Saturday, July 31, 2010

How to add Blogger pictures to MTW

A wiki reader was asking help with embedding Blogspot/Blogger photos in Mini treasures wiki so I wrote instructions for her and then added them to the wiki as well, see Photos_Picasa page. As I wrote the instructions using Finnish UI there might be different words in your Picasa so I hope you edit the instructions.

But this is what we have there now:

How to embed Picasa (Blogspot) pictures in this wiki

Find your photos from Picasa http://picasaweb.google.com (Log in)
Choose the album connected to your blog (e.g. my photo album connected to jjminit blog is http://picasaweb.google.com/jjminit/Jjminit#)
Change your album to be public (Edit - Album settings)
Share: choose Public

Save

Then go to the picture you want to embed
In the right panel there is e.g. information about the picture and a link icon "Link this picture" (or something like that, my UI is in Finnish).
Click it.
Choose the size of the picture: Small 288 pix
Copy paste from the second box. There is a code which looks like this:

...table style="width:auto;" a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo ...

Come back to Mini treasures wiki and choose a page on which you want to add your picture, click Edit and go to the table where the pictures are. Choose an empty cell. Then from Insert-HTML/Java Script.
Enter code here: paste the code in this box
Allow Java Script.
Next
Insert Plugin
Save.

Done! :)

This is how the picture looks like on wiki page:

Lähettäjä jjminit


I hope this will encourage more readers to post their photos to Mini treasures wiki :).

Sunday, July 25, 2010

MTW goes France

Miniature Food - Bonne Maman French Cookies in 12th Scale We started the country theme weeks 10 weeks ago from USA and now we have arrived in the last country: France. France is know for fashion and good food - have you done any French projects? Be inspired by Mini treasures once again. :)

After this we will take a break in theme weeks and have a theme month in August when we are concentrating on roomboxes. It would be nice to have a theme contest - is there someone who would sponsor it by giving a roombox related prize?

Roomboxes gone with the wind

Something really bad has happened - all the roombox related pages were deleted by accident from Mini treasures wiki. Read more about the issue from this page and help us in filling the roombox pages.

I am sorry for any inconvenience caused by this and I hope we have learnt from this case our lessons so that this will never happen again.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Top 25 traffic sources from the last month

Where does Mini treasures wiki get traffic? The 25 biggest traffic sources from the last month are the following, my warmest thanks for all of you who are promoting the wiki in a way or another :).

1. flickr.com
2. facebook.com
3. ca.mc539.mail.yahoo.com
4. nukkekoti.pbworks.com
5. google.com
6. minitreasures.blogspot.com (this blog :)
7. groups.yahoo.com
8. schifka.vuodatus.net (again in the very top :) -congrats Nanna!)
9. en.wikipedia.org
10. poohbeers.eigenstart.nl
11. doreensminiatures.blogspot.com
12. hannajaleijona.blogspot.com
13. a-miniature-life.blogspot.com
14. debbiestinytreasures.blogspot.com
15. theminifoodblog.blogspot.com
16. google.co.uk
17. nukketalo.vuodatus.net
18. search.bt.com
19. google.de
20. millimari.blogspot.com
21. sn110w.snt110.mail.live.com
22. google.com.au
23. google.nl
24. lastanzadigiuggiola.blogspot.com
25. mistercrawler.com

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The second MTW contest starts now!

Wohoo! It is time to start the second wiki competition. In the first contest we were looking for tips for miniature projects inspired by football - congrats Betty King :). Now we do not limit the content but the time - everyone who is editing the wiki during the following week will be part of a lottery. You can e.g. correct spelling mistakes, promote your dollhouse projects or recommend a museum/book/shop. The lottery results will be informed on Wednesday 28th July 2010 (or later).

If you have not edited the wiki yet, see wiki abc and wiki faq.

And one of the editors will get wonderful prize donated by
Marottesud: the 6 Jane Austen's novels
-"Pride and prejudice",
-"Emma",
-"Sense ans sensibility",
-"Persuasion",
-"Nothanger Abbey" and
-"Mansfield Park"),
that's 12 miniature books because each one of the novels is in 2 volumes.


