User talk:RLambertus

Welcome!
Welcome to Wikipedia, RLambertus! I am Manishearth and have been editing Wikipedia for quite some time. Thank you for your contributions. I just wanted to say hi and welcome you to Wikipedia! If you have any questions check out Questions, or feel free to leave me a message on my talk page or type helpme at the bottom of this page. I love to help new users, so don't be afraid to leave a message! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Also, when you post on talk pages you should sign your name using four tildes ( ~ ); that should automatically produce your username and the date after your post. Again, welcome! – Manishearth (talk)
 * Introduction
 * The five pillars of Wikipedia
 * How to edit a page
 * Help pages
 * How to write a great article

Reply to email: API, developers, and userpages
To answer the questions you asked in the email:
 * To use the API, check out API, mainly mw:API:Quick_start_guide. I feel comfortable in Java, so I use MER_C's API framework when I mess around with the API. More frameworks are here. The developers forum would be mainly on IRC . Otherwise you can check out the various talk pages at Mediawiki (like mw:API_talk:Main_page). The MediaWiki site isn't too user-friendly for someone new to using a wiki, so, if you have any difficulties, you can ask me at my talk page, and I'll be able to help you or atleas direct you to the relevant talk page.
 * If you want to contribute to the API by writing frameworks, you're welcome to! Check out the Client code link above for some pre-existing frameworks to get you started. I don't think there's much of a need for writing frameworks, though. Instead, you might want to try developing js userscripts (I do this quite often, so I can elaborate if you want me to and give you some pointers), or even, developing MediaWiki (I run MediaWiki on my computer and I know my way around the code, but I only mess around with it, I haven't actually developed for MedaiWiki yet)
 * As you're using the API for fetching information, this shouldn't be much of a problem, but anyways, remember that the API is quite potent, and you can be blocked from editing if you misuse it. You MUST check all automated edits done through the API.
 * I don't know exactly why you need the data from Wikipedia, but you can find the full content of all Wikimedia wikis in individual data dumps at . The database dumps are in XML format. They're supposed to be imported into wikis running MediaWiki, so there's no documentation on their exact format. But anyways, you'll only want these if you're importing the entire wiki.
 * If you want to learn how to spruce up your user page, check out User_page_design_center. Those CSS and JS boxes are called 'Userboxes', and you can find a full listing at UBX. If you like any of the userboxes that I use, just see the source code of User:Manishearth/Userboxes (click "edit" to see the source code). Wikipedia template codes can be confusing at first, so ask me if you don't understand which code to copy for a particular userbox.

Most of all, don't be afraid to ask for help. Good luck with your site! Manish Earth Talk • Stalk 12:35, 23 February 2011 (UTC)