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GPF

GPF, Gadgets, Technology, Webcomics
Why there isn’t (and likely never will be) a GPF iPhone app
November 30th, 2009 (3 months, 1 week ago) by Jeff | Permalink | 3 Core Dumps

There’s an interesting trend in webcomics for a push onto mobile devices. I think it started with Clickwheel.com (which apparently no longer exists, hence no link), which tried to bring comics to the iPod by encoding them as short video files syndicated like a podcast. I thought this was an interesting idea, and I was even offered an opportunity to get into it on the ground flood, right when it started. However, I had a number of technical and rights management questions about the service and dragged my feet, eventually losing out on the deal and never following up on it. Given that the domain is now owned by a Norwegian ISP that apparently serves up malware, I’d say apathy may have been the right choice.

Nowadays the hot new distribution medium is to put an app on the (seemingly) ubiquitous iPhone (or its GSM-crippled sibling, the iPod Touch). Keenspot was the first place I remember seeing webcomic iPhone apps showing up, although I can’t say for certain that they started the trend. Since then, I’ve seen iPhone apps for various comics popping up here and there. The one I’ve been watching the closest has been Howard Tayler’s Schlock Mercenary (since Howard and I follow each other on Twitter and Facebook). It’s a curious trend to be certain, and it certainly has an element of “hipness” to it. After all, the iPhone is the “it” mobile device these days. And one thing every webcartoonist wants is more eyeballs reading their comics. Certainly it makes sense to go where those eyeballs are, to reach as many potential readers as possible.

Then a thought occurred to me: No one has really asked me why there’s no GPF iPhone app. Certainly it’s a valid question, and I’m even more surprised it hasn’t been brought up yet. I know a number of you out there use iPhones, as I’ve read your comments and seen your screen shots of the GPF site in the past. So I thought about this for a while and came up with a list of reasons why we don’t have an app, then decided to document those reasons here so I can point folks to one place so I won’t have to repeat myself. I thought about putting this in the GPF News, but since it’s more of an opinion piece than a news item, it probably belongs here instead. (There will probably be links from the FAQ eventually, if nothing else.)

The primary reason there is no dedicated GPF app for the iPhone will surely come as a shock to those out there who can’t get enough of their favorite beloved Apple device. I’ve never been one for great diplomacy or delicacy, so I’m afraid I can only be my blunt, bullish, blundering self. I really hate to say this, but it has to be said:

The iPhone isn’t the last word in mobile computing.

Now, before the fan boys start picking up your torches and pitchforks, let me elaborate. I have nothing against the iPhone. In fact, at one point, I seriously considered getting one. The GPF Year Nine story “iDilemma” is actually semi-autobiographical. (GPF Premium subscribers should check out the Author’s Notes for that story to see how it diverges from real life.) In the end, it all boiled down to economics, just as it did for Nick and Ki; it was less expensive for me to buy my current Treo 700p without subsidy than for me to break my contract with my current carrier, switch to AT&T, buy the iPhone plus another phone for my wife, and so on. While I passed on the device itself, several of my coworkers at my day job have iPhones, so I can pretty much get access to one to play with any time I wish. Thus I’m familiar enough with how it works and all the whiz-bang spiffiness it purports to have. I know a thing or two about what it does right, what it does wrong, and how it’s revolutionized the mobile computing or “smartphone” industry.

That said, the iPhone’s 30+ million units pales in comparison to the number of BlackBerry devices in circulation. The iPhone represents one device, one platform, on one network. BlackBerries are available in many form factors from almost every wireless carrier. On top of that, Android is a rapidly-growing platform; while it hasn’t yet matched the numbers of the iPhone, like the BlackBerry it comes in many flavors from many manufacturers and can be found on almost every network. It won’t be long before Android phones overtake iPhones in number by mere aggregation of disparate devices. And while some folks dismiss Palm as a has-been in the market, the Pre and the Pixi are selling modestly and may represent a comeback for the company. (Don’t forget the many of us who, ahem, still use good ol’ Palm OS, myself included, despite its age.) No matter how much we’d all wish it just went away, Windows Mobile still exists and people are still suckered into buying phones with it installed. And all of this ignores the biggest player of all in the field: Symbian, which runs about half of all mobile phones in the world.

