Meza

Revision as of 18:38, 8 October 2025 by Admin (talk | contribs) (Added Meza value proposition)

Meza is MediaWiki EZ Administration

For the past couple years, we've been the primary maintainer and have successfully pushed our contributions upstream to NASA.

Meza components

Why Meza is More Valuable Than Simply Downloading MediaWiki


Enterprise-Grade Deployment Automation edit

MediaWiki alone: Manual installation, configuration files to edit by hand, extension management is manual and error-prone.

Meza: Single meza deploy monolith command that orchestrates:

  • MediaWiki core installation with proper versions
  • 100+ pre-configured, battle-tested extensions
  • Automated database setup and updates
  • Web server configuration (Apache/PHP-FPM)
  • Search integration (Elasticsearch/CirrusSearch)
  • Automatic TLS security certificate provisioning
  • Full logs and audit trails for change management

Production-Ready Extension Stack edit

Meza automatically installs and configures:

  • VisualEditor with proper Parsoid integration
  • Semantic MediaWiki with rebuild capabilities
  • CirrusSearch for enterprise search
  • Flow for modern discussions
  • 50+ other extensions with tested configurations

MediaWiki alone: You'd spend weeks researching, installing, and configuring each extension individually.

Multi-Environment Management edit

# Meza supports multiple environments out-of-the-box
meza deploy production
meza deploy staging  
meza deploy development

Each environment has separate:

  • Configuration hierarchies (/opt/conf-meza/secret/<env>/)
  • Database backups (automated before updates)
  • Deploy locks to prevent conflicts

Operational Excellence edit

Automated maintenance (logged):

  • Database backups before each deployment
  • update.php runs for all wikis automatically
  • Search index rebuilding
  • Semantic data rebuilding
  • Log rotation and cleanup

MediaWiki alone: All maintenance is manual scripting.

Multi-site Architecture edit

Meza supports multiple sites in one deployment:

sites: meta, biz, demo, policy

Each gets:

  • Separate databases
  • Individual configuration
  • Shared extension stack
  • Unified management

Infrastructure as Code edit

# Simple configuration drives complex deployments
wikis:
  - demo
  - production_wiki
  
extensions:
  - SemanticMediaWiki
  - VisualEditor
  - CustomExtension

vs. MediaWiki: Manual LocalSettings.php editing with no version control integration.

Enterprise Security & Scalability edit

  • Multi-server deployments: Load balancers, database clustering, GlusterFS
  • SSL automation: Let's Encrypt integration
  • Access controls: Fine-grained permission management
  • Backup strategies: Automated, tested restore procedures

Time to Value edit

  • MediaWiki download: Days/weeks to get a production-ready wiki
  • Meza: Minutes to deploy, hours to customize


Meza offers a complete enterprise MediaWiki deployment with search, visual editing, semantic capabilities, and operational tooling - all from a single command. That's the Meza value proposition.