Mediawiki as This Website
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First, some background techical info. University of Rochester, CS Department has a shared website hosting service for all grad students and faculty member, powered by Apache 2 and supports PHP. The webroot itself appears to be mounted on an NFS drive. These factors majorly influenced my decision to use MediaWiki as the backend. Let's break down bit by bit. | First, some background techical info. University of Rochester, CS Department has a shared website hosting service for all grad students and faculty member, powered by Apache 2 and supports PHP. The webroot itself appears to be mounted on an NFS drive. These factors majorly influenced my decision to use MediaWiki as the backend. Let's break down bit by bit. | ||
I could have used a Static Site Generator (SSG) or even plain HTML, but decided against them since I would need a machine with the department network access to publish any changes. This limits my options to write | I could have used a Static Site Generator (SSG) or even plain HTML, but decided against them since I would need a machine with the department network access to publish any changes. This limits my options to write content with, as it pretty much requires me to SSH into the university network AND have a good programmer's editor. | ||
I would also like to write "knowledge snippets" on this website, and perhaps form a connected knowledge graph. This just screams "Wiki" to me -- thus I decide to choose a Wiki software, and start to prune my options by looking at technical constraints and my requirements. On top of this, I would need support of writing blogs (like this article), and the ability to create some more complex interactive pages. | |||
( | The fact that there's ''only'' Apache/PHP with an NFS folder accessible means that there is no database available and no backends like Node. This rules out any wikis that require a SQL server, including BookStack, Wiki.JS, etc. For anything to work on the shared server of CS department, it has to run on PHP 7.3 and access nothing except for files on an NFS drive (more complications later). I would also not have access to the installation forever, so I would need the software to be rock solid. The best candidates under these requirements are: MediaWiki, DokuWiki, and PmWiki. | ||
Now, if I say I chose MediaWiki because it's the first one I successfully set up, the story's going to be boring. Therefore, let's add some more reasoning. | |||
If I am hosting ''just a Wiki'' on any machine that ''I own'', I would use DokuWiki, period. It's small, has excellent default feature set, easy to maintain through the web interface, and doesn't require a database. I had good experience with it before. However, for this website it has two critical faults: | |||
# Unable to disable email support | |||
# Not enough info about making "special pages" via plugins, etc. | |||
PmWiki is another choice, which I seriously considered using. Its main advantage are: | |||
# Extremely small size, measuring only 2.2MB over MediaWiki's >300MB | |||
# Immense customizability: just look at [https://tvtropes.org] | |||
Yet there is one critical fault: | |||
# Everything requires machine access to manage, including passwords | |||
And that leaves MediaWiki, our favorite behemoth of wiki software, unpacking to 300MB and running on SQLite. It's big and slow and complex, but it doesn't violate any hard requirements. It has a few bonus points: | |||
# Decent visual editor | |||
# Lots of features bundled | |||
# Widely used, so there are lots of resources online | |||
Though it does have a few problems: | |||
# Visual editor can be very slow due to the shared-hosting nature of the website | |||
# Unlike DokuWiki, extensions are installed manually, requiring some machine access | |||
# The latest version that still supports PHP 7.3 is 1.38. This will be discontinued in June 2023. The last LTS, 1.35, will be discontinued in September. | |||
Not ideal, but MediaWiki is good enough for my use case. | |||
[[Category:Articles by user Rdong3]] | [[Category:Articles by user Rdong3]] | ||
[[Category:28 April 2023]] | [[Category:28 April 2023]] | ||
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Revision as of 09:39, 28 April 2023
Why MediaWiki
First, some background techical info. University of Rochester, CS Department has a shared website hosting service for all grad students and faculty member, powered by Apache 2 and supports PHP. The webroot itself appears to be mounted on an NFS drive. These factors majorly influenced my decision to use MediaWiki as the backend. Let's break down bit by bit.
I could have used a Static Site Generator (SSG) or even plain HTML, but decided against them since I would need a machine with the department network access to publish any changes. This limits my options to write content with, as it pretty much requires me to SSH into the university network AND have a good programmer's editor.
I would also like to write "knowledge snippets" on this website, and perhaps form a connected knowledge graph. This just screams "Wiki" to me -- thus I decide to choose a Wiki software, and start to prune my options by looking at technical constraints and my requirements. On top of this, I would need support of writing blogs (like this article), and the ability to create some more complex interactive pages.
The fact that there's only Apache/PHP with an NFS folder accessible means that there is no database available and no backends like Node. This rules out any wikis that require a SQL server, including BookStack, Wiki.JS, etc. For anything to work on the shared server of CS department, it has to run on PHP 7.3 and access nothing except for files on an NFS drive (more complications later). I would also not have access to the installation forever, so I would need the software to be rock solid. The best candidates under these requirements are: MediaWiki, DokuWiki, and PmWiki.
Now, if I say I chose MediaWiki because it's the first one I successfully set up, the story's going to be boring. Therefore, let's add some more reasoning.
If I am hosting just a Wiki on any machine that I own, I would use DokuWiki, period. It's small, has excellent default feature set, easy to maintain through the web interface, and doesn't require a database. I had good experience with it before. However, for this website it has two critical faults:
- Unable to disable email support
- Not enough info about making "special pages" via plugins, etc.
PmWiki is another choice, which I seriously considered using. Its main advantage are:
- Extremely small size, measuring only 2.2MB over MediaWiki's >300MB
- Immense customizability: just look at [1]
Yet there is one critical fault:
- Everything requires machine access to manage, including passwords
And that leaves MediaWiki, our favorite behemoth of wiki software, unpacking to 300MB and running on SQLite. It's big and slow and complex, but it doesn't violate any hard requirements. It has a few bonus points:
- Decent visual editor
- Lots of features bundled
- Widely used, so there are lots of resources online
Though it does have a few problems:
- Visual editor can be very slow due to the shared-hosting nature of the website
- Unlike DokuWiki, extensions are installed manually, requiring some machine access
- The latest version that still supports PHP 7.3 is 1.38. This will be discontinued in June 2023. The last LTS, 1.35, will be discontinued in September.
Not ideal, but MediaWiki is good enough for my use case.