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

[Angela]

> 1 - In response to the suggestion that I NOT "bother" (my interpretation) the MediaWiki folks with my inquiry:

That wasn't what I said. There is a difference between MediaWiki and
Wikimedia. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/names

> [Peter Blaise says: Nope.  I presume you
> mean "Go to [[Special:Userlogin]] on your
> wiki by typing "Special:Userlogin" into the [Search] box"

No, a word in brackets like that signifies a link. You didn't say
where your wiki was so I couldn't tell you the actual link, but if a
page on your wiki was at wiki.example.com/wiki/Article then
[[Special:Userlogin]] would be at
wiki.example.com/wiki/Special:Userlogin

> ... however, even "going" to "Special:Listusers" I only get red "Admin (Bureaucrat, Sysop)" links.

This suggests the admin's name is Admin.

> In other words, I'm looking for a MediaWiki INSTRUCTION MANUAL someplace.

meta.wikimedia.org
mediawiki.org

It's a collection of help pages on two wikis, not a ready-to-print
manual. The content is freely licensed, so you're welcome to format
that into a manual if you'd like to.

> I want to prevent anonymous contributions

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Preventing_Access


> Yes, I was reading about templates
> over the weekend and wondered if that might work.
> How'd you learn that?

By editing wikis for 4 years and reading most of meta.wikimedia.org.

> > The sidebar can be edited by any admin
> > at [[MediaWiki:Sidebar]].  Angela, Angela
> Beesley http://www.Wikia.com/
>
> [Peter Blaise says: By doing what?  " MediaWiki:Sidebar"
> brings up "There is no page titled "MediaWiki:Sidebar".
> You can create this page."  Is that an error?
> Do I need to be "admin" first?

It's not an error. You do need to be an admin. The default text should
be shown even when the page doesn't exist, so you can create the page
and edit the sidebar.

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Navigation_bar

Angela