New MediaWiki skin for Hedyn.net knowledge base

Hedyn.net has a new skin, Pivot, mainly because it has a responsive design and the previous one, Vector, does not. In other words it responds to screen sizes from laptop/desktop down to the smallest mobile phone.

I’m not sure why Wikipedia still runs Vector and continues to offer separate mobile and desktop versions. That’s another story.

If you want to check if a website design is responsive, just visit from a phone or tablet and compare it to laptop. Alternatively change the shape and size of the browser on your laptop and watch what happens..

Hedyn.net is a wici which has been running continuously for nine years to provide a knowledge base for Welsh-language web resources, e.g. a list of blogs in Welsh, ideas and planning for Hacio’r Iaith unconference events, and WordPress resources for website developers.

I visit Hedyn.net several times each week to access resources and look things up. Contributions are always welcome in the form of edits. I’m also trying to do more notetaking there as public-by-default, especially things which have no need to be kept private.

Cof y Cwmwd: wiki website about Uwchgwyrfai’s history

Here’s an item in Welsh for the TV programme Heno about Cof y Cwmwd, a new multi-author website about the Uwchgwyrfai area.

The purpose of the site is to collect and share historical information about the area, its institutions and people.

As web developer I have been working with Canolfan Hanes Uwchgwyrfai on this site, which is powered by MediaWiki server software.

People are now contributing pics and articles to the site.

Activity has increased today during the first Golygathon (Editathon) on the wiki, a community event to stimulate contributions. The Golygathon is headed by Jason Evans of the National Library of Wales, who is the Wicipediwr Preswyl (Wikipedian in Residence) and knows a great deal about growing wikis!

It’ll be very interesting to see how projects like Wikipedia and the new website Cof y Cwmwd share content between them in the future.

Pic of the Golygathon by Jason Evans

@Wicipedia, an automatic Twitter bot

Check out @wicipedia which is an automatic Twitter bot I thoroughly enjoyed making.

This work was commissioned by Wikimedia UK as a means of increasing engagement with Wicipedia Cymraeg, the Welsh-language version of Wikipedia.

It is an automated Twitter account sharing:

  • ‘on this day’ historical events,
  • links to recent new articles within certain criteria of ‘interestingness’,
  • ideas for articles that anybody can create about notable women in order to contribute to fair gender representation on Wicipedia.

You’ll see all of these types of tweets on the account itself.

If you’re curious the account is run by a custom PHP script which runs on a server and performs calls to the Wikipedia API and Twitter API.

Björk pic by deep schismic (CC BY)