Right there, I’ve listed off seven mobile platforms, including the iPhone. To pick one would severely limit the potential to reach new customers. To pick one with such a small market share (~14% as of Q2 2009) would be even more limiting. If my goal were to reach as many eyeballs as possible, why would I focus on one tiny segment of the market, simply because it’s the one everyone is talking about at the moment? After all, everyone might be talking about something else in a couple months.

Of course, this plethora of platforms opens up another can of worms. My goal with GPF has always been to be as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. Although the comic is (currently) confined to the English speaking world, it is available to just about anyone with a Web browser. I carefully designed the site to be as cross-browser compatible as possible, sometimes even sticking with older technologies longer than I should so the site will keep working in older browsers. If nothing else, it degrades gracefully and is still functional if you don’t have something top of the line. For that matter, thanks t0 our Oh No Robot transcriptions, you can even read 95+% of the archives with a text browser! That also means screen readers for the visually impaired can be used to enjoy the strip. It’s not ideal, of course, but it’s functional, and it’s helped us garner fans in ways you might not expect.

So if I’m not going limit myself by building a specialized app for one mobile platform, does that mean I’m going to end up making applications for all mobile platforms? No, that too is an exercise in futility. Every mobile platform has its own SDK with its own quirks. The iPhone and webOS use HTML/CSS/JavaScript, Android uses its own version of Java, and BlackBerry, Palm OS, Symbian, and everything else requires specialized cross-compilers and development environments. No, developing for individual platforms isn’t the answer. It just turns everything into a development and maintenance nightmare, one that is ridiculously expensive from a financial, time, and resource perspective. What I need is something that works everywhere, regardless of platform, using resources common to all devices out there.

And the answer, my friend, is the same as it is the desktop: the Web browser.

What piece of software do all the nifty little gadgets listed above have in common? A Web browser, of course. Some make it the core of everything the device does, like in webOS and to some extent the iPhone. To others, it’s just another app available among many. But even the most rudimentary phones have simple browsers these days, enough to grab small snippets of HTML and display it competently. Even my Treo, which most iPhone users would likely scoff at, allows me to do the odd bit of online banking, news reading, and forum checking. While no single mobile platform is ubiquitous, the Web browser itself comes alarmingly close.

So I’m happy to announce the creation of GPF Mobile, the official mobile-optimized version of the GPF site. There’s nothing special to learn or type in; just visit the main GPF site at the usual URL and it will detect your mobile device and bounce it to the mobile site seamlessly. With the exception of one or two multimedia-rich updates, you can read the entire comic archive, browse the News archive, read the forum, or search the wiki. If you are a Premium subscriber, you can do all of this ad free, as well as get mobile access to the Jeff’s Sketchbook and Rumor Mill archives. The entire mobile site is specially optimized to minimize clutter and trim bandwidth, so it loads fast and doesn’t break your data plan. But if you have a smartphone with a bit more horsepower and a fatter pipe, switching to the “full” site is as simple as a few extra clicks. Just use our site to set a cookie (and you choose its duration) and have access to the full size for as long as you choose. I’ve been using the mobile site myself for months now, especially to keep track of the forum while I’m on the road, and it’s been beta-tested by a number of hand-picked Faulties. It’s not necessarily pretty (in fact, it’s downright Spartan), but it does let you get your GPF fix on the go.

Best of all, it works with BlackBerries, Android, webOS, Palm OS, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and… yes, folks, wait for it… the iPhone. I guarantee that bookmark will take up less valuable storage space than some bloated, unnecessary “app”.
GPF, Recycle Bin, Short Stories, Webcomics, Writing
No Writing post this week
August 24th, 2009 (6 months, 2 weeks ago) by Jeff | Permalink | Dump Core

What, no new Recycle Bin or short story this week? Well, truth be told all my varied multitasking has caught up with me and I haven’t had time to devote to writing up a new post or reformatting old content. So no new creative writing content this week. For lack of anything better to do, you can always check out my appearance on FLOSS Weekly, where you can download the audio podcast or watch the captured live video stream. Lots of fun webcomics-meta stuff, as well as video footage of me making an idiot of myself in front of Leo Laporte.

