Emufarmers Sangly emufarmers at gmail.com wrote:
The nice thing about extensions, in comparison to the way
modifications
work for software like phpBB, is that they're pretty easy to remove:
You just
take a line out of LocalSettings.php, and it's gone. Of course,
if it's
something that affects pages in a lasting manner, then it could be messy...which extension are you looking at?
Currrently I'm using the gnuplot extension (yes, it's probably insecure, but it's for use on a private network) which does effect pages, but a) it's simple enough that it will probably not break, and if it does I can maintain it, and b) since the gnuplot scripts are embedded in the page I could always recreate them by hand and upload them.
I'm also using DynamicPageList, which looks like it's pretty well integrated, so will probably continue to be supported. I'll probably add one or two like that, and maybe one or two of my own (so I'll have to support them myself anyway).
The real problem is that I realize that DynamicPageList is not enough for what I need, I have to go to something like Semantic or Data extension. Data extension is much lighter weight, and seems more flexible in terms of versions (my site constrains me to use older versions of PHP and MySQL), and would be plenty for my purposes. Semantic, OTOH, is much more intrusive and might require some significant hacking to get working on my site. But it looks like a long term project which will likely continue to be supported.
-- Daniel M. Israel dmi1@cornell.edu
On Wednesday 07 February 2007 18:06, Daniel Israel wrote:
Emufarmers Sangly emufarmers at gmail.com wrote:
The nice thing about extensions, in comparison to the way
modifications
work for software like phpBB, is that they're pretty easy to remove:
You just
take a line out of LocalSettings.php, and it's gone. Of course,
if it's
something that affects pages in a lasting manner, then it could be messy...which extension are you looking at?
Currrently I'm using the gnuplot extension (yes, it's probably insecure, but it's for use on a private network) which does effect pages, but a) it's simple enough that it will probably not break, and if it does I can maintain it, and b) since the gnuplot scripts are embedded in the page I could always recreate them by hand and upload them.
I'm also using DynamicPageList, which looks like it's pretty well integrated, so will probably continue to be supported. I'll probably add one or two like that, and maybe one or two of my own (so I'll have to support them myself anyway).
The real problem is that I realize that DynamicPageList is not enough for what I need, I have to go to something like Semantic or Data extension. Data extension is much lighter weight, and seems more flexible in terms of versions (my site constrains me to use older versions of PHP and MySQL), and would be plenty for my purposes. Semantic, OTOH, is much more intrusive and might require some significant hacking to get working on my site. But it looks like a long term project which will likely continue to be supported.
Semantic MediaWiki probably offers a broader range of functions, and thus is more dependend on the current MediaWiki code. We have to update regularly according to the current version of MediaWiki, and it thus requires PHP5. Unfortunately, PHP5 introduced some incompatible changes compared to PHP4, and some customisation would be needed. I would not suggest this kind of backporting if you have a choice to upgrade to PHP5.
Still I would not call SMW intrusive: it is just a parser hook + a few special pages. It maintains its own DB tables, and does not modify the DB tables of MediaWiki. Removing it is as easy as with most other extensions (of course, you have to remove SMW-enabled wiki syntax from your wiki, or you keep a skeleton of SMW installed to transparently delete such syntax during editing).
-- Markus
mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org