Hey,

Unfortunately I'm not experienced at all with setting up wiki farms (hence I joined this mailing list to maybe learn a thing or two).

It is my understanding that when setting up wiki farms, there are a number of specific goals to be achieved:
  • Centralized configuration of the individual wikis
  • Centralized authentication and authorization
  • Shared local files and resources
  • Shared wiki files (i.e., images with ForeignAPIRepo)
With these goals in mind, there are numerous different methods of achieving all of these goals. Centralized configuration is simple enough: just have a CommonSettings.php or something similar, or use puppet or something.

Centralized authentication can be done either by using a shared DB so that the user logins are all the same, by using OpenID or some other authentication delegation service, or by attempting to use Wikimedia's custom SSO service E:CentralAuth. For most wikis, the first is the easiest option and the second is the best option, although it'd be nice if E:OpenID was a little more stable.

I think a nice to-do list for making wikifarms easier to establish is:
  • Evaluate current wikifarm extensions (e.g., E:WikiFarm), see what they do, and how they can be improved.
  • Get E:OpenID to a state where it can be easily and stably configured as an inter-wiki authentication service (if it's not at this state already)
Thoughts?



-- 
Tyler Romeo
Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2016
Major in Computer Science
www.whizkidztech.com | tylerromeo@gmail.com


On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 10:22 AM, Mark A. Hershberger <mah@nichework.com> wrote:
We currently have just over 35 subscribers.  I figure it is time for me
to say something.

First of all, thanks for subscribing to the list.

This list started with a conversation that began at Wikimania.  When
Markus Glaser and I held a MediaWiki meetup one of the recurring themes
was Wikifarms.

It seems that farms are relatively common.  WikiApiary lists around 100
farms that have just two wikis all the way up to Wikki's 2000+.
(WikiApiary is just starting out, so I'll forgive them that they miss
Wikia's thousands.)

Despite the wide use of farms, there doesn't seem to be a "standard" way
of setting one up.  So I've created https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/52721
("Create a Wikifarm profile for MediaWiki-Vagrant") that will help us
capture the "best practices" way of setting up a wiki farm.

Of course, it would help to have some best practices first.  My
observation -- please correct me if I'm wrong -- is that there we seem
to create MediaWiki ghettos.  Developers and administrators in the Wikia
ghetto don't communicate (much) with their counterparts in the Wikimedia
ghetto or the Semantic MediaWiki ghetto.

So, best practices.  MediaWiki-Vagrant and maybe the WikiFarm extension
(does anyone use it?).

Maybe we can start the discussion by describing how we set up wikis on
our farms?


--
Mark A. Hershberger
NicheWork LLC
717-271-1084

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