That said, I’m not sure how motivated I am to continue posting these items. The original idea was to renew interest in this blog by providing regular new content. To that end, the idea has been largely unsuccessful. The blog hasn’t seen any significant new traffic and nobody’s posting any comments, positive or negative. With no apparently feedback, either numerically or verbally, I don’t feel a whole lot of motivation to add anything else new. The only other catalyst for adding this content was to give me an outlet for non-GPF creative works, which is an itch that’s been scratched sufficiently enough that it’s no longer strong motivation.

If you’ve been enjoying the short stories and Recycle Bin entries—or even if you haven’t—please drop me a line, either here in the comments or via the other usual channels (e-mail, Twitter, the GPF Forum, etc.). If I hear enough positive reinforcement, I’ll probably be motivated to continue them. If I get mostly negative feedback (or none at all), I’ll probably end it here and not bother with anything else.
GPF, Miscellaneous
Blog Server Upgraded
June 13th, 2009 (9 months ago) by Jeff | Permalink | Dump Core

It case you missed yesterday’s tweets, the jeffdarlington.com server has been successfully upgraded both to Fedora 11 and WordPress 2.8. The GPF server is next, although I haven’t started that effort and it’s bound to take longer. I’ll make a bigger deal about the downtime for GPF when that upgrade draws closer.

Let me know if you encounter any problems with the new site.
GPF, Miscellaneous
Upcoming Server Maintenance
June 10th, 2009 (9 months ago) by Jeff | Permalink | Dump Core

Just a quick heads-up to anyone who cares, but I’m in the process of upgrading the blog server’s operating system from the creaking and decrepit Fedora 6 to the shiny new Fedora 11. I’m doing most of this work on a totally different virtual server, which I’ll then backup and overwrite this virtual server with the new image once its ready to go live. In theory, there should be only a minimum of downtime when the actual overwrite occurs. However, I’ll probably end up closing comments and such temporarily right before the flash to make sure the database stays in sync. I don’t have a time frame for when the actual flash will occur, but it should be in the next few days.

As an even more advanced warning, GPF will be getting the same upgrade (only from Fedora 8 ) once the blog server is stable. The blog comes first because (1) it’s running on the older OS and thus theoretically more vulnerable due to its venerable age and (2) it will serve as a test bed to make sure the upgrade process moves relatively smoothly. I tend to be much riskier with the blog server because it’s less important to my livelihood, so it gets to be the guinea pig for these sorts of experiments.
GPF
So, my characters are now getting real world mail…
February 4th, 2009 (1 year, 1 month ago) by Jeff | Permalink | 1 Core Dump

It’s not uncommon for me to occasionally receive… interesting mail in the GPF snail-mailbox. Most of what I receive tends to be business credit card offers. (GPF currently has no form of debt, and personally I’d like to keep it that way.) During the December holidays, I usually receive a handful of Christmas cards from fans. And on rare occasions, I receive pamphlets and flies for various technical conferences, such as the one you see below, which arrived this past weekend:

What makes this one noteworthy is who it’s addressed to:

As soon as I read the address label, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. This is the first instance that I can remember where one of my characters actually received physical mail. I hate to break it to them, but I doubt Nick will be able to make it. He’s also not the president of GPF Software; Dwayne might have a thing or two to say about that.
GPF, Hardware, Internet, Personal, Technology
When it rains, it pours…
January 20th, 2009 (1 year, 1 month ago) by Jeff | Permalink | Dump Core

Here’s a clarification of my recent Tweet about Diana. Sometime over the weekend Diana, our primary Linux box that serves as the backbone of our home network (DNS, file server, internal Web server, SSH gateway, SVN repository server, etc.), gave up the ghost. I only discovered this yesterday evening, so I haven’t had much time to diagnose the problem. It’s almost certainly a hardware issue. I’m thinking it’s the power supply or the motherboard, as when I try to power her up, nothing happens. The power light comes on, I can watch the CPU fan twitch like it wants to start spinning, but otherwise nothing else visible occurs. No output makes its way to the monitor so there are no error messages to follow.

