Yeah. It took me 3 sessions of 3-6 hours each to put all this stuff in and link it as much as I did. By the time I finished up last night I was forgetting some items I had already made, and so the linking is incomplete, and I suspect there are a few items that should be reclassified, combined, or split. For instance, I put some window stuff in MoreInsulation and some in BetterWindows. About half of the work was done past my bedtime and I'm pretty sure my brain shut off halfway through. On 9/26/06, James Newtons Massmind wrote: > I didn't see any mention in the wiki of integrated solar panels as a roofing > material. It's there, under DreamHouse: http://www.ubasics.com/home/wiki/SolarEnergy Although it belongs just as strongly in the building technology section. You can also find it through GreenIdea or EfficiencyIdea, or a search for "solar". Search box is on the bottom of the page, though, I think I'd like it near the top. Like Techref, there's always 6 ways of finding it, and there's always someone that tries yet a different way... :-) > And for an even easier option there is now a peel and stick version. Nice > article in this months Mother Earth News. Peel and stick the solar panel to > the metal sheeting, tack it to the roof, cover the peak with a cap. The > panels interlock and the cap covers the electrical interconnects. Very > slick. Added. Link for article you mention is http://www.motherearthnews.com/Alternative_Energy/2006-10-01/Easy_Solar_Power I'll have to read it later... > On the Geothermal Heating and Cooling page, there is no mention of earth > tubes. The Passive Solar Heating and Cooling page makes only passing > mention. Earth tubes are a really interesting idea in my opinion. > > Ah... I see, "Trench Geothermal Cooling" > > I would also recommend a lot more interconnection between terms, but that > takes much work. This is my first exposure to using a wiki extensively (we use one at work, but I do minimal editing) so I was doing a lot of things differently when I finished than when I started. Even now that it's mostly entered (though it's always ongoing) I'm thinking about how I can better accomplish some of my goals for it. I entered 160 pages over the weekend though (didn't start until Saturday, really - up until then I was evaluating wiki software). I didn't use any of the index features that I now realize would have made things a little easier. For instance some names don't have links because I didn't start linking names of contributers until near the middle. Now that I understand how to use the page index better, I would have liked to have that handy when I was creating pages so it would be trivial to link appropiate topics together. At the end I was just getting tired of it and rather than stop altogether, I just cut back on the features so I could finish it. Even if I never get around to the extenisve linking I'd like, I know it's all searchable and in a substantially easier form to use than GMail. I plan on continuing to use it as the project documentation, which is one of the reasons I'm not allowing others to edit it, though comments are welcome. > Overall, its great! I do wish more people would use the wiki abilities of > piclist.com, but... The last time I tried it I had a difficult time, and just haven't looked at its editing features in two years. The problems I see with it today are that searching is still very slow (if it's faster to search your pages using google then there's little point to having your own search engine - Wikipedia has this problem) In your case I don't think google gets every page, but I've never done a comparision of your search engine against google's for pages on the site. When I go to http://www.piclist.com it takes 9 seconds on this connection (a 3Mbps dual T1, with only two users). When I go to http://ubasics.com/home/ it takes 2 seconds, and that includes the redirection to http://ubasics.com/home/. I wouldn't have done more than a page or two on techref if the edit - preview - edit cycle was going to be greater than 15 seconds. The only two other things that kept hitting me when I went to piclist.com in the past were: 1) sign in was cumbersome, wouldn't keep me signed in, and I kept getting errors of a dubious nature. I think the main problem was I couldn't figure out how to assign my own password, and had to use some long numeric password that was given. 2) The style, layout, and organization of the site are not comfortable for me. I can find what I'm looking for only after looking through a lot of stuff (much like you found on my site). This is a usability problem that shows our sites are designed by and for us, and there are likely things we could do that would make it more universal. But it's pretty subjective. Now that everything is in, I'm considering the style and layout of the website. I'm no usability expert, but I know that everyone is now trained to expect a navigation bar on the left. My wiki site needs to be cleaned up (too much text on the bottom and top), and made as simple as possible. Now that I think about it, when I go to http://piclist.com I literally have to force myself to read the page line by line to find what I'm looking for. There's too much clutter, too many text styles and various forms of emphasis. If I want to go looking for pic algorithms I don't know what to click other than search. The text doesn't flow naturally, and there's no index so I can skim the page itself and drill down to the paragraph I need. Of course, the next thing you'll tell me is, "Give me some suggestions!" So I suppose I'll put my money where my mouth is while it's still wagging. Here is a layout that, for me, is a bit easier to read and find what I need. If I really wanted to work on it I'd change the style and layout a bit more (specifically the top and bottom navigation and 'utility' areas). I really only focussed on the central content: http://ubasics.com/piclist I'll take it down within a week. No wonder it took 9 seconds for the page to finish loading, though. You're shoving over 160KB of stuff to the client, then forcing it to run over 40KB of javascript, and that's just on the home page. That would be fine on a 45Mbps connection, but if I remember correctly you're running on a much slower line. With the number of users you have, I imagine it's mostly just data downloading time. Of course, I can't talk since my homepage is forcing well over 1MB to the client, but even then it's only taking 4 seconds here. Could also be affected by geography. Let's see... My server is somewhere in central Florida right on an internet backbone (OC-3 connection). I'm using a shared hosting service, but I suspect my site isn't as hard on the database and computer as yours is. I hope I don't sound critical - in the past when people have mentioned difficulty you've been quick to request more information, so I hope you find this helpful rather than annoying. I think that's enough talking for me for now... -Adam -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist