Looks like we’re going with MediaWiki which I finally got running early today on a Windows/IIS/MySQL/PHP set-up. This page proved indispensable. (I’d add that you also need to enable the php_mysqli.dll extension.) At some point, I’ll have to document the whole process. Meanwhile, how does MediaWiki measure up to our requirements?
To quickly review our feature shopping list:
- supports tags(!) – There’s a MediaWiki extension called SelectCategoryTagCloud which seems fairly stable. It supports multiple tags and a tag cloud.
- allows for lockable pages and different levels of user permissions – It’s fiddly and requires a fair bit of editing of .php files but the MediaWiki documentation is clear and I had the new install secured relatively quickl. Currently, it’s set up so the wiki adminstrator can set up new accounts – and to read or edit pages, you need an account.
- allows comments – yup
- runs on Windows – yup
- uses
Apache– IIS. That was a security issue. Our tech team know IIS but they don’t know Apache. - supports customisable skins – Skins are CSS based.
- supports RSS feeds (incoming and outgoing) – We’re dependent on extensions and I haven’t sorted this out. But it isn’t a deal breaker.
- includes WYSIWYG page editing – Another extension. FCKeditor required one tweak in the relevant .php file and worked first time. It crashed Internet Explorer browser when I tried to add wiki category markup in the wysiwyg interface (yes, that was silly) but hopefully, very few people will be interested in actually trying to break the thing. Otherwise, it was very stable.
- be more or less ready to run “out of the box” – MediaWiki seems to need a fair bit of configuration but the feel of it is familiar (by this stage, all our information staff are well-acquainted with Wikipedia) and there seem to be well-established extensions for the majority of the different features we may want to add.
- open source – Tick!
I haven’t got the email hooked up yet but I should be able to sort that out on Friday, all going well. Hopefully, the central information team can learn to live with it.
Doubtless there are easier and quicker ways to go about this but doing it for yourself is so…empowering 
Filed under: MediaWiki, installation, wiki
Michael you wrote:
“Doubtless there are easier and quicker ways to go about this but doing it for yourself is so…empowering”
But why does one have to have a will of iron and commit more hours than one may have ever planned?
Fabulous series of recent posts here that I only found thanks to your commenting on our blog that is appreciated. Finally responded. Thanks. Having read your posts now at least I can label my absence as “blogger fatigue” and “Facebook distraction”.
My current favorite meme provided by Nancy White to our Knowledge Tree article is about paying attention to “the space between the tools”. Faced with messaging you about your comment on our blog I confronted too many choices:
- Do I send you a message on Facebook?
- Write on your wall?
- Post a comment here on your blog?
And if I’d thought longer no doubt other options like old fashioned email would have emerged.
All support I see for really paying attenton to the space between the tools and how we best manage and find the value given so many competing choices for increasingly limited time and attention.