Categories
General Technical

New feature: instant database dumps

One of the features that both users and the staff alike have been wanting for a while has been instant database dumps. Now we’re thrilled to announce you that such a feature is finally available!

Where do I find this feature?

The instant database dump generation feature is available on the statistics page, Special:Statistics, of each wiki. However, due to the high abuse potential of this feature, we have implemented certain restrictions.

Only stewards may generate a database dump. In addition to that, only one database dump process may run at a time. So, if someone is running a database dump for a different wiki, you will need to wait for that process to complete before you can run yours. Finally, a dump may be generated only once a week.

The good thing is that the process is instant: once the dump process finishes, the dump will be available for download from our database dumps site! There will also be a link to the newest database dump on the wiki’s Special:Statistics page.

Technical details

The extension was written by Jack Phoenix, based on code written by Krzysztof Krzyżaniak.

The generated database dump is an SQL file, which has been compressed with gzip to save some space. The dump contains the following core MediaWiki tables and their data:

In addition to these core tables, certain extension tables will also be dumped if the relevant extensions are installed:

Bugs reports & feature requests

Bug reports and feature requests can be made on our Bugzilla. Pick “MediaWiki extensions” as the product and “DumpsOnDemand” as the component.

On behalf of the ShoutWiki staff,
Jack Phoenix
Head of the Customer Support Team

Update on 17 June 2012: We’ve changed the format of the database dumps from SQL to XML due to popular demand. Please let us know if you encounter any issues with this.

Categories
Customer Support General Technical

Meet the new ShoutWiki staff members!

Earlier in April I promised changes in various areas of the site, including people. Now the time for these changes has come. It is my pleasure to announce the newest additions to the ShoutWiki staff — all of whom have ties to Britain!

Callum Walmsley (Solar Dragon) joins the Customer Support Team with years of wiki experience at Wikisimpsons, the biggest Simpsons wiki on the Internet. He is comfortable with CSS, advanced wikitext tricks and other “power user” tools, such as pywikipediabot and AutoWikiBrowser. Outside ShoutWiki, Callum likes watching NCIS, Stargate and CSI, and listening to rock music.

Lewis Cawte (Lcawte) basically is our new technical team. He is responsible for making sure that things like our bug tracker or this very site — the ShoutWiki blog — are running smoothly, but he is also interested in learning and more and more about the MediaWiki software. In addition to expanding his knowledge about MediaWiki, programming and server administration, Lewis enjoys working code, as well as a wide variety of TV shows from Stargate SG1 to Criminal Minds and NCIS. When he’s not found around the MediaWiki community, he is hiking or camping somewhere in the outdoors of Sussex, UK.

Nicolas M. (Nicmavr) is an avid Halo fan, best known for his work on Halopedia, the Halo wiki. On ShoutWiki, Nic will provide general support as a member of the Customer Support Team. He is also interested in aviation.

Each staff member has a @shoutwiki.com e-mail account, the username being their wiki username (so for example, Solar Dragon’s email account is solardragon), if you need to contact them privately.

Let’s give them a warm welcome!

On behalf of the ShoutWiki staff,
Jack Phoenix
Head of the Customer Support Team