MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide

Mizanur Rahman

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MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide

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Overview

Table of Contents

Author

Support

Sample Chapters

Get your MediaWiki site up fast
Manage users, special pages, and more
Customize and extend your MediaWiki site
Create new, attractive MediaWiki themes

Book Details

Language : English
Paperback : 284 pages [ 235mm x 191mm ]
Release Date : March 2007
ISBN : 1904811590
ISBN 13 : 9781904811596
Author(s) : Mizanur Rahman
Topics and Technologies : All Books, CMS and eCommerce, Open Source

Preface
Chapter 1: About MediaWiki
Chapter 2: Installing MediaWiki
Chapter 3: Starting MediaWiki
Chapter 4: Advanced Formatting
Chapter 5: Organizing Content
Chapter 6: MediaWiki in a Multi-User Environment
Chapter 7: Administrating MediaWiki
Chapter 8: Customizing MediaWiki
Chapter 9: Hacking MediaWiki
Chapter 10: MediaWiki Maintenance
Chapter 11: Cool Hacks
Index

Preface

Chapter 1: About MediaWiki
- Wikipedia
- Wiki
  - When to Use a Wiki
    - Wiki versus Blog, Forum, and CMS
- Web 2.0
  - Web 2.0 and Wiki
- About MediaWiki
  - MediaWiki Features
    - Available Wiki Software
- Summary

Chapter 2: Installing MediaWiki
- Prerequisites
- Downloading MediaWiki
- Upload the MediaWiki Files to your Server
- Creating a MySQL Database
- Changing Permissions of the Config Folder
- The Installation Process
- First Look at our Installed Wiki Site
  - Haunted: Our Sample Site
- Summary

Chapter 3: Starting MediaWiki
- A Closer Look at the MediaWiki Navigation
  - Navigation
    - Main Page
    - Community Portal
    - Current Events
    - Recent Changes
    - Random Page
    - Search
  - Toolbox
  - Login Section
  - Main Body Section
  - Footer
- Creating New Pages for the Haunted
  - Creating a New Page Using a Link from an Existing Page
  - Creating a New Page Using the Search Option
  - Creating a New Page through the URL
- Considerations before Adding a New Page/New Content
- Page Name Convention
- Formatting Pages
  - Formatting Text
  - Adding a Line Break
  - Section and Subsection Creation
  - Indentation and Signature
  - Using HTML Tags for Formatting
  - Show Things as they Are
- Creating Links and References
  - Creating Internal Links
  - Creating Interwiki Links
    - Uses of Interwiki Linking
  - External Linking
  - Anchoring
  - Piped Links
  - Creating Image Links
- Summary

Chapter 4: Advanced Formatting
- Using Lists with MediaWiki
  - Unordered List
  - Ordered List
  - Definition List
- Using Tables
  - The Syntax
  - Adding a Caption
  - Adding Column and Row Headers
  - Adding Parameters
  - Nested Tables
- File Uploading
  - Why and How to Log In
  - Accessing the File Upload Option
  - What to Upload and What Not
- Working with Images
  - Image Page
  - Adding an Image as a Thumbnail
  - Embedding External Images
  - Creating a Gallery in MediaWiki
  - Superimposing and Putting Text in Images
    - An Old Map
- Using Audio with MediaWiki
- Using Mathematical Formulas
- Magic Words
- Summary

Chapter 5: Organizing Content
- Necessity of Organizing Content
- MediaWiki Content Organizing Features
  - Namespaces
    - Creating New Pages in a Namespace
  - Category
    - Creating a Category
    - Putting a Page into a Category
    - Creating Subcategories
    - How to View the Category List
    - Using Sort Keys to Sort Category Listings
  - Template
    - Creating our First Template
    - Parameterizing Templates
    - Named versus Numbered Parameters
  - Section
    - Comparison between Sections and Separate Pages
    - Creating a Table of Contents Using Sections
  - Redirection
  - An Alternative for Namespaces
- Moving a Page
  - How to Make a Move
  - Undo a Move
  - Swapping Two Pages
- Special Pages
  - All Pages
  - Categories
  - File List
  - Popular Pages
  - Create an Account or Login
  - Preferences
  - My Watchlist
  - User List
  - List of Blocked IP Addresses and Usernames
  - Export Pages
- Summary

Chapter 6: MediaWiki in a Multi-User Environment
- Disadvantages of Completely Open Systems
- Advantages of User Accounts
- Setting Up User Accounts
- Customizing User Accounts
  - User Profile
  - Skin
  - Files, Date Format, and Time Zone Setup
  - Editing
  - Other Preferences
- Finding Out Who Has Done What and When
- What Must be Considered for Multi-User Environments?
  - Look for Recent Changes before you Change Anything
  - Watch the Page
  - Analyzing the Page Difference
  - Provide Edit Summary when you Change the Page
    - File Upload Summary
  - Mark Edit as Minor if Changes are Not Significant
  - Patrolled Edit
- Reverting Changes
- Resolving Edit Conflict
- Communicating with Other Users
- Making a Community Site with Talk Pages
- Summary

