One of our random visitors in the Battlestar Forum posted a link to their website on how to make the patch via Adobe Photoshop. Very cool stuff! Maybe even help us get the site redesigned for better iPhone/Smart Phone support.

Check it out here!

Just to let our followers know, Battlestar Wiki will be upgrading to MediaWiki 1.15 (and all extensions) sometime later this week—either beginning Friday or over the weekend. Some downtime may occur, however nothing too Earth-shattering.

During this update, we will re-implement the Google search in lieu of the MediaWiki’s default search.

As of right now, we have already updated the Battlestar Wiki Blog to Wordpress 2.8, as well as the plug-ins. This took less than 10 minutes without fail.

Now for what our immediate future holds:

• We will be creating mobile skins for Battlestar Wiki, thereby allowing the Wiki to be accessed via handheld devices such as iPhones, Blackberries, and all those lovely web-enabled gizmos you kiddos like to use nowadays. Updates on this forthcoming feature as we have them.
• We are looking for one or two contributors to help us maintain our Twitter feed. Basically, we are looking for fans to tweet (or re-tweet) BSG and Caprica news, as well as fandom developments. If you are interested, please send an e-mail to webmaster AT battlestarwiki DOT org.

More to come! Now I’m personally off to bed. So sleep we all!

My longtime friend, Michael Hinman, operator of Airlock Alpha (formerly known as SyFy Portal before NBC-Universal bought the rights to the “SyFy” name) notified me by e-mail yesterday that Battlestar Wiki was on a list of 16 websites that were being considered for the category of “Best Website.” Of course, I didn’t say anything until Michael Hinman and the team at Airlock Alpha publicly released the “Long List” of Potential Nominees late last night. That list is here.

Now this list will be pruned down to five (5) websites that will appear on the final voting ballots. The “Final Five” nominees from each category will be announced on June 15.

Read more about Airlock Alpha’s 2009 Portal Awards here.

Regardless of whether or not we make the “Final Five” nominees for Best Website, I would like to take this opportunity to express how humbled I am that we were even considered for this honor. Further, as always, I would also like to reiterate that it is because of every contributor and visitor to this website that we are here today—without all of you, Battlestar Wiki would not be in the position it is presently in without your support.

So say we all.

I’ll be back full swing here in the next month or two, since I’m really worn out from Battlestar Galactica due to my previous involvement with the auction house that executed the two live auctions at the beginning half of this year. However, I’ve been given a few questions which I need to answer here, and they are mainly about the Wiki and our future.

I’ll go over the more common ones:

1. Will there be a “Caprica Wiki”?

Yes and no. While we have gone ahead and registered all the .org, .net, and .com domains for “capricawiki,” we will have those redirect to the battlestarwiki.org website. The Battlestar Wiki will encompass the entire universe of every iteration of BSG out there—the original, its 1980 spinoff, the re-imagined series, and Caprica—and the site will remain “Battlestar Wiki” in both name and function, since Caprica itself is in the universe of BSG.

While we could create a separate wiki dedicated solely to Caprica, this is unrealistic as this causes unnecessary compartmentalization and fragmentation of the user base. It is ultimately far more effective and worthwhile to keep everything on one site.

The same goes for the Battlestar Forum, which serves to encompass discussion of every version of BSG and its related spin-offs.

2. How long will you guys be around?

As long as there are humans around.

Realistically, we will be around as long as we can. Our resources are not infinite and we cannot hope to logically sustain two servers as their current level without new blood. While Caprica is on the horizon for 2010, and The Plan will air later this year, we will be around as long as the resources are available to upkeep the site. We are looking at downsizing our operations, assuming that we cannot find other sites to host to financially sustain having two servers. Times are tough and, despite the various streams of revenue we’ve received from ads, affiliate links and the memberships, the money still ultimately comes out of my pocket.

Therefore, if you have a well-trafficed website that you would like to find a new host for, feel free to drop me a mail at:

joe(at)frakmedia(dot)net

Having just said that, we do have sites that are interested in being hosted by FrakMedia!, which is the name of the “company” that we’ve assembled here. (We’re not really a company in the legal sense, hence the quotes.) We’ll have at least one or two announcements on that coming this June! Look for it!

3. Now that BSG is over, what new content can we expect to see on the website?

You can expect to see an increased emphasis on information from the BSG comics, novels, memorabilia—and even props that were auctioned off since the beginning of 2009.

Further, there is also Caprica and The Plan to consider as well. Yes, it seems like there won’t be much new information from the show itself, but there’s a ton of stuff that will still be documented by the hard working contributors who have made Battlestar Wiki possible.

Not to mention all the other languages that the Wiki can be translated into. German, Spanish, French… Exciting!

So that’s all for now! Take care!

Oh, and also, we now have a Twitter feed as well that I (and possibly other contributors) will be updating periodically. Follow us here.

