JamesBranam's Blog

Wiki Woes

Hi all,

When I'm not sitting in front of a computer for work, I find myself sitting in front of a computer when I'm not working. And usually I;m messing around with something that I shouldn't have started messing around with.

MediaWiki

I manage the alumni site for my former military unit. I started the site in 2000, and it has grown tremendously to include 250 registered alumni. Not bad, eh? I'm constantly looking for ways to improve the site. I've had a guestbook and message board since the beginning, and I've also experimented with live chat (which wasn't so popular). I work a lot of hours for Sun, and it has become increasingly difficult to keep the site updated, especially the contact information for the 250 alumni. So I had what I thought was a brilliant idea: I'll create a wiki where members can keep their own contact information updated. I was a lot of work, but I finally got it up and running. This is what I had to do:

1. First, I had to download MediaWiki.
2. Then I had to make sure I had a MySQL database up and running on the web site. Luckily for me, my hosting service provides a lot of help here in the form of FAQs, a knowledge base, and 24-hour support.
3. I had to make sure that PHP was turned on on my website. This was easily done.
4. I didn't have to format the database, MediaWiki did that. I just had to make sure that the database was in place and that MediaWiki was pointing it it. When I configured MediaWiki I was able to do this easily.

That's basically it. It works now. If I had to do it all over again, I choose another Wiki. I don't like the formatting rules in MediaWiki, and I'm still learning about manipulating styles, etc. It will be a few weeks or so before I let the community know that wiki is available.

So, keep your fingers crossed for me.

Cheers!

--James

Posted at 04:45PM Mar 03, 2009 by branajam in NetBeans  |  Comments[2]