Dear WikiTech,
I have downloaded and installed the Wikipedia script from CVS, and have
set it up for use in a private wiki I am running. I picked the
wikipedia script because it is such a well- and actively-maintained
script and it has so many useful features that I'm used to as an active
wikipedian.
Overall, I found customizing the script quite easy. I don't know if
generalization of the script to other wiki applications is one of your
goals, but if it is, then the following would be helpful:
1) Wikipedia-specific strings in $wgAllMessagesEn:
Many of the messages in $wgAllMessagesEn are wikipedia-specific. I
overrode these by creating a $wgAllMessagesEn in LanguageEn.php, which I
figured would change less than Language.php. I was able to resolve this
without much problem, but it would be nice if this array could be split
into smaller chunks, to make it easier to override one variable but not
all. It would be really nice if one of the smaller arrays could be a
$wgLocalStringsEn with defaults commented out in LocalSettings.php
2) Namespace, Interwiki
It would be nice if it were obvious how to override namespace names and
the interwiki array in LocalSettings.php so you don't have to hunt it
down.
Also, unrelated, I noticed after I changed the text for "Recent Changes"
that it actually resolves each link in the text (which I assume costs
database lookups). This seems colossally wasteful to me. People are
not going to be in the business of linking to non-existing articles on
recent changes very long, and recent changes is one of the most
frequently-hit articles, no?
Thanks for your work,
~~~
PS. please cc: me on answers.