TechDocuments Custom Setup Information

This explains the specific custom setup of this website. All non-default changes and options should be noted here.

• Currently, the documents are in a user-created hierarchy. This hierarchy is implemented via dokuwiki namespaces. See below for linking. Try to stick to the hierarchy as it makes sense, keeps stuff organized, etc.
• The homepage is manually created. Each new topic or page should first be added to the homepage as a link in a list and then saved. The link can then be clicked on to create a new page that the link will point to for content.
• The directory where this website is located on the UMBC AFS is /afs/umbc.edu/public/www/gradbusiness/techdocuments/

User configurable settings can be changed to offer other-than-default behavior in DokuWiki. These settings can be edited in the /conf/dokuwiki.php file, or more efficiently in the /conf/local.php file. See here for details.

The URL for pages is non-default (different from how it is used straight out of the box). Two options were changed in the /conf/local.php file under /*Advanced Options*/ to change the look and action of the URL.

• $conf[’userewrite’] = 1; makes the URL act and look nicer. Instead of the default techdocuments/doku.php?id=systems:blah , this option will change it to use apache’s .htaccess file. This file specifies how access is given, participates and looks. With the combination of this option on, and by setting up your .htaccess file according to dokuwiki settings, your URLs can look like techdocuments/systems:blah.
• $conf[’useslash’] = 1; makes the URL act and look EVEN nicer. Instead of what is above, the URL will replace the colons with slashes like so: techdocuments/systems/blah.

Because there is currently no user authentication to allow editing of pages, I fear that mischeveous people could be editing pages without me knowing it. There is no evidence of this, but the below option allows me to receive an email notification whenever a page is edited. Preventive disaster control

• $conf[’notify’] = ‘nyeates1@umbc.edu’; tells dokuwiki where to send the notification emails to. When an edit occurs the notify function in common.php is called, which in turn utilizes unix sendmail. See below links for details and discussion.
  • http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:discussion:better_notification?s=notify
  • http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:tips:mailconfig?s=mail%20send

Whenever the wiki comes across an acronym that is defined in conf/acronyms.conf, it displays the defined writen-out version of it as a popup when the user mouses over the acronym in a normal page view. See http://wiki.splitbrain.org/wiki:abbreviations?s=acronyms

The use of dokuwiki namespaces is required to be understood when linking to pages in various places of the hierarchy.

An example dokuwiki link is:

[[projects:grantswebview:How To Update Data]]