MediaWiki/Presentation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences

1. DONE Do slides on s5 so I can play and distribute the slides
2. DONE write an extension that creates an s5 slideshow from mw article(s)
3. DONE Ask Andy Oram for the O'Reilly MediaWiki book
4. Write outline for Mark
5. Complete presentation
   1. Images
   2. Video
6. Rehearse and Repeat
7. Record to video for blogging

Intro

MediaWiki is the free software (GPL) that runs Wikipedia under the auspices of the Wikimedia Foundation.

I'm Greg Rundlett, a free software advocate who lives in Newburyport, MA with my wife and two sons. I'm here to show you a lot of things about the wiki system called MediaWiki and hope that you'll take away a lot from this presentation. The great thing about sharing knowledge; like sharing free software; is that you can take away as much as you possibly can and I may take away an even greater knowledge than I started with just from our sharing.

Oh, and I do have some tangible free and cool stuff too. Freebies (books, commons)

Using it

I'm not going into a detailed comparison of various wikis, trying to argue which is best. But I'll point out a few reasons why you should care about MediaWiki in case you don't know.

It's the most popular wiki in the world. In practical terms that means people you hire will know mediawiki. The growth is exponential. The quality is excellent. Does your wiki have conferences? Does your wiki have a foundation to keep it going?

I do want to point out that MediaWiki does not use words in order to make a link. This means a lot to all the Irish people of the world, and also the marketers who seem pretty convinced of the coolness of McWords like ThinkPad, etc.

MediaWiki syntax is easy to learn, and easy to use. In fact, you might already be using it without even knowing it.

• this
• is
• a list

and

1. Family
2. Community
3. Work
4. Country

is an ordered list.

http://example.com links are automatic and by using a simple bracket notation, you can make them prettier and more meaningful <nowki>See the kids in their Halloween costumes</nowiki> See the kids in their Halloween costumes

• External editor
• Wysiwyg editor

WikEd is a full wysiwyg editor with special features for MediaWiki. You can install it for yourself in a single browser as a user script http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/12529 or you can install it into your mediawiki installation.

• Style sheets and
• Use this http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/6372 greasemonkey script to show any mediawiki page as a presentation

WikEd

• Wikicode syntax highlighting
• Pasting, import, and conversion of formatted text, e.g. from Microsoft-Word and web pages
• Regular expression search and replace
• Edit preview and show changes on the same page without reloading
• Fullscreen editing mode
• Single-click fixing of common mistakes
• History for summary, search, and replace fields
• Jump to selected heading
• Type-ahead find
• Support for many languages
• Improved diff display
• Follow links and wiki-links (ctrl-click)
• Runs automatically on every MediaWiki installation when installed as a local Greasemonkey user script

For more details, see the WikEd homepage

Features

1. Recent Changes
2. Watchlist
3. Preferences
4. Automatic TOC
5. Section editing
6. Magic words

__NOTOC__, __TOC__ #REDIRECT __HIDDENCAT__

1. Variables

{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} {{NUMBEROFEDITS}} {{NUMBEROFUSERS}}

1. Special pages

[[Special:ListGroupRights]] Image searching

1. Protection

Creating Structure

1. Wikifarm
2. Namespaces

   1. Main
      What is sounds like, there is no need to specify this namespace when making links
   2. Image
      Used for all file uploads, whether image, video, sound, doc or whatever. Each upload creates it's own article within this namespace
   3. Project
      Used as a "About Us" namespace -- not used for the main content of your wiki, but normally reserved for pages about the project which created the wiki.
   4. Help
      What it sounds like, this namespace is
   5. Template
   6. Category
   7. Special
   8. MediaWiki
      MediaWiki:Sidebar

1. Subpages
2. Templates "transclusion"

<noinclude> </noinclude> <includeonly></includeonly> show example.

1. 1. arguments
   2. Templates used on this page
   3. copying from mediawiki Special:ExpandTemplates
2. Categories
3. Navigation (talk about in Administration)

Administering it

• Custom menu

Developing it

• Theming
• Extensions
• Conversion of existing wikis and documents Format conversion

Theming

The quickest thing you do is change the menu and the logo

Extensions

1. The Manual
2. An incomplete list of extensions

So many examples, which ones to highlight?

1. Case Western University's Google Map Extension

Any wiki site you visit, you can see the installed extensions by viewing the Special:Version page

• http://wiki.case.edu/Special:Version

Getting it, Installing it

use svn

In Production

Creating Slideshows

MediaWiki/Slideshow

<slide>flower</slide> will create a nice slideshow from http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:BR/S5_slide_for_mediawiki_documentation/en

Setup for an intranet and/or KB

• Namespaces
• Wiki farm ala Drupal multisite

Publishing

Wiki is quick markup. Feed recent changes into publishing system that moves those out into front-end -- even static.

One Hack

Uselang (show image)

• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:UploadForm.js/Documentation
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Redesigning_the_upload_form
• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/Manual:Uselang_hack

Resources

• Book
• IRC
• Manual
• Source
• More user scripts

CamelCase

General Public License = A sane copyright license