Good luck and if you have problems with editing, ask help from me. :)

PS. If you are not lucky in the lottery but are dying to get the books you can of course buy the books from her Etsy shop.

Monday, July 19, 2010

MTW goes Italy

Italian Feast: Spaghetti Dinner (1/12 scale) Ciao bella! After quite quiet Australian week (because I was offline whole week) it is time to visit Italy. See the Italian pages in our wiki - and be prepared for a contest any day now :).

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Many ways of being part of MTW community

Cassie, Bridget, Fleur, Love, Poppy

Do you know that anyone can edit Mini treasures wiki?

Do you know that you can add links to your web sites (photo albums, blogs, mini shops and other mini sites)? Start by introducing yourself.

You can also promote other mini things you like, e.g. museums, books, shops, brands, cool projects.

You are also encouraged to
- write instructions related miniature, e.g. in trash minis.
- correct all the grammar mistakes I have made :)

Do you know you can add pictures of your minis? You can add them either in our Flickr group or directly to our wiki. See wiki faq to learn how.

Do you know that you can help promoting MTW? E.g. by
-telling about it to your friends (e.g. in club meetings or forums), use e.g. wiki abc to get you started or ask help from me
-adding wiki link or button for your site
-joining our Facebook page or
-following our Twitter account,

The best way of being part of our community is of course reading the wiki pages - after all the wiki is made for readers. :)

From now on I'll be mainly offline until I go back home. You can follow me either in Facebook or in Twitter.

MTW goes Australia

Skipper Love's to Read Greetings from Gdansk! I am here participating Wikimania, yearly conference organized by Wikimedia (best known of Wikipedia).

We have a lot of readers from Australia but not that many information related to the area in our wiki so this time we are working on Australian pages. Can you see why I used this picture? Please add more Australian pictures to our Flickr group. :)

Monday, July 5, 2010

For those of you who have not visited MTW lately...

Hi mini friend

As it seems you have not logged in to Mini treasures wiki in the last months I am writing you to tell what has happened lately there :).

First of all we got new icons and the whole site looks much fresher now. Go and press the buttons to learn to navigate in the wiki again.

Then we started having theme weeks. During the past weeks we have visited US, Finland, Canada, UK, Germany and the Netherlands. This week we do Spain and after that we go to Australia, Italy and France.

And we have started piloting contests. The very first one is about a hot topic: football (soccer) and it will last one week still - one Sunday we will know the winner. To participate you only need to write a hint for miniature projects related to football.

Start following us either in Facebook or in Twitter .

Welcome back! :)

Mini hugs,
Johanna Janhonen

Organizing wiki: tags

Are you familiar with the concept of tags? If not, check this video:

An example with Halloween tagged pages.


What this has to do with us then?

Well, we also use tags in our wiki and now I am telling you why and how.


Why we need tags?

Tags are needed for organizing the data. Folders can help in that too but a page can only belong to one folder.

E.g. in countries folder we have Italy, France, UK...

Then we have tags. E.g. pages with tag "italian" (we use small letters both in page names and in tags):
blogs_italian(belongs in blogs folder),
fusili(food folder),
italian(nationalities folder),
leonardo_da_vinci(celebrities folder),
pasta(food folder),
pizza(food),
salamis(food),
tuscan(nationalities),
venetian(nationalities).


How they are then used?


Go to a wiki page and look in the right panel.

Click Edit tags
(or Add tags if there are not any yet)
so that the space will be active:
now you can edit the tags, e.g. add new tags or remove old ones. There are no limit about how many tags there are in one page (at least I have not seen any limits so far).

So when ever you see a page that has not enough tags for you go ahead and add them. Read more about tags from here and thanks for tagging. :)

Sunday, July 4, 2010

MTW goes to Spain

Poly detalle 2 Hola! This week we stay in sunny Spain - see the pages tagged with spanish and get inspired by this wonderful country. I am not that familiar with Spanish miniatures but I would like to know more as one of our most active Flickr group members Lola, is always showing so cool stuff. Please show us more Spanish projects!