Wikitravel:27 April 2006

From Wikitravel

[edit] Changes to "Today's Log"

The "Today's Log" link in the navigation menu is a nice way to keep a daily logbook of what's going on around and about Wikitravel. However, it's always depended on some shifty sneakiness with MediaWiki, none of which every worked particularly well with caching of pages, and over time it's gotten more and more messed up to the point where it's more or less a crap shoot what page you'll end up on when you click the link.

So, now we have a new special page, Special:Todayslog. It does the date calculations on the server and redirects to the proper page. The "Today's Log" link in the nav menu now uses this page. It works correctly for the English version, and I think it works correctly for the Japanese version.

It might not be perfect for non-English Wikitravel versions. There's a new system message, logbooktitle, that has the new format of logbook entries (without the namespace). These can have variables: $1 is the current formatted date, $2 the year, $3 the month number, $4 the day of the month, $5 the month's long name, and $6 the month's abbreviated name. I know that ja: has a custom format that may need work. Also, languages that have customized portal-url will need to either un-customize it or point it at Special:Todayslog. Languages that have customized MediaWiki:Sidebar items should probably double-check, too.

Let me know if there are any problems. This should probably be more dependable in the long term, even though it's going to cost non-English admins a few minutes to figure out right now. --Evan 16:24, 27 April 2006 (EDT)

Also: I think it would be nice to upgrade the logging system so that the monthly archives and the little iframe on the main page get updated automatically. It's kind of a pain to work with. --Evan 16:27, 27 April 2006 (EDT)