That would work, yes.

Hmmmm... https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:ExtensionDistributor/GoToShell "No such extension".... I take it I can copy and paste the files off the web page? Also, how difficult would it be to extend it to allow multiple commands (I have 8 commands I need to run right now; that's going to run up to 9 shortly. I can set up 9 special pages by changing the names but that seems like overkill v. just passing an argument to select the command.)

Maybe I'm missing something about the maintenance shell. I don't want my users to see any of the "bones"; I just want them to click on a link and have things done. I thought maintenance shell gives you a terminal type environment you then can work in with specific commands? We're using the wiki to create manuals, and I want my editors to be able to click a link and create a release version that automatically gets copied to a download directory. The release version is date stamped and the script creates a link to the current version of the manual. I don't want to give them access to the server or have them have to do anything more. I'll look at maintenance shell again, too, while I'm working on this.