Get the NewsletterMediaWiki Book Enlightens Wiki Developers
MediaWiki is one of the most powerful open source wiki systems available today. MediaWiki, a book released by O'Reilly about the popular wiki CMS, is prepared to explain how users can take full advantage of it.
Although Wikipedia wasn't the first wiki created — WikiWikiWeb, created in 1994 by Ward Cunningham, is agreed to be the first — it certainly is the best and most recognizable. Either way, Wikipedia would not exist without its backbone: MediaWiki.
MediaWiki The Book
Unlike many other Web CMSs, after installing MediaWiki, there isn't much direction on what should be done next. As a matter of fact, there really is no direction. The user is presented with the home screen, and anyone who visits the homepage of Wikipedia will know the feeling. Think of it as a sandbox that can be molded into what the user wants; however, accomplishing that requires knowledge of the MediaWiki system.
Software engineer Daniel J. Barrett hopes to get users up to speed on MediaWiki's basic and advanced functionality, which, truth be told, can be quite overwhelming. His latest book, MediaWiki, will attempt to fill in the voids.
The book goes into detail about the following topics:
- Installing and configuring MediaWiki
- Finding your way around the MediaWiki platform
- Creating, editing and categorizing content
- Setting site preferences
- Changing the look of a MediaWiki site
- Developing extensions with PHP and MySQL
Brion Vibber, Chief Technical Officer, Wikimedia Foundation, had this to say about the book:
“A good book! It's a nice overview of wiki editing and administration, with pointers to handy extensions and further online documentation.”
If wikis make you feel tingly on the inside, then the MediaWiki platform is one of the first places to look for a reliable, capable and collaborative content management solution. The book will hopefully help those users who are new MediaWiki platform, and, in the process, will indirectly benefit the MediaWiki.
MediaWiki can be purchased online at O'Reilly's site for US$ 39.99 for a print version or US$ 31.99 for an e-book version.
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It's so important that users have an idea how to get started with a wiki. So many people download and install wikis and then never get past that point because of the "blank canvas" problem. At Atlassian we've been brainstorming around this very challenge as it pertains to our Confluence enterprise wiki. The solution we came up with is to include relevant demo content in the wiki when it's downloaded. The content includes a short tutorial on basic functionality and even see examples of typical enterprise wiki pages they might make like a sales team page, development team page or HR site. Sometimes a blank canvas it just too daunting.