{"id":97,"date":"2011-02-04T11:17:13","date_gmt":"2011-02-04T03:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/?p=97"},"modified":"2018-09-02T22:31:06","modified_gmt":"2018-09-02T14:31:06","slug":"getting-started-with-mediawiki-as-a-knowledge-sharing-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/getting-started-with-mediawiki-as-a-knowledge-sharing-platform\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting started with MediaWiki as a knowledge sharing platform"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>MediaWiki provides users with a flexible platform to share knowledge, out of the box. Like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediawiki.org\/wiki\/Sites_using_MediaWiki\/corporate\" title=\"Sites using MediaWiki\" target=\"_blank\">many others<\/a>, I had configured a knowledge sharing platform for my colleagues to share their thoughts within our company. In this post, I will share what I had gathered in the process of doing so. <\/p>\n<h3>Configuring MediaWiki<\/h3>\n<p>There are two main PHP files which contain configuration settings for the MediaWiki installation:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The <strong>LocalSettings.php<\/strong> file, which can be found in the root of the installation folder.<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>DefaultSettings.php<\/strong> file, which can be found in the includes folder.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Many variables are prefixed with <strong>wg<\/strong>, which stands for \"Wiki Globals\". <\/p>\n<h3>Preventing anonymous edits<\/h3>\n<p>For a internal knowledge sharing platform, you may have to make sure that only a certain group of people can be granted editing rights. To prevent anonymous edits in MediaWiki, look for the following line in the <strong>DefaultSettings.php<\/strong> file:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"brush: php; title: ; notranslate\" title=\"\">\r\n$wgGroupPermissions&#x5B;'*']&#x5B;'edit']  = true;\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>and change it to: <\/p>\n<pre class=\"brush: php; title: ; notranslate\" title=\"\">\r\n$wgGroupPermissions&#x5B;'*']&#x5B;'edit']  = false;\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>If you want to limit account creation to your administrators, look for the following line in the same file:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"brush: php; title: ; notranslate\" title=\"\">\r\n$wgGroupPermissions&#x5B;'*']&#x5B;'createaccount'] = true;\r\n<\/pre>\n<p>and change it to:<\/p>\n<pre class=\"brush: php; title: ; notranslate\" title=\"\">\r\n$wgGroupPermissions&#x5B;'*']&#x5B;'createaccount'] = false;\r\n<\/pre>\n<h3>Creating new pages<\/h3>\n<p>Creating pages is the essence of knowledge sharing in MediaWiki. There are a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediawiki.org\/wiki\/Help:Starting_a_new_page\" title=\"Starting a new page in MediaWiki\" target=\"_blank\">couple of ways<\/a> to do create new pages in MediaWiki. Personally, I prefer to enter a page name in the search box on the left and have the system prompting me to create a new page if the page does not exist in the system. By doing so, I can check if my content is unique within the system and if there are any content that I can leverage on. You probably will also want to learn the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediawiki.org\/wiki\/Help:Formatting\" title=\"MediaWiki syntax help\" target=\"_blank\">MediaWiki syntax<\/a> to format your content. <\/p>\n<h3>Editing pages<\/h3>\n<p>When there are existing content, you may want to edit them to include your ideas. To edit a page, click the <strong>edit<\/strong> link at the top bar. Be very careful of editing existing content as MediaWiki maintain a <a href=\"http:\/\/meta.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/Page_history\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Link to page history description\">page history<\/a> for every page and there may be users who are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediawiki.org\/wiki\/Manual:Watchlist\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Link to Manual:Watchlist\">watching<\/a> the page that you are going to edit.<\/p>\n<h3>Changing the main page<\/h3>\n<p>The default main page that is included with a MediaWiki installation is named as <strong>Main Page<\/strong>. If you like the name as it is, you can edit the contents of the page to include your own contents. <\/p>\n<p>However, if you do not like the name of the main page, there are two ways to change it:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Click on the <strong>move<\/strong> link on the top navigation bar to rename <strong>Main Page<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Create a new page and edit the <strong>MediaWiki:Mainpage<\/strong> page to point to it. Initially, this page does not exist and you will be prompted to create one. Enter the name of the page that you want to designate as the first page.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Tweaking the sidebar<\/h3>\n<p>The sidebar will show on every page that you create. Hence, it can be used for navigation purposes. To edit the sidebar contents, search for the <strong>MediaWiki:Sidebar<\/strong> page. Initially, this page does not exist and you will be prompted to create one. You probably will also want to reference <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediawiki.org\/wiki\/Manual:Interface\/Sidebar\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Manual page for customizing MediaWiki Sidebar\">the MediaWiki:Sidebar manual page<\/a> to learn more about the <strong>MediaWiki:Sidebar<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h3>Extending MediaWiki's features<\/h3>\n<p>While MediaWiki provides excellent knowledge sharing features out of the box, there are times when you need more features.  MediaWiki provides for added features through <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediawiki.org\/wiki\/Category:Extensions\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Link to Category:Extension\">extensions<\/a>. You can look in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediawiki.org\/wiki\/Extension_Matrix\/AllExtensions\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Link to extension matrix\">Extension Matrix<\/a> for a list of features that you can add to your MediaWiki installation.<\/p>\n<h3>Learning more about MediaWiki<\/h3>\n<p>There are many things about MediaWiki that I am learning as I progress in my work. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediawiki.org\/wiki\/Help:Contents\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Link to Help:Contents\">MediaWiki help page<\/a> is the place that I go to whenever I have any questions. <\/p>\n\n      <ul id=\"social-sharing-buttons-list\">\n        <li class=\"facebook\">\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwp.me%2Fp245TQ-1z\" target=\"_blank\" role=\"button\" rel=\"nofollow\">\n            <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/ph\/img\/3rd-party\/social-icons\/Facebook.png\" alt=\"Facebook icon\"> Share\n          <\/a>\n        <\/li>\n        <li class=\"twitter\">\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwp.me%2Fp245TQ-1z&via=Techcoil_com\" target=\"_blank\" role=\"button\" rel=\"nofollow\">\n          <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/ph\/img\/3rd-party\/social-icons\/Twitter.png\" alt=\"Twitter icon\"> Tweet\n          <\/a>\n        <\/li>\n        <li class=\"linkedin\">\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/shareArticle?mini=1&title=&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwp.me%2Fp245TQ-1z&source=https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\" target=\"_blank\" role=\"button\" rel=\"nofollow\">\n          <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/ph\/img\/3rd-party\/social-icons\/linkedin.png\" alt=\"Linkedin icon\"> Share\n          <\/a>\n        <\/li>\n        <li class=\"pinterest\">\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/pinterest.com\/pin\/create\/button\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.techcoil.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-json%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts%2F97&description=\" class=\"pin-it-button\" target=\"_blank\" role=\"button\" rel=\"nofollow\" count-layout=\"horizontal\">\n          <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/ph\/img\/3rd-party\/social-icons\/Pinterest.png\" alt=\"Pinterest icon\"> Save\n          <\/a>\n        <\/li>\n      <\/ul>\n    ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MediaWiki provides users with a flexible platform to share knowledge, out of the box. Like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediawiki.org\/wiki\/Sites_using_MediaWiki\/corporate\" title=\"Sites using MediaWiki\" target=\"_blank\">many others<\/a>, I had configured a knowledge sharing platform for my colleagues to share their thoughts within our company. In this post, I will share what I had gathered in the process of doing so. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[15,13],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/MediaWiki-logo.gif","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p245TQ-1z","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}