July 2021 update

Hello MD fans! It’s been another month of huge growth for the wiki and we’re very excited to share with you what’s new.

From 300 last month to 500 today, our equipment pages are growing rapidly. As we add pages, data is being cross-referenced, corrected, and added to our database.

This month we focused on bookshelf units, boomboxes, and automotive, but there were lots of additions to portables and decks as well. Existing pages are also being updated with corrected details, new photos, manuals, and modern-day buying advice.

At 500 pages, we now cover a large majority of all MD equipment ever built.

Since we’re adding equipment to a database, we have lots of sorting options available on the wiki. We have the detailed All Equipment page that allows sorting and filtering by release date, NetMD or Hi-MD support, if a device has a radio, and more.

There’s also the new Equipment by manufacturer page, and the breadcrumbs menu at the top of every page – click the arrow and see all devices or categories under that manufacturer.

Our equipment database now has a dedicated field for “Control” – connections like PC Link kits, USB for NetMD, remotes, and other ways that MiniDisc equipment could be controlled by another device. We’re working on updating existing pages so that “Input” and “Output” are for audio, and “Control” is for data and remotes.

Making an account on yet another site and adding it to your password manager sucks. That’s why we’ve added Sign in with Google – just click the Google button on our login page.

We’re also looking to add Facebook and Microsoft sign in as well, but this will require either commissioning a developer or improving my own PHP skills to connect to DokuWiki’s oAuth plugin.

A lot of people are still coming back to the MiniDisc format, or are discovering it for the first time (especially thanks to This Does Not Compute's brilliant new video). We've created a Getting started guide to cover most common questions and pitfalls. Feel free to make additions or suggest changes!

Shortly after the launch of our blank discs section last month, we were contacted by the admin of https://minidiscdb.co.uk to let us know of the work he’s been doing. Because that site is looking so good, our own blank discs section is on the back-burner for the foreseeable future. The infrastructure to handle blanks is still there, so feel free to contact us if you do want to contribute or have ideas on how to handle the section going forward.

Website hosting (especially on a major cloud service with scheduled backups) can get expensive. If you're able to, please consider joining our Patreon to help with hosting costs. The site will continue to exist and won't be running ads, but any support is greatly, greatly appreciated.

Labeling discs is a popular part of the hobby, so we've added a MiniDisc Labels page to our Resources section, with examples, templates, and recommended vendors. We'll be expanding the section in the weeks to come, to keep your eyes peeled!

We've got themes! Select your favourite from the button at the top-right of any page. Some of the darker themes currently clash with the infobox tables, but we're looking into it.

We have a full backup / mirror of .org hosted in case the site ever goes offline. If it does, we can switch our links with minimal hassle.

Browser titles are now the title of the page instead of the full path to the page - search engines should update the titles in their results soon.

The sidebar has been refreshed with more links to the most popular pages on the wiki.

There's still so much more for us to do!

Between adding more equipment, automating the releases section, migrating data to new fields, migrating other pages from across the web, and more guides for modern user-cases, we will not be bored any time soon. Please let us know what additions or changes you wish to see.

There are 3 big ways you can help our efforts:

1. Use and link to the wiki as much as you can. Social media links and clicks greatly improve visibility and search engine results

2. Contribute! Correct typos, add details or manuals, start a new guide, anything you want to share and archive for the community.

3. Support us on Patreon and follow our social media accounts.

*We look forward to keep growing, supporting the format and the community, and your feedback on the work we're doing.*