Talk:Main Page

This page is for remarks on the content of our main page, or our wiki. Please address your questions on FreeMind itself or request for help with using FreeMind to our Help forum.

My impression of the wiki is quite good. So far, we can let the original home page running, together with the one at freezope. I will move most of the stuff from the home page to wiki, as well as from the wiki at freezope. Any failure of this wiki is, therefore, covered. We can switch to this wiki completely in the near future. -- Dan of FreeMind 08:32, 10 Sep 2004 (PDT)

Logout problems ("Save page" button previews instead)

Can an admin read Running MediaWiki on SourceForge and ensure the sessions directory is setup correctly? As of August 2005, SourceForge no longer allows write access to the htdocs directory and instead requires writing persistent data to /tmp/persisent. Changing this directory should fix the logout problems (just try to edit a page to see what I mean). --Shellreef 15:19, 7 Sep 2005 (PDT)

That was very helpful; thank you. The sessions of MediaWiki should work fine now. --Danielpolansky 12:03, 8 Sep 2005 (PDT)

Design of the navigation bar

I have made a very simple navigation bar, repeated at every page to which it points. The navigation bar points only to the primary pages. Secondary pages can be reached by following the link "All Pages" at the navigation bar.

Originally, I wanted to change the navigation bar at the very left, but MediaWiki's documentation disclosed that this is only possible by editing the monobook skin's template. As this is not very flexible, I've chosen the other option, although it's not very elegant.

The navigation bar content is located at Template:Navigation_bar. By changing the template, the navigation bar changes in all the pages where it is included. See also help on templates. --Danielpolansky 11:08, 14 Sep 2004 (PDT)

Where is toolbox defined for the wiki

At templates/xhtml_slim.pt, with user rights rw-timan72,r,r.

Wiki is very slow

I have enabled file cache (see help on file cache). It also simplifies backing up of the wiki, as it suffices to backup the pages in the file cache. But the wiki is still very slow. --Danielpolansky 11:21, 27 Sep 2004 (PDT)

If performance continues to be a problem, you might consider moving this MediaWiki to BerliOS (another free software host). Their MySQL is much faster than SourceForge's in my experience. --Shellreef 14:17, 7 Sep 2005 (PDT)

By logging to SQL server, I have found out that SourceForge is running mySQL version 3.23.58. Thus we may not set that we are running version 4 in LocalSettings.php. --dp

$ mysql -u freemind --database=freemind --host=mysql -p

An easier way to find out about mySQL version was to visit this special page of this wiki.

Currently, we are running on mySQL 4.1.x --Danielpolansky 10:13, 18 Oct 2005 (PDT)

Mediawiki's image thumbing capability is not that good

Computer Knowledge Map

In the main page, there are several screenshots scaled down manually in Gimp. They are not stored in the wiki internally; they're only referred to from within the wiki. When I first tried to use images internally, taking advantage of Mediawiki's thumb function, it did not work at all because of the PHP's GD libary missing. The library is now there, but, when scaled down using GD, the thumbs do no look that good . Thus I keep the screenshot images as they are, i.e. external to wiki. A demonstrating example follows. --Danielpolansky 10:26, 8 Apr 2005 (PDT)

GD is infamous for its poor thumbnailing. Consider installing ImageMagick instead. --Shellreef 14:26, 7 Sep 2005 (PDT)

To get help on using mediawiki

See Editing Overview (pointing also to Extended Image Syntax), documentation on customizing the interface of the wiki, Style Guide and the User's Guide for wiki usage and configuration help.

Why we chose MediaWiki rather than other wiki engine

MediaWiki has buttons for formatting a cursor selection when editing, lessening the memory burden of a new user. MediaWiki allows for editing of single sections of a page, and has an elegant automatic table of contents for each page, created out of the sections. It has a separated pages for article and for discussion. MediaWiki distinguishes graphically inner links and links going outside. Furthermore, MediaWiki supports TeX markup for mathematics. MediaWiki is the wiki engine of Wikipedia, successful free internet encyclopedia. Thus MediaWiki seems to be one of the best free wiki engines available.

Some how too's would be nice

i was playing around, I imediately thought of mapping some complex (poorly designed) websites, software etc. I want a quick tutorial on /if i can do this... thanks FUN STUFF

HOWTO's and Documentation

I mentioned this in an e-mail to the OpenDiscussion forum, but I believe a HOWTO section and Documentation section are in order. These sections should have links above the current "Asked Questions" link on the main page.

The HOWTO section should contain a list of HOWTO's that are written/updated the Freemind community (it's users), and the Documentation section should be a well organized layout of the information contained in the HOWTO's, but explicitly controlled by the site-administrators.

My $0.02, Bobby

Feedback

Very intresting wiki site!... Thanx! --HarryRens 16:56, 15 Oct 2005 (PDT)

Under Alternatives, you might want to add Compendium. http://www.compendiuminstitute.org/. Compendium is similar in intent to one of the functions of MindManager and FreeMind -- brainstorming and discussions -- but there's an underlying philosopy to Compendium that's unique to the tool. I don't have enough experience with either tool in a corporate setting to have a strong preference.

MindManager has superb integration with Microsoft and is the tool of choice for project management, given that it imports/exports with MS Project. But for general braintstorming, discussion, and possibly even "knowledge organization" I think I'd pick Compendium over MindManager. Compendium is technically open source, although the project folks do ask that you register your downloads.

Another alternative

You might want to add Compendium ([1]) to the Alternatives. Compendium is a tool similar in intent to mind-mapping software, but it has a different map structure and a different underlying philosophy. Compendium is free to download and use, although the project people request that you register before downloading. It is not open source, however -- you must register as a developer to get the source and can not re-distribute it. Like FreeMind, it's in Java.

For general brainstorming, discussion capture and personal knowledge base organization, I don't really have a strong preference between Compendium and MindManager/FreeMind. I've used MindManager much longer, and I haven't used either in a corporate brainstorming/discussion session, just for my own personal work. If you're doing project management I'd recommend MindManager, since it integrates with Outlook and Microsoft Project. But I'm leaning towards Compendium as a personal organization tool for a couple of reasons:

1. It runs on both Windows and Linux. I think it runs on MacOS as well, being in Java, but I don't have a Mac to test it.

2. The underlying philosophy is geared towards brainstorming, discussion and knowledge organization. I think it's a "mini-ontology editor".