Difference between revisions of "Project:Wiki/Server News"

Revision as of 06:27, 24 April 2015

Welcome to the wiki/server news section of the site. The server that hosts Girlfriend Kari Wiki is primarily maintained by User:Erina.

Server Status

Currently in a relatively stable status. However, due to the early state of the server, changes to the server, infrastructure, and pages may still be made if deemed necessary.

Server News

Currently accepting all contributions! If you have anything to contribute, or want to help out by editing articles, or just joining as a member of the community, feel free to make an account and get started! Account creation, however, is protected by a password. The password is located on User:Erina's page - it's the name of his favorite girl (hint: her name starts with an "I").

Also, more admins will be necessary in the due future. Active contributors on the previous wikia are highly recommended to talk with me (Erina) if interested.

The future of this wiki is to become much more exhaustive and extensive than the current active Wikia. Feel free to add information about the anime, merchandise, girls, and more. However, please note that a separate database is being developed to organize cards and sprites of the girls in the game. Thus, please do not upload pictures of the cards to the wiki, unless they are being used to explain some in-game concept or mechanic. Also, try not to upload too many sprites of the girls as well - one per girl is enough for the time being. This is also because those sprites will be hosted on the new database.

Hardware Notices

A few hardware notes:

• The current hardware that the server is running on is more than enough to support MediaWiki and its core functions.
• The current hardware that the server is running on meets the requirements to support VisualEditor and Parsoid.
• What this means to you: Avoid using the VisualEditor to make edits if you know how to use markup text. Also, don't play around with images too much (as in constantly resizing them, spamming them in various articles, etc.). This causes unnecessary server load.

As a general rule of thumb, use the visual editor only when dealing with formatting, images, or other stylistic properties that would be hard to do in the source editor. For help with editing, visit Project:Editing.

For now, the server seems to be handling most requests pretty well. However, I am slightly concerned with the server's future due to the few but definitely apparent memory allocation issues that are occuring. See the next section for more details...

Server Costs

Sadly, due to the current statistics of the server that I'm looking at, the current specs of the server may not be enough to keep the server running in the future, especially with the addition of a database and (hopefully) more active users. VisualEditor is eating up a bunch of memory for every edit, and is beginning to cause some occasional issues. I can only imagine them getting much worse in the future.

If I am to increase the memory and CPU of the system, the monthly cost of maintaining the server would basically double. We'd get double the memory and processing power for twice the cost ($25/month). If I find out that it is essential for me to upgrade the server, I'll almost have to open donations to help pay for this cost. I'd like the donations to sum ~$15 per month, if possible.

Since the server is running fine for now, I won't be upgrading it yet. I'll only upgrade when I think it's absolutely necessary, because I'd like to avoid donations and a higher monthly cost if possible.

Database News

A new project is currently in the works, which is to set up a separate database which will (hopefully) host images that deal with the specific girls for the Girlfriend Kari Wiki. Status, updates, and progress will be posted here.

Currently working on the back-end (php/rest api). Laravel development and routing is in progress. Sadly, due to increasing workload from university, the database will probably not be finished and pushed out to the site for a couple of weeks.

• 4/6/2015: The initial draft of the database has been created, including basic routing in laravel/php. Information can be transferred from a .csv file. It took us way too long to get this set up, mainly because damn foreign language fonts.
• 4/20/2015: Programming a crawler to read information and statistics about the cards is in progress, thanks to a few friends. In the meantime, a test database is being created. This will hopefully be up before the end of May.
• 4/24/2015: I'm still alive. The back-end of the testing database is near completion, but the front-end is, as can be seen, extremely lacking. There's still quite a bit of time before I'll be able to get this test database working. Please note that this is nowhere near representative of the final database product - there's much more information planned and a much better designed website. But for now, this site is being used for testing purposes.

Changelog

The below lists the current changelog to the wiki:

• 2/12/2015: MediaWiki has been successfully installed.
• 2/13/2015: VisualEditor has also been successfully installed.
• 2/13/2015: Main Page has been changed to "Girlfriend Kari Wiki." This is the new main page.
• 2/14/2015: Logo and favicon have been added.
• 2/15/2015: Main page has been updated in design and style. Now uses MediaWiki:Common.css to edit design.
• 2/15/2015: gfkari.com redirects to wiki.gfkari.com, for the time being.
• 2/17/2015: Modules and Templates are now working, along with documentation! I'll add more information on these later.
• 2/19/2015: Comments can be added to any pages with the comments tag. Just put the word comments in diamond brackets.
• 3/18/2015: Categories have been added.
• 3/24/2015: Enabled SSL (more security, but not like we'll ever need it)

Future Updates

Future updates are listed below. Large future updates are bolded.

• Consider adding extensions for further image reliability support (or as feasible due to constraints in memory)
• Working on finishing the policy and help pages.
• Change and add more girls onto the main page (but not so much that they're cluttered). Working on finding good (better) sprites from GF Kari to use, like the Haruka one.
• Create a database for organizing sprites/cards/images/and maybe also information of the girls. This will be hosted on girls.gfkari.com.

--Erina