Chapter 7: Administrating MediaWiki
- What You Show Know
- Access Types
  - General User
  - Sysop
  - Bureaucrat
  - Bot
- Changing User Rights
- Granting Permissions to Users
- Blocking Users
- Protecting a Page
- Deleting a Page
- Allowing File Uploads
- Security Checklist
- Creating Interwiki Links
- Summary

Chapter 8: Customizing MediaWiki
- What We Can Customize
  - Knowing the File Structure
  - Understanding the Skin File
  - Customizing the Layout
    - Changing the Logo
    - Changing the Footer
    - Moving Sections
  - Customizing the Skin Using CSS
    - Changing the Background Image
  - Customizing Using Core Files
    - Disabling Registrations Using the Skin File
    - Disabling Registrations Using the Core PHP File
    - Changing Default Skin for the Site
    - Disabling the Skin Choosing Option for Users
    - Custom Navigation Bar
  - Writing a New Skin
    - Design the Layout for the New Skin
    - Creating HTML and Style Properties, and Integrating MediaWiki Skin Code
- Summary

Chapter 9: Hacking MediaWiki
- The File Structure
- MediaWiki Hooks
- Using Hooks
- Extending Wiki Markup
- Article Rating: A Cool Hack
- Writing a New Special Page
- Custom Namespaces
- Change the Name of the Wiki
- Summary

Chapter 10: MediaWiki Maintenance
- Deploying MediaWiki
  - Remove all Test Records from the Database
  - Back Up the Database
  - Back Up MediaWiki Files
  - Re-Create Database, User, and Permissions on the New Server
  - Import Database Backup
  - Import MediaWiki Files
  - Change the Configuration File
  - Test New Site
- As your Site Grows
  - Squid Caching
- Maintaining MediaWiki
- Upgrading MediaWiki
- Summary

Chapter 11: Cool Hacks
- Calendar
- Who is Online
- YouTube
- Multi-Upload
- Category Cloud
- Google Maps
- Amazon Ads
- Summary

Index

Mizanur Rahman

Mizanur Rahman from Bangladesh is a Senior Software Engineer at Relisource Technologies (http://www.relisource.com). He loves to work with Java, PHP and other web-based technologies and is a moderator of PHPXperts, the largest PHP user group in Bangladesh.

Contact Mizanur Rahman

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What you will learn from this book

Installing MediaWiki and getting started quickly
Using special pages and domains
Running multiple wikis from a single installation
Incorporating images, multimedia, and advanced formatting
Structuring your wiki from the start for easy navigation as it grows
Managing users and protecting pages from vandalism
Creating new MediaWiki templates

In Detail

Run your own MediaWiki collaborative website with this fast-paced, friendly tutorial, which is full of information and advice for creating powerful MediaWiki sites, and filling them with varied and useful collaborative content. Whether you are creating a public wiki for completely open contributions, a private wiki for collaborating within your work team or group of friends, or even a wiki for personal use, this book will show you all the essential steps. You will see the various ways of organizing and managing content, and preventing collaboration from getting out of control. You'll learn how to incorporate images and other media into your pages, as well as becoming a wiki markup wizard to produce intricately formatted pages with tables, lists, and more. On the technical side, the book covers how to administer users, back up and restore content safely, migrate your installation to another server or database, and even make hacks to the code.

MediaWiki is the free, open-source wiki engine software that powers Wikipedia and many of the other popular wikis across the Web. Written in PHP, it possesses many features that make it the engine of choice for large collaborative wikis: flexible markup, comprehensive user management, multimedia handling, and more.

This book covers the open-source MediaWiki wiki engine from installation and getting started through structuring your collaborative website, advanced formatting, images, multimedia, security, and managing users to backing up, restoring, and migrating your installation and creating new MediWiki templates. The author, Mizanur Rahman, is a Senior Software Engineer at ReliSource Technologies. The book has a fast-paced, friendly tutorial style and uses a fun example to teach all of MediaWiki's key features.

Download Online Section from the book, MediaWiki Administratorsâ€™ Tutorial Guide.

Approach

The power that makes MediaWiki so popular also makes it daunting for many would-be administrators. This book puts MediaWiki in the hands of busy administrators with no time for trial and error, enabling them to get their site up and running quickly and easily. A fun example that runs through the book holds everything together as you see how a real site develops and improves as more and more features of MediaWiki are used.

Who this book is for

This book is for competent computer users who want to run MediaWiki. They should have some knowledge of HTML and have used a wiki before. No PHP knowledge is required for most of the book, although some chapters at the end include some PHP code.

MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide

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Mizanur Rahman

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