From: Patricia Barden webmaster@prwatch.org
Is there any downside to having the URL set up as http://www.mywiki.com/index.php versus the recommended way; i.e., http://www.mywiki.com/wiki/index.php?
Possibly.
If you use aliases to make "pretty" URLs in your website root directory, you won't be able to access other things in your root.
For example, if you set it up so you can do: http://www.MyWiki.com/Wiki_page_name
which looks real nice and is easy for people to type in, then you cannot do http://www.MyWiki.com/Some_real_file.php
(for example) because it will go looking for a wiki page of that name. Likewise, say you want to install some other software, perhaps a photo browser like gallery2. You basically cannot do it, because the aliases used to make pretty wiki URLs will "steal" the URL, So http://www.MyWiki.com/Gallery
will go to a wiki page called "Gallery", whether it exists or not, and your real directory on your website called /Gallery/ will be inaccessible.
So personally, I think it's a good idea to generally have your wiki in its own directory. It doesn't have to be "/wiki/"; some people use the simpler "/w/".
On a client's insistence, I broke this rule of thumb just once (warning her of the implications), and it came back to bite me when she wanted other third-party software on her site, and we had to move the whole wiki back to the way I originally advised her.
:::: The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has been growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself. -- Alan Greenspan :::: :::: Jan Steinman http://www.VeggieVanGogh.com ::::