Wiki Administration

This wiki runs on the MediaWiki software and is hosted by Miraheze. The bureaucrat is the BristolSHC user, which is linked to the co-op email address and can be accessed by all members. The wiki was set up by Callum in December 2022, and recreated in January 2023 after Miraheze experienced database corruption.

Permissions

Only users in the administrator group are permitted to create and edit pages because the wiki is intended as a web presence for the co-op.

To give a member access:

• Get them to create an account on https://meta.miraheze.org/wiki/Special:CreateAccount
• Log in as BristolSHC
• Go to Special:UserRights
• Enter their username
• Add them to the administrator group
• They can now log in at Special:UserLogin

Most permissions for the (everyone) and user groups were removed on Special:ManageWiki/permission, and those permissions added explicitly to the administrator group.

There used to be a "Private" namespace, which required the wiki to be set as private. This created problems, for example generating a sitemap for search engines to use, and wasn't needed, so was removed on 2023-02-24.

Navigation

The navigation bar can be edited in MediaWiki:Sidebar. The link to the History page has to be set in MediaWiki:History for some reason.

The Main Page is set as "Home" in MediaWiki:Mainpage

Styling

The wiki uses the Medik skin, with the header colour set as the dark blue the co-op uses.

Some additional styling is done in MediaWiki:Common.css. This includes hiding site notices, because they can be annoying and irrelevant for viewers who don't edit the wiki. If you would like to be shown site notices then create User:Username/common.css, where Username is your own username (a link to that page is also in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering under "Shared CSS/JSON/JavaScript for all skins"), and add the following:

.siteNotice {
    display: block;
}

Footer

The 'about' and 'disclaimers' links in the footer are hidden using a single "-" in MediaWiki:Aboutsite and MediaWiki:Disclaimers respectively.

Licensing

• MediaWiki:Copyright: notice about copyright in footer
• MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning: Notice shown to contributors on the editing form, above 'Save changes'.
• Bristol Student Housing Co-operative:Copyrights: Details and discussion of copyright and licensing

Back-ups

To make a back-up:

1. Go to Special:DataDump
2. Delete the previous xml backup
3. Submit the form to generate a new xml backup
4. Refresh the page to see that it is finished and no longer queued
5. Click the .xml.gz link to download the backup

Domain name

The co-op's domain name is bristolstudenthousingcoop.org and is currently registered with Spaceship, and was previously registered with Namecheap. The domain registration needs to be renewed yearly.

This domain has been pointed to this Miraheze wiki following the procedure detailed in Custom domains. The nameservers are pointed to Miraheze in the domain's Namecheap settings, and Miraheze manages the SSL certificate using Let's Encrypt.