User:Chughakshay16/ConventionExtension

This page contains the details of an extension which I (Chughakshay16) would like to develop 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. Thread link which i have started at wikitech-l.

Features

 * one or more conferences can be organized --->Admin can setup one or more conferences(a default set of pages would be created for each of those conferences and stored in a Mediawiki database just like any other wiki pages). Content and structure of those pages could be changed later by the admin ( or by someone who has been assigned special permissions by the admin).
 * conference can be easily configured with the help of preferences provided on the admin --->Various attributes pertaining to a conference like event can be set up by the admin once he creates a new Conference. Features such as the information on speakers, rooms used during the conference,assignment of teams of people for delegating the work at a conference can be configured too.
 * 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)
 * assignment of people can be done for specific events --->An admin can assign people different roles such as a developer, a committee member,reviewer etc.
 * also creates some Special Pages from where admin can very easily monitor the Conference related features
 * special badges for the attendees of the conference could also be created
 * all the details pertaining to the event ( or conference) can be downloaded in CSV( or XLS) format much like an Export feature we have in a wiki.
 * an email notification system would also be available
 * like/unlike buttons can also be integrated into the pages
 * event management features
 * site user can import conference schedule into their preferred calendar application
 * latest event feeds can also be included on the page like its done on this page
 * updates from other social media networks (like Facebook, Twitter) can also be integrated in the wiki pages
 * feeds from another wiki sites can also be included on the page . For example Wikimedia_News

Architecture and Workflow
There are 5 major modules which would handle the workflow of this extension :- This consist of all the API modules which would be handling ajax calls from the client.All the classes would inherit from the ApiBase class. The role of the classes present in this module would be to manage model objects which are created from the database queries. This represents a data abstraction layer which would contain all the functions for fetching conference information from the database. All the model objects(data object)would come under this module. It consists of all the SpecialPage subclasses which handle most of the implementation of Admin interfaces and other user-input forms.
 * 1. api
 * 2. manager
 * 3. dao
 * 4. model
 * 5. specials

Admin Pages

 * 1.Start a Conference page
 * UI mockup

Dashboard for the conference (even thought its a special page but its look would be different from the rest of the special pages). 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.More details about the dashboard can be found here -http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Chughakshay16/dashboard. Once the preferences are set by the admin via the admin pages, a collection of UI pages would be created by this extension which would contain the default set of features that a conference website normally offers( like welcome, registration and submission pages).

Custom Tags and Magic Words
Besides modifying the UI pages(created by the extension)by hand, one can use a new set of custom tags,parser functions and magic words that would be present with this extension to change the appearance of these pages in whichever way they want. As of now i could think of some custom tags such as, ,. A number of magic words would also be available to the admin to use it on the wiki pages such as,. These tags and magic words would serve a very important purpose of helping the admin in filling the content for conference pages.
 * - which would help display a schedule for the specified conference
 * - for displaying sponsor banners
 * - for integrating an interface showing all the latest updates from Twitter, Facebook regarding this event.

User pages(wiki + special pages)
The extension by default creates a new category under the name of the conference and stores the UI pages in the very same category.These pages would be stored just like any other wiki page in the database.The title and the namespace of these pages would also be set by the extension itself(unless explicitly modified in the admin menu).Special pages written for this extension would carry the task of providing an admin an easy to configure interface where he/she would be able to manage and configure a particular event(or conference), whereas the other collection of pages per conference would provide an entry point for the visitors interested in the conference(more specifically the people who are interested in registering for that conference).

Database storage
(implementation)

Useful Resources
To completely understand the functioning of a conference management system, i went through the code base of a couple of open source ones available out there. Crawling through their code base helped me set my approach for developing this extension.The Wikimania website was of great help to me, a lot of concepts I used above were based on the logic Wikimania was built.
 * wisconDB
 * openconferenceware
 * scholarship template(wikimania 2006) -http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships/Application
 * scholarships code used for wikimania- https://github.com/saper/Scholarships

Other Info

 * My GSOC-2012 proposal - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Chughakshay16/GSOCProposal%282012%29
 * database schema details - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Chughakshay16/databasedetails