About this Site

This page offers a brief overview of the technology and styles employed in this website.

LiquidWiki

As of Saturday, November 4th, 2006, LiquidWiki is powered by MediaWiki 1.8.2 with a custom skin (see style). The previous installation was MediaWiki 1.6.x with added security from the page access restriction patch. As the patch was no longer compatible with the updated version, I have been working on transitioning to a different access restriction methodology based on the MediaWiki namespaces concept.

LiquidWiki was primarily implemented as personal notebook, enhanced by the usage of hyperlinks. As it's used to store private project information and other loose notes, I have limited access to its 'not ready for primetime' contents. After I'm finished rolling out the rest of the website, I am going to return to the wiki's security to create an open space, where I can share articles and information with friends, family and all.

Blogs

I have two blogs running on this site: The general site news frontpage and the personal productivity log aka Ben's Busy Blog. These two blogs are published using the Blogger engine, but they're on a customized template. (see style)

Logo

The logo is known as "The Trepanation of Atlas" and is copyright Ben Younkins 2006. It's an illustraion that I've explored in different forms over the years. It represents the escape and loss of creative thought when burdened with inescapable and mundane responsibilities.

Style

The style of LiquidBen.com's layout was built in several steps. I knew that I would be working with MediaWiki, Blogger and normal XHTML. I started by working with what I deemed the least flexible medium: the wiki. I took the basic Monobook style and per MediaWiki's advice, worked from there. After creating a style that was differentiated from the usual Monobook, I then exported the style to XHTML using a separate style sheet. After that was working to my satisfaction, I then took the XHTML framework and embedded blogger template tags into it, creating a working Blogger template.

As Monobook is GPL'd, my derivative works here are also GPL, but the art is my copyright.

Yes, I will be tinkering with this for quite a while yet.

 

If you have any other questions, please feel free to reach me given my contact information.

Ben Younkins

Saturday November 4, 2006