[hpsdr] wiki components

[Richard Ames]

Here is a bit of detail on how our wiki works; I hope it will help in
understanding the use of the wiki. I will put footnotes at the bottom.

Users view the wiki using a web browser[1] such as Internet Explorer,
Firefox, Safari, etc.

The web pages are constructed each time they are viewed by the
Mediawiki[2] software. The data is contained in a MySQL[3] database.
Mediawiki is written a scripting language called PHP[4].

You can see the specific version of each component at:
http://openhpsdr.org/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Version

When the wiki is edited the database entry for the page is updated...
*NOT* deleted. So there is a history for each page; you can view the
history by clicking the tab that says history at the top of each page.
Try it now; an example.. go to:
http://openhpsdr.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page then click the
history tab to see:
http://openhpsdr.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=history

The history page allows you to compare the various versions of the page,
click on the 'Compare selected versions' button to get:
http://openhpsdr.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page&diff=968&oldid=928

(could be a bit different if it has been updated since I wrote this...)

You can now step back through all the versions of the page by clicking
the 'Older edit' button.

The important points are:

A. The wiki is a database of all the edits.
B. All edits can be changed back to a previous edit.
C. Normal editors can not delete pages.

That's enough for one message.

Regards, Richard.

Footnotes:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser
2. http://www.mediawiki.org/
3. http://www.mysql.com/
4. http://www.php.net/