At this point, I’m not sure of the status of the hard drives. My hope is that they’re fine; the obvious problem appears to be occurring before they even start to spin, as if they’re not getting any power (and that’s why I suspect it’s a power supply issue). The good news is that Demeter, her predecessor, has been sitting idle and collecting dust and has since been rapidly pressed back into service. I should be able to slip Diana’s disks into Demeter, check their integrity, and hopefully recover the data. That’s the core thing right now, getting the data off; hardware is replaceable, data is not. The only hitch is that Demeter is old enough that I’m not sure her BIOS will read Diana’s larger disks. Demeter’s current HD is already larger than her BIOS supports, though, and Linux seems to work fine in this situation, so I’m hoping that won’t be a problem. A worst-case scenario might be to throw a live Linux distro into Athena, our current “alpha” Windows XP desktop, and try to grab the data that way. (Diana’s disks are in ext3, which obviously Windows can’t read.) Both Demeter and Diana have EIDE drives while Athena uses SATA, but I’m almost certain Athena also has legacy EIDE on the motherboard somewhere; if not, I’m hosed there.

Why might this be a concern to you? Well, for one thing, Diana was one of several redundant backup locations for storing my my high-resolution original strips. Fortunately, everything from Year Nine and back has already been backed up to multiple DVDs stored in multiple physical locations, while Year Ten’s files are stored across three redundant drives (two in separate physical machines and one external USB drive). More importantly, Diana was my SVN repository server, housing all the source code for the GPF site. I have working copies of that repository in multiple locations so I’m not hurting there, but with the repository down I’m stuck manually keeping those working copies in sync. The biggest problem that may affect you guys is the humongous time sink this will be for me to repair/replace Diana and get all our internal mechanisms working again. With my day job, two hours of commute, and toddler patrol vying for my time, my comic production schedule is severely squeezed as it is. This is probably going to impact that buffer I was forced to take a hiatus in December to reclaim as I wasn’t able to increase my production, just maintain the status quo.

For those of you who might care, I’ll post updates here when I can. More frequent cries of frustration will likely come through the Twitter feed. If the comic will be severely impacted, you’ll get something in the GPF News. So keep watching those RSS feeds.
GPF
A decade of GPF
November 3rd, 2008 (1 year, 4 months ago) by Jeff | Permalink | 1 Core Dump

On the off-chance you haven’t read today’s GPF, you might want to. In it, Nick discovers that he has absent-mindedly forgotten that it’s his ten year service anniversary. The topic, if you hadn’t guessed, isn’t coincidental.

Yesterday, November 2nd, was the tenth anniversary of GPF. I would have posted something about it, but yesterday was a pretty busy day that kept me away from the computer most of the day. I also meant to have a GPF News item up for today but, well… you get the idea.

I… don’t know what to say about it. If you had asked me ten years ago if I expected to be doing GPF a decade later, I honestly don’t know what I would have said. I probably would have been so heavily distracted by work, a fledgling marriage, and similar things that I wouldn’t have guessed that my little comic had that much staying power. I did know it had the potential to last; I’ve long told the tale that I had over a year’s worth of material written up before the comic went online, and that after expansion and further development that initial year was stretched out to two and a half years. I had honestly thought—although I definitely hoped it wouldn’t be so and never publicly admitted this—that I would completely run out of material by the end of Surreptitious Machinations. That obviously wasn’t the case. I thought the same thing about To Thine Own Self… and the comic just kept on going. Whether it’s because GPF is so flexible and well written that it endures change, or I’m so stubborn and hard-headed that inherently refuse to give up, I’ll let you decide.

I suppose that if I sat and gazed into my navel long enough, I could come up with all sorts of philosophical musings and misty-eyed nostalgia. I’m, um, a little too busy for that, I’m afraid. So for now there’s just a slightly fancier title graphic on the main page, and that’s about it. If I can come up with anything more celebratory, I’ll make sure to post about it, either here or in the News. If you’d like to post something celebratory or nostalgic, there’s already an anniversary thread on the GPF forum and, of course, comments attached to this post.
GPF, Personal
A little bit of name dropping goes a long way…
October 7th, 2008 (1 year, 5 months ago) by Jeff | Permalink | Dump Core

Over the years, I’ve mentioned a lot of celebrities in GPF. Some have only been mentioned in passing, some have had brief cameos, while others have practically become characters in their own right. Other than a brief run-in with Tracy Scoggins at Dragon*Con 2000, I have not had the honor of meeting in person any celebrity I’ve mentioned, cameoed, or parodied. (Scoggins’ brief mention in GPF is here.) I certainly haven’t had any celebrity contact me concerning GPF; I’m still waiting for Sean Connery’s lawyers to threaten me over his portrayal in the strip, but that’s about as close as I thought I’d get.

