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"Steven" == Steven Clift slc@publicus.net writes:

Steven> E-Democracy.Org needs help upgrading MediaWiki from 1.4.5 to Steven> the current stable release at Steven> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download

I presume you mean up to 1.5.4, which is the version I've just set up (minimal content yet) at http://www.cunningham.me.uk/mlowiki.

Steven> We are a small non-profit with a limited budget, but I can Steven> offer a small honorarium if needed.

If I can do it in 10 hours or less, we'll call it a donation.

Steven> Most importantly we need help with anti-spam techniques like Steven> the installation of Steven> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bad_Behavior and whatever Steven> else is recommended.

I'm no expert in this area, so you may find someone else better equipped to help out with this part - and if they can do the whole thing, I won't be offended.

My own background in Computing can be found at http://www.cunningham.me.uk/cv.doc

Can you let me know

1) What your hosting environment is? Specifically, do you have a dedicated server with command line access? And do you have sufficient space to create a copy of the wiki files and database on that server to dry-run the upgrade?

2) Have you modified the existing Wiki software in any way? It looks pretty vanilla to me, but there may be "under the hood" things that I haven't found yet.

3) The size of the database?

I'd propose that we copy the existing wiki and database, upgrade that, and then test it out, and then repeat the process with the live database locked out - the last step being to point the real website to the upgraded database. That way we can't lose anything!

Let me know if you're interested in proceeding and what kind of timescales you have in mind for getting this done.

Andy