It boils down to “really good idea”—but I haven’t the time or the braincells to spare to run the thing. I’d have to learn php, apparently, for which I have zip aptitude: it took me a while to learn basic html, and that’s in English. I look at the sites that explain php, and it’s a massive amount of reading from which I’m supposed to grasp what the heck planet they’re on, when I’ve got a completely different planet on which Bren has problems I’m tracking with just about all the brain cells I’ve got—besides the daily maintenance on the blog site and the conversions and artwork for Closed Circle, and the accounting and math and troubleshooting for that, plus I just shoved out the door a stack of boxes in excess of 6 feet tall—that’s taller than me—of books people send me to sign, many of which I can hardly lift—[please, people, no 40 lb boxes!] got back home and found two more boxes at the door, and I think tackling php would throw me into meltdown.
So has anybody got a notion how this could work without my learning php?
It’s great to oblige your readers with the autographed books but there’s no need to do the schlepping yourself. You could use the USPS online programs for postage, shipping labels and scheduling your carrier to pick-up the packages.
I second the dokuwiki suggestion. I have used dokuwiki, and I know exactly nothing about php (except that it exists, and does things).
You might also want to take a look at http://www.wikimatrix.org/. There’s a choice wizard there, which is how I found dokuwiki; it’s sort of a find-the-wiki-best-for-you tool. I guarantee there’s something out there that you can get running with very little help from your Web Wizard!
HOO BOY!!! Cartons of books? And here I am wondering, should I ever meet you, if it would be too forward to ask you to sign the hard bound copy of Foreigner I just acquired.
@ tyr….. there are more strange things than are dreamt of…… (at least it wasn’t an Uzi!)
That must have been someone’s whole library of Cherryh books, nearly. Thinking further, maybe they were overseas or… well, in any case, it’s great that Ms. Cherryh would autograph them, but whew, that’s still quite a lot in one whack. Haha, if I were to weed beds, you’d need to make sure I pulled up the *right* plants. Though that seems a fair exchange.
Golly, except for the hurling puppies part, that’s quite a prank. No puppy hurling, please, unless you want the puppy to hurl your fool posterior at ’em. Possibly, the bikers were even amused, sans that exception.
Reminds self to look for resources to learn how to wiki.
— “Uh, Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you. I…I want to wiki!”
Hahaha. (Sorry, brain must have regressed to junior high for a moment, there.)
You don’t really need to learn PHP. I haven’t.
Download MediaWiki from http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
The installation guide is here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installation_guide
Security is addressed here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Security
I just thought you should know that someone started a wiki page on Foreigner already. You can do some editing and rearranging.
Mmm. I can find a lot on the band Foreigner, none on the book.
Here it is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreigner_universe
I could set it up for you, php is what I do for a living…
Advice and help always welcome. Let me introduce you to Lynn, who knows more on this topic than we do. I’ll drop her a line telling her we have offers.
As for the wiki, I know nothing.
But for the books…I agree with Spence. He actually gave me one of those 3 books he had autographed (one of the Foreigner series, can’t remember which one specifically, whichever was the next one I hadn’t bought myself yet). I had intended to give him my hardcover copy of Cuckoo’s Egg (which to this day remains one of my absolute favorites) to take with him to have you sign, but it never made it into his hands before he left, sadly. I’m glad you’re at least requiring return postage now, the inclusion of which I think should have been an obvious necessity.
Miss Cherryh,
I would be delighted to help you sign books.
LOF
Agree about wiki matrSetting up a simple wiki is done pretty quickly.
Ops, sorry pressed the post button to quickly 🙁
Please remove previous post and/or this one (or if you like to edit then please do so of course, but it is mostly mumblings .. )
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Was in agreement about wikimatrix.
I only wanted to add that setting up most wikis are mostly quick and easy. I have setup several wiki’s for different use cases. Most wiki’s I have used are or easy to setup, easy configure and above all easy for others to use.
Even if you at a later point in time want to migrate between wiki’s it is easily done since the markup (for most stuff) is very basic so converting the markup is often pretty easy to script.
Last time someone asked me about setting up a wiki, I referred them to wikia.org. It’s free, and hardly any geekery required; certainly no messing about with a PHP back end.
I mean some of us know PHP and would be happy to help, but I’m kind of lazy (read, have a lot of other projects on the go) and so I suggest a tool that is already in wide use.
We learned with Joomla! that a template/tool/marked path is infinitely nicer than wandering in the wilderness.
On the other hand there is that Foreigner wiki already extant. What are the rules of the road, the etiquette of the thing? Do they invite other people with content to contribute? could people from Wave, eg, come in on that with articles and not ruffle feathers?
The link above doesn’t go to a Foreigner wiki, it links to the article about the Foreigner series in the Wikipedia (online encyclopedia). Everybody can edit it, but they will not welcome there what you have in mind. They only want concise, useful and sourceable information to inform the reader who wrote the series, what it is about, if it won any awards, how it was received and other important things from the creation process. And all that will generally need a secondary source to show the information given is correct.
Here is their article about you and their meta-page on how to deal with articles one has a close relation to.
As far as I know there is no dedicated Foreigner wiki or any wiki about your work.
I’d suggest against wikia, it’s advertisment based, has the potential to draw in all the people from all their other wikis with all the problems that can bring, it has some annoying to use technologies in use.
With a wiki maintained by you, you’d have absolute control over who gets in and how what is written.
Thanks for the info!