Well, I guess I was about due.

On September 26, I drew what I thought would be just another innocuous continuation in the Harry Barker and the Napier’s Bones parody. I had reached the point where in the original Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone, the children managed to social engineer Hagrid (played in my parody by Dexter) to find out how to get past the three-headed dog Fluffy. In the original, Hargid reveals that Fluffy is lulled to sleep by music; this is a play, of course, on the classic myth of Orpheus, who entered into Hades by putting the three-headed dog Cerberus to sleep with his lyre. In the chain from myth to parody, Cerberus → Fluffy → Kerberos, a robotic three-headed guard dog who is deactivated with the passphrase “Play Harp.mp3!”

I came up with this little chain of geeky reasoning to arrive at what I hoped would be a pretty funny joke. Unfortunately, I was at first at a loss to explain exactly how the kids would get Dexter to reveal the passphrase. In the original, Hagrid has a tendency to blurt out things unintentionally, a trait Dexter does not necessarily share. So I thought I should come up with something that would appeal to his geek nature, something so tantalizing that he would forget all sense of security protocol and blurt out the passphrase in a desperate bid of nerdy desire. Dex, of course, is GPF’s resident expert in all things sci-fi—he has a shrine to Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas in his apartment—so perhaps if Harry and his friends could find something Dexter would covet above all things, he would give up the passphrase without a second thought.

I’m not sure exactly what chain of events led to the epiphany, but somehow my thoughts wandered to Dexter’s love of Star Trek and then to “The City on the Edge of Forever”, perhaps the most famous and popular episode of the classic series. This story, of course, is the only Star Trek episode penned by Harlan Ellison, the prolific speculative fiction author, and the story of the grudge between he and Gene Roddenberry over the script for this episode is almost legendary. Ellison’s anger over the changes Roddenberry and his staff made to his original script led Ellison to disown the story. (Ellison has many times in the past had his screenwriting credit changed to “Cordwainer Bird” on projects that he no longer wished to be associated with. Roddenberry refused to allow him to change the credit on this episode, which may have inadvertently added to its legendary status.) This combined with the fact that the story is so beloved by fans and listed in many places among one of the top TV episodes of all time (both Roddenberry and William Shatner listed it as one of their favorites) makes it a unique jewel in the Star Trek crown. And that’s when the idea struck me: what else would be more tantalizing to Dexter, the Star Trek geek of Star Trek geeks, than to come across an unproduced Star Trek script from the author of the most famous episode of all time? Of course, the script turns out to be bogus—it’s really Harry’s database homework—but Dexter will find this out far too late and the damage is already done.

The comic, as previous stated, went “live” on September 26. At first, it garnered little apparently attention; the following strip with the “Harp.mp3″ line generated more immediate feedback due to the Orpheus reference. (Unfortunately, I have to pass credit to J. K. Rowling for that idea.) But then, on September 30th, I received an e-mail from Steve Barber… the moderator of the forums on Harlan Ellison’s site. Somehow, some way, Mr. Ellison heard about my little mention of him in the strip and wanted to speak to me about it. I found this especially surprising, first because I didn’t think someone of such notoriety would come across my little comic and second because I had read (on his Wikipedia page) of his “substantial distaste for personal computers and most of the internet”. Thus, someone must have pointed the reference out to him and he made a conscious effort to get online and find the strip in question. Mr. Barber assured me not to “hide under the table, it’s a good thing” and asked for some contact information. With a twinge of hesitant trepidation I gave him my home phone number and the best times to call.

On October 1st, just as we were finishing up dinner, the phone rang. The caller ID indicated the number was blocked. I answered. A thick Indian accent came over the phone, announcing itself with an absurdly difficult-to-pronounce name and informing me that my “shipment of cedars from Lebanon” was ready as soon as I could provide a shipping address. I couldn’t help but smile slightly. Since I was expecting Mr. Ellison’s call, I knew it either had to be him… or a really, really bad telemarketing scheme. I played along, being much more polite than I usually am to telemarketers and cheerfully informed him that I had ordered no such shipment. Mr. Ellison then announced himself properly, but the tone of the conversation was already set.