The Writer’s Guild Foundation has asked that we share the following press release about a big event they are hosting on Tuesday May 5th from 7:30-9:30pm at the Writer’s Guild Theater in Beverly Hills, California. If you live or will be in that area we strongly recommend that you attend the event.

AN EVENING with RONALD D. MOORE
Tuesday, May 5 – 7:30-9:30pm – At the Writers Guild Theater (135 S
Doheny Dr., Beverly Hills, CA 90211)
Light reception included

Join us for this unique opportunity to learn from the writer, developer, and excecutive producer of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA… one of the most successful sci-fi series in a frakkin’ long time. Ronald D. Moore is one of the most successful writers of television science fiction working today. He is writer/executive producer of Battlestar Galactica. Previous writing and producing credits include Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Good Vs. Evil, Roswell, and the acclaimed HBO series Carnivale. He is the winner of two Peabody Awards, an Emmy (plus many nominations) and a Hugo Award, as well as a WGA nomination.

Thanks,
Jonathan

Purchase tickets online at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/63131 or call 800-838-3006

Prices:
$20 General Public
$15 WGA members
$10 Student with ID
(prices slightly discounted online)

So I generally stay out of our entertainment section of our forum, but I got a message via our Mod reporting forum that someone indicated that this content was “Spam”. In this case it was “Spam” as it was posted twice in the same thread, however it was the first time I ever seen or read it. It did publish yesterday. The title in the Onion is ‘Obama Depressed, Distant Since ‘Battlestar Galactica’ Series Finale‘. It features Obama reading the Battlestar Forum.

I saved the page for posterity, but here is a screenshot of it:

Obama reading 'BSF'

Very cool find!

We were contacted by a high ranking public relations person from G4 to alert us to a special segment on last night’s episode of Attack of the Show.  Grace Park, who plays Sharon on BSG, stopped by the show for a bit to answer fan mail and questions about Battlestar Galactica.

G4 has been kind enough to allow us to show Grace’s segment to all of you using our blogs, wiki, and forum.  You can view the segment below.  Many thanks to G4 for granting us permission to do this.  Hope you enjoy.

Thanks,
Jonathan

continue reading this entry »

Tonight I upgraded this blog to 2.7, updated and installed new plugins, and cleared out all the current subscribed users that were part of this site. This last part you must be wondering about…. about half of the users were bots. I didn’t have time to look over each one, but I did look to see if any had posted any comments. Since there was none, I decided that I go ahead and delete them all. There is a new registration system in place as the old one didn’t do much for us.

So if you want to sign up, go back and do so. You will need to confirm your email address within 5 days otherwise the account will be purged from the system.

Well.. after hours of tinkering with our new server upgrade, everything is up and running smoothly. As we speak, 8GB of ram is currently running on the server with only half of it being used and we have about 4000 active connections on the server.

I will be continuing to monitor the situation over the next few hours.

I found a script that I didn’t knew exist in the MediaWiki maintenance folder for such a long time. The script easily changed everybody’s old and invalid skins to the skins that are now active. Because I didn’t know anyone preference I have reset everyone back to the default “Battlestar” skin.

With that being done you shouldn’t have anymore errors when trying to log into the wiki. Sorry for the very very long delay. There was over 1500 users using old skins.. and that was just on the English wiki.

That’s right folks. This morning been all about getting the servers in check and running smoothly for the final season of Battlestar Galactica. As I speak this is what is going on right now and what has been completed.

• Battlestar Forum – Upgraded to 3.8.0.
• Battlestar Blog – Upgraded to 2.7.0.
• Battlestar Wiki – Currently uploading and upgraded to version 1.13.3

The wiki is what is taking the longest. If you are at the wiki right now trying to edit or post something, you will notice my sign while I do it so I can work without wondering what is going on. There are other things that will be going on soon and as Joe has already pointed out some things have already been done.

The forum and the blog will get their 3.0 makeover before Jan. 16 with new designs and new “perks” before the start of the season. The wiki itself has already gotten those, minus the fact that I need to create the heads for the light skin versions. The blog (the one your reading right now) will get the biggest design change. So stay tuned for that. If you notice any problems, after the upgrading is complete please post in the areas designated for that site so we can keep track of all the changes and problems.

That’s about it. Take are and have a happy 4.5 season!

As a result of removing the monobook series skins, users using those skins will see a “blank page”. We’re working on resetting everyone’s preferences, but in the meantime please use the following workaround, as Gordon suggested. Here’s the fix:

You can fix the problem by going to this URL while logged in:
http://en.battlestarwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Preferences&useskin=battlestar
This will take you to your preferences page and temporarily override the skin. Once there, select one of the available skins and save your changes, which will update your preferences in our database.

We apologize for the inconvenience and hope you have had a spendid New Yahren so far.

Good hunting!