Technology Burner Technology Burner

Work is ongoing on improving things. MindTouch has fixed the bug that was damaging links to tag list pages, and we should be picking up that change today or tomorrow; I’ve filed a bug with IT to get it pulled in.

Somehow the footer link to the copyright page got broken again, so I’ve fixed that once again. While I was at it, I fixed the contrast on pre, tt, and code blocks, and switched to Courier New as the font for monospace text instead of Andale Mono. Turns out that on the Mac, Andale Mono in boldface is a different width than when it’s not bold, which was making a mess of certain pages.

Since Friday afternoon, I’ve been dabbling a bit with MDC. We deployed a minor skin update that causes the Copyright link in the footer to work.

Then I got bolder, and installed a clone of MDC on a VM at home, so that I could do some more serious work.

Awaiting deployment is a new update that includes updated Italian and Japanese localizations of the skin (I didn’t do these myself, of course). In addition, the “About MDC” link in the page footer now directs to the current language’s MDC project page. On top of that, the site now offers an alternate stylesheet that uses black text, slightly darker colors for the links, and sans-serif fonts.

I’ve added <dd> and <dt> to the Styles menu, which will help when editing topic main pages, among other things.

Also, the licenses link in the page footer now goes to Project:Copyrights, which actually has the copyright information on it.

Most but not all of the redirect problems have apparently been fixed, and the rest are actively being worked on. Hopefully that headache will be behind us soon!

The localized skin files are all in place but aren’t being used for some reason. I’ve sent email to MindTouch and the skin’s designer to ask for advice on what might be causing that problem.

I’ve not yet fixed the About MDC link, but will be working on that soon.

Yesterday, I said I’d blog again with information about my priorities for things I’d like to see MindTouch fix or implement in Deki. I’ve written up a living priority list (”living” meaning that I continue to update it as ideas occur to me). There are presently 13 items on the list, arranged in order of importance. MindTouch is aware of this list, and hopefully will work on some of this stuff once their impending Kilen Woods release is done.

A couple of hours ago, I fixed the default language for newly created pages. It had previously been using German as the default language for new pages in the English wiki, due to a configuration error.

IT has fixed the CSS on the other sites hosted on developer.mozilla.org.

We successfully relaunched the Mozilla Developer Center on MindTouch Deki tonight, as I’ve blogged previously. There are a few outstanding issues, though, so I thought I’d throw together a list of the ones that I know of off the top of my head.

• The link at the bottom of each page that’s supposed to offer information about copyrights and licenses just sends you to the main page. This is a high priority item that should be fixed tomorrow (Wednesday, August 20th).
• We haven’t installed the localized skins yet. I’m going to try to get the ones we have installed in the next few days, hopefully by the middle of next week.
Source: Bit Stampede

We received the converted data from MindTouch this morning, and webdev has signed off on their tests, so now it’s in the capable hands of the IT folks at Mozilla to get things set up.

I’m sure we’ll have some rough spots for a bit while we finish the transition, but it looks like we’re on for tomorrow evening’s launch.

I don’t yet know when IT expects to have the server ready for testing. I’ll blog further as things proceed, and as I have more information.

The database and attachments packages were received by MindTouch late last night, and the conversion process is now underway. Assuming all goes well, we’ll receive the converted database on Monday so that we can have a day for configuration and testing before we go live on Tuesday.

It’s all very exciting and I expect to be very anxious all weekend.

As I write this, Mozilla IT is in the process of making the Mozilla Developer Center read-only so the database export can begin. Once that’s done, we’ll send it along to MindTouch so they can start converting it into MindTouch Deki format.

We expect to open the wiki up on the new software on Tuesday evening. The conversion of the database will take two to three days. By starting now, we have a little extra time to deal with any problems that come up during the process.

Unfortunately, we ran into a hiccup with the MediaWiki to MindTouch Deki converter tool that requires a bug fix to the converter and a new test conversion.

The new test conversion should be finished tomorrow, but that means it will be at best Friday and more likely Monday before we can get the final, full conversion of the current MDC database finished.

For that reason, we’re postponing the MDC relaunch. I’m hoping for Tuesday, August 19th, but can’t say so for sure until I get confirmation that that date works for everyone involved. I’ll post again when I know.

It’s entirely possible I may opt to spend all day Friday hiding under my bed and trembling. If you don’t see me online, that’s where I am.

Sometime shortly, MDC should be going read-only so we can begin the process of converting the content for the Deki transition. I’ve asked IT to do it, and as soon as they get into the office and caffeinated or whatever they do when they first come in, hopefully that will begin.

The final testing before we launch the new MDC is underway now. The import has been confirmed valid, and the tags look good. Webdev is doing some final security tests, and IT should be doing performance tests tomorrow.

In the meantime, please hit the new MDC and look to see if there are any showstopping problems you can find! It’s almost showtime!

By the way, I’m aware the histories for articles on the test wiki are empty. In order to save time during the test, we didn’t import the histories. These will be preserved when we do the final import.

So the MDC test server is running an updated MindTouch Deki now, but for some reason the tags aren’t working. I’m doing another rebuild of the site index, hoping that I’m insane and forgot to do it the first time. If that doesn’t help, then I’ll have to get some help from the kind folks at MindTouch to figure out what’s wrong, since getting the tags working right was the point to this last update.

If the index rebuild works, we should be in good shape to do the final day of testing on Monday, which gives us time to lock down the current MDC and pull the database over in time to get the new site launched on Thursday.

This afternoon, IT got the Deki software updated on the test server at http://devmo.dekiwiki.mozilla.org. As part of this, the database was overwritten with a new import from a few months ago. Passwords have all been reset to be empty, and email addresses genericized.

Please feel free to do a little testing! IT and webdev will be doing some as well.