We had a wonderful conversation lasting somewhere around 15-20 minutes. He was delighted to hear about my little homage; I didn’t have the heart to tell him that GPF’s readership is probably a lot smaller than he thinks it is. I’m not sure how much of Dexter’s history and character he is aware of (he knew enough about the Harry Potter parody being a special story), but if any of my characters would truly appreciate the correspondence, it would be him. Mr. Ellison was quite entertaining to speak with and I’m far more honored that he went out of his way to contact me than the other way around.

I’m sending him a print of the September 26th strip along with some appropriately humorus and irreverent sketches along the side. (I’d happily send him the original line art if I hadn’t been working completely digitally for the past several months.) In return, he’s promised me a signed book of his own. Personally, I’m hoping its the published original drafts with commentary of “The City on the Edge of Forever”; that would certainly be the most apropos.

Now if only Jeri Ryan would finally return my calls….
GPF, Miscellaneous
Botanists really dig Fred in Ukraine
September 3rd, 2008 (1 year, 6 months ago) by Jeff | Permalink | 2 Core Dumps

I received an interesting e-mail yesterday from a representative of the National Botanic Garden of Belgium. She said she would be attending the sixth International Congress on the Systematics & Ecology of Myxomycetes in the Ukraine in October and that she was giving a “lecture on the different ways that Myxomycetes (Slime Molds) inspire people to make works of art”. Her search of the Web turned up GPF and a certain lovable blob of goo, so she asked permission to reproduce a couple of comics and inquired my thoughts on Fred’s genesis.

First of all, I had no idea there actually was an international congress devoted to the ecology of slime molds, let alone that there had been five previous ones. It’s both fascinating and ludicrous all at once. It’s one of those things you would think would be such a minutia that nobody would bother devoting their lives or entire symposia to. Then again, science is all about increasing human knowledge and at some point you have to specialize to learn all there is possible. (Personally, I’m a poly-science geek; I dabble in a little bit of everything and am master of none.) The second part of this that fascinates me is the thought that there may well be many more people using slime molds in or inspiring their art. I can explain myself away as a weird, isolated nutcase with an odd sense of humor, but to think there are other nutcases with equally odd senses of humor out there is a little bit frightening. Then again, I know how many of you out there read the comic, so maybe there are more nutcases out there than previously thought.

I’ve asked the author of the e-mail to keep me in the loop on how her presentation goes. There’s a tiny part of me that almost wishes I would be invited to the seventh ICSEM as a guest of (dis)honor. I don’t know whether I’d be lauded for promoting awareness of slime mold research or demonized for the liberties I’ve taken with slime mold science. Either way, I’ll bet it will be one wild mold-lovin’ party….
GPF, Internet, Software, Technology
Generating XML Sitemaps for MediaWiki
August 22nd, 2008 (1 year, 6 months ago) by Jeff | Permalink | 3 Core Dumps
Not long ago, I took advantage of a nifty WordPress plugin to enable XML sitemaps for the blog. For those who’ve never heard of XML sitemaps (I hadn’t for quite a while), they are little XML files in a specific format that give search engines like Google hints on how to index your site. They don’t necessarily improve your search rankings per se, but they help the search engine better decide what to index, when it was last updated, relative priorities of different pages, etc. You then throw a special line into your robots.txt file or directly submit the file to the search engine to let it know the file is available. Once the engine knows about it, it will check it periodically to optimize how the site is indexed.

