I've been creating a job description for making a non-profit ad-free
website which will allow people to setup their own communities where they
can work on solving problems relating to specific areas. Different tools
will be provided to them including a custom-built task management system, a
forum and a wiki.
The whole website will be "wiki" based i.e., people will collaboratively
work together and edit task items which are not Wiki pages. For example it
may be a row in a database of another table.
Anyone can fill out a form and a new community is created along with a wiki
of their own. So each community will have access to its own set of wiki
pages. They may have 5 or 20 or 100 pages. In the long term there may be
100's or 1000's of communities if the website is a success. The URL of a
wiki could be something like:
en.Solveissues123.org/Community6543/Wiki
<http://en.Solveissues.org/Community6543/Wiki>
The issues are:
(1) User database. I'd like to keep a common user database so people can
login once and edit other community wikis.
(2) Interlinking between various wiki communities
(3) Sidebar content for each community so they have their own navigation.
(4) Communities may be set up in their own language so a wiki may have its
own language.
(5) There may be customization for aesthetics.
It will be like Wikia but I have to reserve the sub-domains for languages.
I want to use Mediawiki and it will have to be customized to a large
extent.
I have different options:
1. Use one Mediawiki for the whole website (so one database). Let people
separate their community wikis by using different page titles for example
[[Community6543/Title of Page]]. They would have to use a similar notation
to keep their categories separate. There will be one user database so
that's good since anyone can edit a page from any community.
The issue are the sidebar and other navigational links and language
options. I could get the installation fully customized and change it so
they need to edit [[Community6543/Sidebar]] to show their own navigation.
2. Use one mediawiki for each community. They can all use the same user
database ($wgSharedDB). Not sure how to manage interlinking here. Any other
issues I need to think about? This may be a good solution since a community
may have its own language.
3. Use a 3rd light weight wiki software that provides basic wiki functions
(editing, page history, diffs). Is there anything like that available or
would it need to be created from scratch?
A sidenote: Any general advice on how to manage the individual forum
creation as well? I would not like to use the talk pages as forums but
rather an independent traditional forum for each community.
Any advice would be appreciated. Or if you know where I can get
professional help in creating the job description for this website let me
know. I can then post the job at a freelancing website to have the website
made.
Jay