Wiki version: 1.3beta2
We're building our wiki enthusiastically and have come across the warning that a file should not exceed 32K because some browsers may not be able to edit them.
So far, the volunteer who has been loading the large files has not had a problem editing these larger files, but was concerned with the warning.
Is the only reason for the limiting of file size due to the editing or is there another issue we should be concerned with -- such as storage or search performance?
Thanks,
Debi
AlphabetDP@aol.com wrote:
Is the only reason for the limiting of file size due to the editing or is there another issue we should be concerned with -- such as storage or search performance?
The 32k warning is specifically about browsers that cut off edited text at 32k (old Netscape, IE on the Mac, some others perhaps). This is only a warning, however, and not a limit in the wiki. Theoretically the maximum size of a wiki page in MediaWiki is 16 megabytes (stored in a MEDIUMTEXT column).
I wouldn't recommend you actually approach 16mb, though. :) Naturally, the longer pages get, the slower it will be to deal with them and the more disk space is required to store them. If you have a strict memory_limit set in PHP, very long pages may simply kill the script.
Note that currently we don't have diff-based storage; when you make a change to a page the entire previous revision is stored in whole. (Consider enabling $wgCompressOld if you have zlib support in PHP; this will reduce old text requirements by roughly half.)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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