[Mediawiki-l] Any leads on a basic wiki setup-and-configure instruction manual?

[Monahon, Peter B.]

Thanks folks.  I asked for "a basic wiki setup-and-configure instruction
manual".  I see now that what's missing is an authored manual for the
total MediaWiki experience.  I found web resources to be scattered at
best, misleading or missing at worst.  I found a Wiki admin book that
has nothing on maintenance, backup and restore, taking inventory to
confirm successful and complete installation, and so on.  The book is
properly named "admin's" manual, and presumes someone else has setup and
configured the system, and someone else will maintain the system,
including hardware and life cycles through crash.

However, contributions from posters here have been insightful and useful
to me - thank you all very much.  I see the problem in documenting a
group of open system programs.  I now understand:

- the difference between wikitech-l and mediawiki-l (though I'm not the
one to accidentally confuse the two).

- that all I need to do on my own system to regain control is to do
something I can't do on my own system to regain control (such as "run
php", "log in as admin", sysops, bureaucrat and so on).

- that "register accounts" means "create account" (hence my search for
alternative authored and edited documentation).

May I suggest that we write a complete and accurate "basic wiki
setup-and-configure instruction manual" at
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Contents - here's what I have added
to the page so far (some of the following text is pre-existing my visit)
- all my 3 additions are red links, by the way(red = page missing, not
created yet):

========== begin quote ==========
This collecting point is intended to be a Technical Manual for the
MediaWiki Software. Please contribute information about installing,
running and developing for MediaWiki.  See also public domain help
pages.  Currently much content is still on meta (search for "manual" at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/ - more than 1,000 references as of April 12,
2007!)  Please expand this manual to include all the other nitty-gritty
bits of info that are useful to developers and sysadmins.

[edit] Main sections
Note: we desperately need a neat, clean, sophisticated group of accurate
and unambiguous instruction manuals for each part of a WikiMedia's life:

- preparing gear and software, 
- creation from scratch, 
- design criteria for your particular MediaWiki implementation
(hardware, software, extensions, organizational structure and
customizations), 
- publicity and community building, 
- ongoing maintenance and administration, 
- crash recovery and prevention, 
importing (to build your initial resource) and exporting (to migrate
your data and to reuse or re-purpose your data, 
- turning your MediaWiki over to the next generation of WikiMasters, 
- inheriting an existing Wiki from known or unknown previous WikiMasters

... and so on. Got ideas and experiences? HELP! Anything in red is
missing! Please add your own new sections as your experience dictates.
Thanks!

[[Preview/Overview of basic steps to building a MediaWiki]]
- Private or networked or Internet-connected computer with Operating
System 
- Web Server software - Apache, Microsoft IIs 
- Database server - MySQL 
- Management software - PHP 
- Customizations - MediaWiki and your configuration choices 
- A web browser! 

[[MediaWiki Basic setup and configuration]]
- Detailed step-by-step checklists 
- Designing your organizational scheme for users, data, security,
maintenance 

[[MediaWiki backup/restore and import/export]]
- How to inherit a MediaWiki and re-set it up 
- Crash recovery and prevention
========== end quote ==========

I'm still trudging along in development and I keep bouncing back to
pre-development(!), exploring at least 3 development systems across at
least 4 alpha/beta/gamma scenarios with about 6 possible gamma
trajectories so far ... keeping my options open!

Later!

- Peter Blaise