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

[Monahon, Peter B.]

> Gary wrote: ... Go to Special:Allmessages 
> on your wiki ... a large (as in length and 
> file size) page will display, showing every 
> single piece of text in MediaWiki's interface, 
> taken from MessagesXX.php in /languages, 
> in the wiki's default language.  The blocks 
> of green show a non-default message is 
> used - that is, it has been edited.

Peter Blaise responds: Thanks again, Gary, as Jan also pointed out this
resource.  

In the HTML on-screen version of special:allmessages, that page has
links to each message shown in the list.  When I sign in as "sysop"
equivalent, I can click any link and it will open a page showing the
contents of that variable for edit.  I can change the contents of that
variable to my preference.  Such as, in the special:allmessages screen,
if I click on the variable "yourpasswordagain" to see or change the
message users get of "Retype password" and make it say, "Ooops, please
try again!" or whatever.  

And so on for 1,580 variables (MediaWiki v1.9.3) ... in alphabetical
order.  

I just printed it to ~82 printed pages.  

Fun reading.  

Should I wait for the movie?

However, there are no explanations on what will happen when you change
anything.  When a variable shows the word "discussion" (8 occurrences in
special:allmessages) or "search" (63 occurrences in
special:allmessages), there's no indication of where in the actual
MediaWiki screen those words will show up.  So?  So, change the ones you
find one at a time, checking the results in-between.  Toggle back to
your MediaWiki page you're trying to effect, refresh the screen,
[Ctrl][F5] in Windows, and look for the changes you expect.  If you find
that you didn't change the thing you thought you were changing, go back
to the variable control screen and unchange what you did.  Then keep
searching the special:allmessages page for the next occurrence of the
thing you are trying to change, such as the next occurrence of
"discussion" or "search".  Change the next variable and see what that
does.  I use the browser page search function, [Ctrl][F] in Windows, to
find all occurrences of the word I'm trying to find and control.

Thanks - special:allmessages is truly a great resource.  But, it's a bit
like handing someone a dictionary and saying, "Here, learn to speak the
language!"  We also need encyclopedias and narratives and so on.  

And, of course, in spite of special:allmessages 1,580 variables, it's
not all there is to controlling what's appearing on any MediaWiki
screen.

So much more to do!

Thanks for the help, folks.

-- Peter Blaise