User:Chughakshay16/ConventionExtension

This page contains the details of an extension which would be developed as part of a GSOC-2012 project which would help convert any wiki into a conference like website such as Wikimania. Currently Wikimania is hand-tailored to meet its needs(features it currently supports). With the help of this extension wiki admin can set up a conference with features like proposal submission, voting and registration. This extension would be built on the MVC(along with Observer classes) design pattern, which would help create an intuitive workflow for the admin(preferences) menu as well as for the users visiting the Conference wiki.

Features

 * one or more conferences can be organized
 * conference can be easily configured with the help of preferences provided on the admin menu
 * creates a set of UI pages for your conference ( like Welcome page, Registration page,Proposal Submission page and some more depending upon the preferences set)
 * also creates some Special Pages from where admin can very easily monitor the Conference related features
 * rss feeds from any wiki website can be included on the page
 * updates from other social media networks (like Facebook, Twitter) can also be integrated in the wiki pages
 * special badges for the attendees of the conference could also be created
 * site user can import conference schedule into their preferred calendar application
 * all the details pertaining to the event ( or conference) can be downloaded in CSV( or XLS) format.
 * an email notification system would also be available

Setup
After loading this extension, a link "Start a Conference" would start appearing on the sidebar of your wiki(which would only be visible to admin of the wiki).So following that link admin can set up a conference on his/her own wiki. During the setup an admin would be presented with page(s) containing the preferences waiting to be set by the admin. Here menu page(s) would be a set of Special Pages which were created by this extension itself when this wiki was loaded into the browser for the first time. With the help of these menu page(s) an admin can configure a lot of features like :-
 * event details such as venue,timings and its schedule
 * modifying the read/write permissions for the users

Appearance
Besides modifying the UI pages(created by the extension)by hand, one can use a new set of templates to change the appearance of these pages in whichever way they want. As of now i could think of some templates such as, ,. Wikimania also uses a lot of templates to decorate its pages.More information on such templates can be found here..
 * - which would help display an event schedule
 * - for displaying sponsor banners
 * - for integrating an interface showing all the latest updates from Twitter, Facebook regarding this event.

Monitoring
Admin or a set of users permitted by admin can monitor the changes occurring on the wiki like keeping a check on vandalism, number of attendees registered for the event.This feature would be accomplished by a couple (or more) Special pages specially dedicated for monitoring purposes.So by extending a SpecialPage class, these pages would also be included under the Special Pages option present in every wiki.