[Mediawiki-l] MediaWiki Farmer

Gregory Szorc gregory.szorc at gmail.com
Sun Jul 16 22:26:52 UTC 2006


I have started work on a new project, MediaWiki Farmer.  The goal of the
project is to make it trivial to manage a MediaWiki wiki farm.  Think of it
as a user-friendly alternative to the SiteConfiguration class.  The bottom
line is that it will allow anybody to turn a MediaWiki wiki into a site like
Wikia.

Here is the quick summary of Farmer:

* Create wikis via a web form (like
http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Special:CreateWiki)
** As soon as you click the submit button on the form, the wiki is created
and can be instantly accessed

* Multiple wikis can be run from one MediaWiki source tree -- no need for
symlinks

* Farmer is extensible and light weight.  Overhead of Farmer is a few string
comparisons and the inclusion of a per-wiki configuration file.  All the
heavy lifting is done when things change.  Farmer is also designed with
extensibility in mind.  All functionality is built into a base class, which
can be extended and modified to suit your needs.

I haven't released the source code yet (I want things to mature a bit), but
I already have Farmer automatically creating wikis via a web form, properly
initializing the database, and recognizing the new wiki via wildcard DNS.

I have been assembling documentation on
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:IndyGreg/Farmer for public consumption.
I would appreciate feedback to the project there, or via this list.

As I continue with the project, I look forward to community input.

Gregory Szorc
gregory.szorc at gmail.com



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