop of this wiki, I strongly suggest that a new MediaWiki namespace is created that specifically relates to DreamHost Apps so that we can maintain a degree of separation between this free service and the paid services. For example, Registering a domain should be renamed DreamHost Apps:Registering a domain (or something like that) so that it cannot be confused with Domain Registration. Please consult Robert Parker on this matter - I'm sure he will agree. -- Scjessey 19:37, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this observation, and would like to set about correcting it, but the question arises:

Do we want to do this using a "custom namespace" (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Using_custom_namespaces) or a "pseudo name space" (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Pseudo-namespace)?

My initial thinking is that the correct "MediaWiki way" to do this is with a custom namespace, but I wonder if the "pseudo namespace" characteristic of these pages showing up in searches of the "Main" namespace might actually provide more utility to our more newbish customers (DH Apps types). These are "easy" to make (just preface the page title with the pseudo-namespace and a colon ("Registering a Domain" becomes "DreamHost Apps:Registering a Domain") and then a search for "registering a domain" will show *both* the original page with this title *and* the DH Apps version in the results without the user having to first enable the search to include the custom namespace.

On the other hand, organization is good, and with a little tweak or two to the *LocalSettings.php *configuration file we can create a custom namespace that might serve us better in the long term as the content grows. (I'm still researching whether we can also force the default search to include this new custom namespace by default - and if that is actually desireable).

At any rate, whatever we do is going to be a lot easier if we do it now, rather than later when a lot more pages may be involved. What do you think? -- Rlparker 11:36, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

It seems that a pseudo namespace can easily be converted to a custom namespace if needs be, so in the short term it would seem prudent to use the "pseudo" solution at the very least. A future version of MediaWiki will apparently make this process easier (ref). At the moment, it would seem an SQL update on the database will be the only way to make a default search include the desired namespace, and this would impact the search preferences of all users (effectively resetting them). -- Scjessey 13:53, 16 January 2009 (UTC)