Forum:Technical Request: Custom nav-box & Notification templates

 Some Assembly Required!

Hello, fellow Wikiapedians! I am currently looking for some help back at my home wiki of Nukapedia, and I was hoping someone here might be able to give me some template/scripting help/advice. Here is what I'm looking for:

Pip-Pad Nav-Box

I am looking to have a customized nav-box created out of for a news feed of mine that I'm starting up. These are the features I'm looking at:


 * Transparent background.


 * Image is re-sized properly so text and images are easily readable, but still doesn't bloat up any page(s) it's added to.


 * The ability to change text and images inside. (Including being able to add the poll template and being able to link to other pages/sites.)


 * When first loading the page, the Pip-Pad will be retracted like a normal nav-box would be. Pushing a button will slide the screen out for viewing; to take up less space when not being viewed.


 * Using the slider on the right side of the Pip-Pad to scroll down through text.

Notification Template

I have recently created a discussion board to help users at Nukapedia to get into touch with Administrators easily whenever an incident happens, or if they have ideas on how to improve our wiki. The last thing I'm looking for is a template where every time a forum is added to the discussion board, a notification is sent to each of our Sysops.

Feedback
I would really appreciate any help! Thanks for reading, and I'll be looking forward to your responses.
 * Not asking for much, are you? :) I don't really have the time to completely create a template like the one you're suggesting in your first question, so I'll just add a little comment about your notification template.  The quickest solution to your dilemma with the Discussion Board is simply to desysop those admin who don't regularly read the Discussion Board.  It's a reasonable requirement that site admin be actively involved in your w:c:fallout:Forum:Administrators, after all.  Compel all admin to at least sign all threads there within a one week period, and if they miss say, three, de-sysop them.  I doubt you'd have much problems getting people to read the admin board under these conditions.


 * Another solution would be to move to the new Message Wall-required forum system. Under the new forum, you're notified everytime someone posts to a thread you post to.  Yes, this still requires admin to at least post a single character to the thread, but after that, you're automatically notified when there's movement in the thread. Of course, you have to accept Message Wall, generally, so that's a potential drawback, depending on how you feel about MW.


 * I'm not saying that there's no way to implement exactly what you're asking for. I'm sure it can be done.  Off the top of my head, I know you could create a DPL-based template that you could put on someone's user page which would alert the user of a change in the number of threads in the category associated with a particular forum.  But they would still have to actually navigate to a page to look at a counter, so that's not much different than just navigating to w:c:fallout:Forum:Administrators.


 * Again just thinking off the cuff, the key to your problem is that you'd have to find a way to get a notification per thread. You'd basically have to riff on the javascript used for the MediaWiki:Community-corner notification such that it sent out a message only to those belonging to the group "administrators" and "bureaucrats". Then you'd have to get an individualised "trigger" onto each forum page where you wanted the notifications.  So you'd have to smuggle a template onto a page that would read the pagename and send out notifications based on changed to that pagename's length.  The only way I can think of "smuggling" it onboard is to force-apply it through the thread creation box's ability to tack on a preload. So the basic outline of what you have to do is:


 * Duplicate, then modify, the javascript underpinning MediaWiki:Community-corner such that it sends messages to administrators and bureaucrats when the pagelengeth of a targeted page changes.
 * Create, or add to, a template that is automatically added as a preload to new forum threads through the thread creation box. This template should trigger the javascript created in step 1.


 * Obviously that's just a sketch, but I'm pretty sure it's an accurate overview of the process required.


 * Still, you don't really need a technological invention to ensure participation in the forums. What you actually need is leadership on your wiki stressing the fact that forum involvement is a requirement of an admin. Once people get in the habit of checking the forums at least weekly, you'll start to see an acceptable level of involvement.  15:56: Tue 18 Sep 2012