The plugin, of course, makes this ridiculously easy for WordPress. However, GPF gets orders of magnitude higher traffic than the blog does, so finding a way to generate sitemaps there would be ideal. I toyed with the idea for a while until I finally sat down, examined the sitemap specification, and figured out how to roll my own code. It now successfully runs via cron each morning and gives a pretty thorough census of what’s available on the GPF server. The problem is that the GPF site is divided into several parts that are largely autonomous and self-contained:
- The archive, of course, is the main bread and butter. This is what people come to see, so it is vitally important to get everything represented, especially since the archive is entirely dynamic PHP. I count the main index page as part of the archive, as it displays the latest strip.
- The forum is self-contained because it uses a third-party application: phpBB. I decided long ago to discourage spamming by blocking search engines from indexing the forum, relying on the forum’s internal search capabilities for users who want to find things. Since search engines were being blocked anyway, I decided the forum didn’t need a sitemap; that would just be a waste of processing time.
- The wiki, however, is slowly becoming a vital part of the site. It replaces the old cast pages and adds tons more GPF metadata in a convenient, easily searchable form. I wanted to make sure that got included too. The GPF Wiki runs MediaWiki, the same software that powers Wikipedia. As far as I know, MediaWiki does not include any internal mechanism for generating XML sitemaps nor are there any extensions to do so. (I could easily be wrong, however; I’ll admit my research on this was extremely limited.)
- Then there’s everything else. The GPF site beyond the two pre-packaged items above is completely custom-built PHP, so there’s no one to blame for that mess but myself.
Ignoring the forum, that left me three major sub-projects for creating sitemaps. It’s easy enough to segregate these into separate files and tie them together using a “sitemap index” file, so that wasn’t a problem. The archive would just be a formatted dump of the archive database, deriving approximate update times from the posting date. The bulk of the rest of the site could be done by stepping through the file structure of the site and taking note of every HTML or PHP file and its last modification time (conveniently ignoring certain files and directories that don’t need to be counted, like access-restricted Premium pages). And that leaves the wiki.

I managed to come up with a decent wiki sitemap routine that I thought I’d share, just in case someone else might be interested. Of course, it’s not likely to be useful for massive wikis like Wikipedia—sitemaps are restricted to 10MB in size and 50,000 URLs—but something small like the GPF Wiki would be easy to submit and index. It was built using MediaWiki 1.12.0; I am uncertain what database changes may be needed for older or newer versions. Here’s my current process:

I only want to index relevant pages, including category pages. The relevant database table for this is “page”. (How… convenient). Unfortunately, this table also contains things like redirects and images. Each image has its own “page” assigned to it; try clicking on an image in Wikipedia or in the GPF Wiki to see what I mean. The time stamp of the latest revision, however, is stored in the “revision” table, joined to the page table by the latest revision ID number. So a good starting bit of SQL would be:

select p.page_title, r.rev_timestamp from page p, revision r where p.page_latest = r.rev_id and p.page_is_redirect = 0 and p.page_title not like '%.gif' and p.page_title not like '%.png' and p.page_title not like '%.jpg';

Unfortunately, this also returns a few meta pages like the sidebar and editing pages. Before selecting, I define a look-up hash of titles I want to avoid and as I loop through the results I just skip those.

The title, of course, is both the displayed title and the input portion of the URL that uniquely identifies the page. Thus, knowing the base URL (http://www.gpf-comics.com/wiki/) I can easily reconstruct the public URL of any article from the title. As with Wikipedia links, spaces have already been converted to underscores, but the rest of the string needs to be be URL encoded. This is easy enough, so we can quickly build the full URL as required by the XML schema.

The time stamp is a little bit tougher. MediaWiki stores time stamps as a 14-digit number in YYYYMMDDHHMMSS format, always in UTC time. In Perl (in which almost all my crons are coded) this is easy enough to break apart and turn into a UNIX time stamp. I then output the date in W3C ISO 8601 format as required by the schema. A sample of a resulting entry would be:
```
<url>
   <loc>http://www.gpf-comics.com/wiki/Nick</loc>
   <lastmod>2008-08-22T06:00:07Z</lastmod>
   <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
   <priority>0.3</priority>
</url>
```
Change frequency and priority are purely guesses and fudges for mine. According to the sitemap specification, priorities are purely relative to other parts of the site. I rated the wiki pages as relatively low since the wiki at GPF is considered a “supporting” page and subordinate to things like the archive. As for change frequency, the sitemap specification includes a number of predefined choices (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.). Monthly was a purely off-the-cuff guess; some pages may update more or less frequently, but monthly would be a good average. It is entirely possible to rate select pages as higher priority or frequency than others, but I decided to take the easy route and rate everything the same. To apply different values, you just need to pay special attention to the title and assign a non-default value when that title crops up.

Well, I hope someone out there might find this helpful. I’m not sure if it really helps anyone find anything at GPF, but it was a fun little exercise nonetheless.

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