REWILD.info Field Guide:News

Contents 1 July 16, 2007 2 July 13, 2007 3 July 11, 2007 4 June 14, 2007 5 June 13, 2007 6 June 12, 2007 7 June 1, 2007

July 16, 2007

Spam Protection

The REWILD.info Field Guide now uses reCAPTCHA to block spambots from getting an account.

How does it work?

Whenever someone signs up for a new account, they have to enter the two words they see as distorted text in order to prove themselves as a human and not a machine trying to get an account for spamming our wiki.

If you want to learn more about reCAPTCHA, click here.

posted on July 16 2007 by WildeRix

July 13, 2007

Units of measure

The REWILD.info Field Guide now has a function that automatically calcuates differing units of measure. What does this mean for you?

Plant and Animal Measurements

When providing specifications in plant and animal pages as to the various lenghts and heights and weights of things, it can get cumbersome to include both metric and US measurements over and over again. Worse yet, if your source material only includes one method of measurement and you want to show both metric and US, then you have to do the calculations yourself. Not anymore. The <unit> hook will do the calculations for you.

How it works

• When editing a page, simply place your measurement between the <unit></unit> hooks, and the wiki will do the rest--based on each user's preferences.
• Set your preferences on the Special:Preferences page (Misc) tab. You can opt for the following:
  1. Prefer the article's units

     if checked, the units stated in the article are used as the primary units.

  2. Prefer metric units

     if checked, the primary units are metric; otherwise, non-metric.

  3. For non-metric, prefer British over US units

     if checked, uses British instead of U.S. gallons, etc.

  4. Show both metric and non-metric units

     if checked, shows dual units; like "3 meters (10 ft)".

Learn more

Read UnitsFormatter at Mediawiki for more information and configuration options. (Hopefully we can have an internal help page on this subject soon.)

posted on July 13 2007 by WildeRix

July 11, 2007

Subpages

The REWILD.info Field Guide's Main namespace now supports subpages. What does this mean for you?

Linking to and from Observation and Songline pages

Previously, you had to use a template for {{observations}} or {{songlines}} pages and provide the name of the parent article as a parameter. Now, you can link back to the parent article using [[../]] and link to a subpage of whatever page you are on by using [[/SubpageTitle]].

Along with activating this feature for the Main namespace, a couple other features have been included.

Subpages Hook

You can use the <subpages/> hook to automatically have a list of subpages show up on your article. WildeRix finds this handy for keeping track of articles in his userspace. Be sure to check out the MediaWiki article to see how the different parameters can work for you.

MenuTabs

You can use the MenuTabs feature to create a customized tab bar at the top of your article. You will probably find this handy as a replacement for the {{tabs}} template. Check out the WikiMedia article for the specifics.

Check back later for information on help pages for these new features.

posted on July 11 2007 by WildeRix

June 14, 2007

Category Trees

The REWILD.info Field Guide now supports Category Trees. What does this mean for you?

Category Pages

When you visit a category page that has sub-categories at the top, the sub-categories will appears as trees with a [+] expansion link next to them. Clicking on this link will expand the tree and let you see if any of those sub-categories have sub-categories themselves.

Category Hook

Example: If you use the <categorytree>Plants</categorytree> hook on a wiki page, it will show the contents of category "Plants" as a dynamic tree on that page (see example to the right).

posted on June 14 2007 by WildeRix

June 13, 2007

Parser Functions

The REWILD.info Field Guide now supports parser functions.

What does this mean for you? Probably not much unless you're into serious developing of templates. But it should mean that developers can create more complex templates that look prettier and don't show weird code when certain parameters are missing.

Want to learn more about parser functions? Check out this article at WikiMedia: Help:ParserFunctions.

posted on June 13 2007 by WildeRix

June 12, 2007

Rewild Camp Portland 2007

• Get ready for Rewild Camp Portland 2007!
• Never heard of Rewild Camp before? Read about it here.

posted on June 12 2007 by WildeRix

June 1, 2007

Wiki E-mail

The REWILD.info Field Guide now has email enabled. What does this mean for you?

1. Password Assistance

   If you lose your password, you can request the wiki to email it to you from the login screen.

2. Email other users

   Users can email each other through the wiki's email interface. This lets users get in contact with each other without having to publish their email addresses on their user pages. It's a safe, spam-protected way of getting in touch with other editors.

3. Page watch

   You can have the wiki notify you via email anytime a page on your watchlist is update.

In order to take advantage of this feature, you'll have to add an email address on your preferences page. (Click here to go to your preferences page.) The wiki will send a verification email to you to make sure it's actually your email. Once you verify it, then you can adjust your email options on your preference screen.

posted on June 1 2007 by WildeRix