User:Daveg
Dave Golby's Test Page
This is my home page, mainly used for testing ideas and resolving installationand configuration problems.
Testing the Security Features
I've set up a special area for testing the LockDown facility. You can find it here.
Installation and Configuration of Latex
Some equation tests.
First of all, good old Einstein's famous mass-energy equivalence:
Remember the good old days of Newtonian absolute space and time? (sigh...)
a totally made up equation to test partial differential symbols:
and another (Ludwig Boltzmann, rest in peace...)
Notes
- After much struggle, the above equations should be rendered properly if texvc is working and the MediaWiki is configured correctly.
- Had to install MinGW32 for the basic compilation tools (make in this case). MinGW32 provides an application manager to download and install the components. These are stored in e:\mingw
- The source files for texvc are written in Caml. So another package is required called Objective Caml to compile these up. This is also installed on the E: drive.
- MediaWiki has a Math folder in which various source programs for texvc are kept. The make file in this folder must be executed in order for the texvc.bc code to be generated.
- NOTE Both Objective Caml bin and Mingw bin folders must be in the path
- When compiling from the DOS shell, use CAMLLIB=e:\objective caml\lib to enable CAML to pick up the various auxiliary files
- The render.ml file needs to be modified. Consult the page at [1]
- The Math.php file also needs to be modified. Read the instructions for replacing certain code sections at the above link
- I also had to open up all sorts of permissions to different users on the images folder. Not good form but this was required to get it to work.
- A good source of info for LaText within MediaWiki can be found at here.
Installation and Configuration of PHP on Windows
- I would recommend using the zip installation, NOT the Windows installer
- Install PHP to C:\PHP or similar directory with no whitespaces in its pathname
- Use mmc to change the IIS setings:
- In the ISAPI Filters tab set up a PHP ISAPI Filter using c:\php\php5isapi.dll
- Make sure the Web Service extension for PHP is enabled with C:\php\php5isapi.dll
- In the Home Directory mmc tab, click on "Configuration..." and add a new extension .php to the list of supported extensions. Set the executable to c:\php\php5isapi.dll
- Use the PHPRC system-wide environment variable to set the PHP installation directory
- It may be required to change the permissions of the directory so that the IUSR_<machine name> has access to the folder (eg, for write,read,execute...)
- Set up the c:\php\php.ini file
; Directory in which the loadable extensions (modules) reside. extension_dir = "c:\\php\\ext" ... ; Windows Extensions ; Note that ODBC support is built in, so no dll is needed for it. ; Note that many DLL files are located in the extensions/ (PHP 4) ext/ (PHP 5) ; extension folders as well as the separate PECL DLL download (PHP 5). ; Be sure to appropriately set the extension_dir directive. extension=php_bz2.dll ;extension=php_curl.dll extension=php_dba.dll extension=php_dbase.dll ;extension=php_exif.dll ;extension=php_fdf.dll ;extension=php_gd2.dll ;extension=php_gettext.dll ;extension=php_gmp.dll ;extension=php_ifx.dll ;extension=php_imap.dll ;extension=php_interbase.dll extension=php_ldap.dll ;extension=php_mbstring.dll extension=php_mcrypt.dll extension=php_mhash.dll extension=php_mime_magic.dll ;extension=php_ming.dll extension=php_msql.dll extension=php_mssql.dll extension=php_mysql.dll extension=php_mysqli.dll ;extension=php_oci8.dll extension=php_openssl.dll
- Use the following test script to verify the installation:
<html> <?php phpinfo(); ?> </html>
Internal Variables
These are some internal variables that should be rendered correctly at run-time.
Consult the article here for more info on these variables.
Here are some examples of these variables:
- KBwiki The name of the site (SITENAME)
- //kbwiki.ercoftac.org The name of the server (SERVER)
- User:Daveg The full name of the current page (FULLPAGENAME)
- User:Daveg The name of the article (ARTICLEPAGENAME)
- Click this to get a printable version of this page
- The current user is 18.191.68.61
Templates
Test Templates:
- Letter template
- AC Article template
- UFR Article template
- A test template for checking the Form extension
Note that these Templates should be substituted into the page.
Here are some test pages that use templates I've developed
Simple Forms
Click one this link to create a form. It uses the MediaWiki extension described here. The following form is provided as a test by the Form extension.
The sample form definition can be found here. The template used can be found here.
My own test form uses the AC Abstract template. Unfortunately it doesn't work properly at the moment.
- Click this to generate a new AC Abstract Page
- The form definition for the AC Abstract
- The Template for the AC Abstract page
Some sample pages created using the Abstract page form:
HTMLets
This is a test area for HTMLets.
Towards a Content Management Extension
These are links to pages concerned with scoping out work for a content management system. This is a proposed extension that would provide Ercoftac Editorial team members with tools for creating, moving and deleting Ercoftac articles. Ercoftac articles are a collection of MediaWiki pages.
Email Confirmation and Access Control
Currently looking at limiting edit privileges to users who have a registered AND confirmed email address. This would help to prevent any bots from registering themselves.
Today I registered a new user Test Account user with a valid email address. The registered email was received at the expected address.
It turns out that a reply to this email was not required to complete the registration of the new user. That is, in principle a user without a confirmed email address can continue to use the Wiki. However, if the access controls on a page demand it, he/she may not be able to edit the page.
A user who elects to confirm his email address should be added to an 'emailconfirmed' user group, and it is by using this group that edit-controls can be placed on particular groups. To date it has not been possible to add users to this group: a check of the User List page shows that there are no members of this group as yet.
A forum post recommends the following PHP code. To restrict editing rights to registered users, the following should be added to LocalSettings.php:
$wgGroupPermissions['*' ]['edit'] = false; # Disallows editing by users. $wgGroupPermissions['emailconfirmed']['edit'] = true; # Allows editing by those with confirmed e-mails.
It's possible that this won't work as there are individual edit settings for particular groups that might override this setting. What is required is a means of adding users to two groups and ensuring that the permissions are AND-ed, ie, a user needs to be both in the Submitter group AND in the 'emailconfirmed' group before he is allowed to edit a page.