Tag: wiki

I recently brought my wiki back to life at wiki.datguy.net datguy.net/wiki, consolidating my old wikis onto a newly upgraded MediaWiki installation.  After I went through and removed a lot of dead links, I decided it was time to work on the configuration.  The first thing that had to go was the default URL structure (i.e. http://wiki.datguy.net/index.php?title=Main_Page).  I was hoping to simplify it to http://wiki.datguy.net/Main_Page.

I found a page at mediawiki.org describing how to shorten the URL, but it recommended against page names in the root directory, with a link to a warning page.  As much as I want to have pages directly in the root, I didn’t want to deal with the complications yet – so I picked a random letter to use as a virtual directory, resulting in http://wiki.datguy.net/w/Main_Page.

EDIT

That extra virtual directory kept bugging me, so I moved the MediaWiki installation out of wiki.datguy.net into a directory underneath datguy.net, where I could use the /wiki path.  I changed the old domain to redirect to the new location — http://wiki.datguy.net/Main_Page redirects to http://datguy.net/wiki/Main_Page.  However, the wiki subdomain still has the problem that they recommend against — http://wiki.datguy.net/robots.txt is redirected as if it is a regular page, and displays an error when http://datguy.net/wiki/Robots.txt is not found.

I have a much longer post in the works (mentally) on a related topic, but I had to get this thought out…

One of the main things I look for in the software that will run my web sites is something that (once installed) I can completely manage through the browser. I’ll accept that software upgrades may require working at the command line, but if I want to change content or layout, don’t make me edit files or muck around in the code.

For that reason, I think my use of MediaWiki may come to an end. I need to check out the new version (I’m using 1.4.x, and 1.5.4 is available), but from what I’ve seen in the few configuration changes I’ve made, I can’t imagine it being satisfactorily improved in the new version. The latest frustration point (changing the contents of the navigation sidebar) has been fixed in 1.5, so we’ll see…