Vanipedia Tech-team Immediate Projects
Immediate Projects
1. Upgrade of Semantic Mediawiki and Mediawiki in Vaniquotes
Skills - Mediawiki Administration
Vaniquotes is currently running a very old version of Semantic Mediawiki. It has to be upgraded to a more recent version so that it remains compatible once Vaniquotes itself is upgraded to version 1.19.9.
2. Create an extension in Vanisource for comparing different editions of books using the HTML Diff engine
Skills - PHP
Earlier versions of MediaWiki were shipped with an html diff engine which was used to visually compare different revisions of pages. However this engine was removed from the Mediawiki core after version 1.15.( see this and this) We had built a custom extension called ‘Edition Compare’ which used this engine to visually show a diff between 2 different pages. This helped to show the changes that were made in different editions of printed books (e.g. 1972 edition of Bhagavad-Gita verses 1983 edition of Bhagavad-Gita.) As this module is no longer available within MediaWiki, our Edition Compare feature is now broken and needs to be rebuilt using the library.
3. Develop in Vaniquotes the Complete Compilations and Goals extensions
Skills - PHP or Javascript
The ‘Goals’ extension and the ‘Complete Compilations’ extension are internal tools which facilitated us to have a very streamlined process for compiling quotes from Srila Prabhupada’s teachings in Vaniquotes. However due to a dependency on the Semantic Mediawiki extension, as soon as the extension was upgraded, these 2 custom modules ceased to work. We need to rebuild these 2 extensions to facilitate the further development of Vaniquotes.
4. Evaluate and discuss the pros and cons of combining our multiple wikis into a single wiki
Skills - Mediawiki administration
Currently each of our wikis has its own domain. We need to evaluate if it is better to centralise the project to help improve site ranking, or if it is beneficial to leave things as they are.
5. Create a Plan of Action and then implement the Translate extension for MediaWiki.
Skills - Mediawiki administration
MediaWiki has a translate extension which facilitates translation of wiki content to different languages. Vanipedia needs this multi-language presence as soon as possible.
6. Write Wiki Bots for performing administrative functions
Skills - Python
Develop bots to automate maintenance, administrative and time consuming manual tasks.
7. Implementing SEO procedures
Skills - System administration
Vanipedia has never had the qualified staff to work on SEO. Thus our rankings most probably are not the best they could be.