User:Evelyn
Advice for administering this wiki site:
Backstory
In the spring of 2008, I was tasked with replacing an online help system (based on FrameMaker/RoboHelp) with a MediaWiki-based solution. I had no prior experience with MediaWiki, but didn't let that stop me.
Phase I
As with most projects, it took more time than anticipated, however, once we procured a hosted site and installed MediaWiki, I quickly became familiar with the basic editing and formatting syntax. Significant effort was spent reorganizing the existing help documents to fit an improved category scheme.
Finally, the help content was imported, and we launched the site. It was designed to behave as most context-sensitive help systems do: when the user clicks a Help link/icon in a web-based application, a new page opens with the relevant help content. Happy to say, this was successful and the MediaWiki-based help system went live in August 2008.
Phase II
Flush with our success, we set new goals:
- build a single MediaWiki instance that supports two versions of the product, i.e. one wiki, two sites
- single-source the articles (using conditional pages, text, images and navigation)
We found that with these MediaWiki features: Templates, Magic Words and ParserFunctions, we could achieve our goal of single-sourcing one wiki, supporting two sites.
Phase III
The one wiki, two sites implementation was in place through mid-2009, at which time we split the wikis into two separate sites. Development in Relationals ended with V6.3, and a separate Relationals user support site was created at http://rn.platformatyourservice.com/~platfor1/rn63/index.php?title=Main_Page. At the time of this writing, V7.0 was launched in February 2010, and it supports both standard platform users and ISVs implementing the hosted version.
Key Resources and Advice
- Resources:
- Wikipedia:Cheatsheet
- Help:Contents
- Wikipedia User Page Design Center
- MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
- For Editing: FireFox and the It's All Text FireFox extension, plus a Text editor (I prefer Notepad++ over TextPad)
- Install these apps:
- Choose a hosting provider; We used Siteground; They have helpful MediaWiki advice
- Because mediawiki.org offers periodic upgrades with improved security and features, it's good practice to understand How to Install MediaWiki Upgrades
- Typically, I upgrade to the new version about a month after it is released to production
Customize localsettings.php for Whitelabeling
The different versions of the support wiki are created by settings in localsettings.php. We use those values in concert with MediaWiki parser functions to show/hide sections conditionally.
Extensions
See the list of installed extensions here: http://lj.platformatyourservice.com/~platfor1/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Version
How to Install MediaWiki Upgrades
- As a precaution, before installing an upgrade, use FileZilla to backup the following to your local computer:
- localsettings.php file
- /skins folder
- /extensions folder
- /images folder
- Change the directory and file names so that they will not be overwritten during install/upgrade
- Install MediaWiki according to the excellent instructions at MediaWiki Installation. Upgrade options when using a hosted instance require this process: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Upgrading#Alternative_2:_Re-run_the_installer
Advanced MediaWiki Stuff for Conditional Content
Read about Templates, Magic Words and ParserFunctions - they are key to building a single-sourced site.
Templates
Templates are used heavily to build a single-sourcing environment. Get to know an love the [Special:UncategorizedTemplates|Templates].
Project History
- When I started this project, the RoboHelp content was six months out of date
- First milestone: Pull RoboHelp articles into MediaWiki
- I tried the robo2wiki extension, but the RH site had many pop-ups and fold-out content, so the result in MW was very ugly, with jillions of tiny articles from all the pop-ups, plus similar-but-different redundant content
- The best result was exporting RH to PDF, then copying and pasting from PDF into MW...cumbersome, but it allowed me to become familiar with the materials, and identify needed art and category topics
- The result was that I could consolidate redundant content, and build a single MW page; These pages could be cross-referenced from an article, or used as a template for inclusion into a larger overview article
- In the following months, I added extensions and learned the subtleties of templates and parser functions
- Disclaimer
- Everything described here was completed from my laptop, using only the resources listed ...no command-line processes were executed in the building of these sites.
eby 21:11, 23 April 2010 (UTC)