One of the problems we've had keeping the wiki up to date was all the pages that needed to be made when an item was released. Just a quick list should illustrate this (and I've probably forgotten a page or two):

The page itself
The timeline page
The page for how it was released (the store or quest or whatever)
The checklist page
One or more themed and subcategory pages
If its a pin set, the pin set page


We do a great job helping each other fill in all these pages, but its still a lot of places to remember to make changes. It was bad when Spin and I first discussed it, and its only getting worse.

This isn't a complete solution, but we just got a tool that I think will help us make things easier in the future. IF we take a little time now to think about the best way to do it, and then some more time to implement it. That tool is the Dynamic Page List (or DPL) module that Nick recently installed, and which you might have seen mentioned in a couple of recent change log messages.

For example, you can now see DPL in action when you look at the Checklist (http://www.disneysonlineworlds.com/index.php/Checklist) page, which generates its lists of items using only a few lines for each section. This is a very simple use of DPL - generate a list of items using the default formatting for everything in a category. It is possible to make things more complex - including extracting values from a template on the page and formatting those values in a new way. Look at the sandbox pages and you'll see what I'm experimenting with.

If you want to experiment yourself, don't use the real pages. Please just use the sandbox pages until we all figure out what we're doing. You should also read the DPL manual (http://semeb.com/dpldemo/index.php?title=Category:DPL_Manual). And then re-read it, since there is a lot to digest.

As for what else we should do with DPL besides the simple checklist - I have some ideas about how to shrink that task list so many of the pages are controlled by parameters we set on item pages themselves. I'm researching how feasible they are, and I'll discuss some later. But does anyone else have ideas?

Most of all - I want to discuss all of this before we do anything. Some of the changes will be a lot of work... and I only want to do that work once. :D

So, what you're saying is, we put that into the category for example, and since we have the category of the item in the page itself, it will automatically put it in the checklist page?

~HAMD

Yup. That is the most simple example. (And it is working today on the checklist page.)

There are more complex things we can do - we just need to figure out what and if we need to make changes to the item pages to take advantage of them.

What exactly could we do to the items pages?

~HAMD

I think the question that I'm trying to figure out is if we want or need to change the item pages to use a named template instead of the cut-and-paste template that we're using today. I think (I'm not sure, but I think) that this will give us the ability to include just portions of the page into other pages or to only include pages which have fields set to certain values.

Another thing I hope is that it might help us clarify the color issue as we discuss here (http://www.disneysonlineworlds.com/index.php/Talk:Red_Surprise_Gift).

I think we should use a changeable template, meaning we can change stuff in the template if needed, instead of the kind we have now.

In my opinion, we don't need a color thing at all, because either:

1) It has Color, then the color.

2) Has the color in the name without the word "color".

3) It doesn't have either of the above.

~HAMD

Any ideas for how we should change the template, not sure how we'd do this, using DPL, but this really needs to be changed. Also, we use the same template, for magic/pins and clothing, which isn't really good. Any ideas on how to get this fixed.

Also, the color column is really confusing on when we use colspan or not, because when the color is in front of the name, we use it, but when it's at the end we don't? Also, on the name column, we don't put the correct name when the word color is in the name? We just put the color part of the name in the color column, and leave the rest in the name column, which isn't really accurate.

For the heart chairs for example. The name in the template is called heart chair, but that isn't really the name of it. Yes, if you click the link, you'd find the right name, but still.

Any more thoughts, like how we'd put the changes using DPL?
~HAMD