Mediawiki

I have started again to look at this software, which I have used in that past and have had a lot of fun with it and learned a lot about how to set databases and stuff like that.

The software has got better and o think easier to use since the last time I used it, which has got to be a good thing.

One of the things that I want to do this time with the software is to look at all the extensions that people have added to the software that you can now download and install.

The last time I played with mediating the date that I was putting into was based on stuff from my Dirk Maggs website.

One of the problems that I had last time was that there was a lot of information that was facts and figures and without making lots of either categories or hand made lists I could not at that time see any easy way to present this information or indeed how to find the information in an easy to find way.

Well the good news is that I think I may have found an extension to mediating that will allow me to code the information in such a way that will allow me to easily find and present the information and also to find new connections to different bits of the information.

The only problem is there does appear to be a bit of a learning curve as the way the information is coded is different to how you would normally code stuff in a wiki.

The extension is called semantic wiki and it appears that this is cutting edge stuff and I suspect the way that information on the Internet is going to get coded in the future on wiki sites. As there appears to be a lot of information that computers can not get at.

As the semantic wiki is new to me there are a lot of new terms that I don't understand so I think that it is going to be a while before I get out anything that is worth seeing, but rest a assured that once I do get something that is worth looking at I will put a link up on this blog of mine so that you can have a look.

It goes without saying that if you are looking at this blog post in the future all of the links might and probably don't work anymore and I will have gone on to something else.

So to recap I am looking forward to learning how to use a semantic website and wiki and it will be interesting to see of it will code and be able to present the information I have in the ways that I need it for my website.

I am going to use my Dirk Maggs website as the basis for the semantic wiki of mine as it has lots of data like dates and duration of all the different programmes that Dirk has done.

One of the things that I hope that it will allow me to solve is this;

I have on the website possibly 200 or 300 different actors and actresses who over the years have worked on more than one radio show or play, I want to be able to type in their name in a search box and for the wiki to come up with a list of all the productions that that actor has been in.

At the last time of trying this I could not get it to work.

Another question which is fairly similar to the above is what is the duration of each play and which is the most common format and duration of the productions that actor or actress has been in.

So I am hoping that the semantic wiki can help or even sort out these questions that's assuming that I understand what a semantic wiki can and cannot do.