[Mediawiki-l] Any leads on a basic wiki setup-and-configure instruction manual?

[Monahon, Peter B.]

Hi fellow wiki-admins,

We all gotta start someplace ... here's where I'm at now:

I presume there's something painfully simple I'm missing, but I can't
for the life of me find a reference anywhere simply on how to
setup-and-configure a wiki!

For example, all I wanna do is:

1 - Sign in as admin.  Is that so hard?  How do I sign in as admin?

2 - Make others sign-in as lesser-editors and contributors.  I need to
see how hierarchies of user-capabilities work before I go live.

3 - Lock parts of article contents so users can add to them but not
delete the locked part, admins can change anything.

4 - Change/customize a few visual things, like the sidebar.

Now, I'm not askin' you all to answer my detailed questions above
(unless you want to!).

I'm asking if anyone knows of a reference where I can look up these
kinds of (must be) precedented things.  Does anyone have any leads on a
BASIC (as in "initial") MediaWiki setup-and-configure instruction
manual?

Thank you so much (conversations so far have been ... interesting - I
can't wait to understand what you're all talking about and see how you
respond here!).

- Peter Blaise Monahon, USPTO/OTPC, 571-272-3950, MDE 4D68, WS01419