| | |  | Software Engineering | Home » » » Mediawiki (Wikipedia and Beyond) | | | | | | | Product Promotions: | | | | | Description: | | "A good book! It's a nice overview of wiki editing and administration, with pointers to handy extensions and further online documentation." -Brion Vibber, Chief Technical Officer, Wikimedia Foundation
"This book is filled with practical knowledge based on experience. It's not just spouting some party line." -Rob Church, a developer of MediaWiki
MediaWiki is the world's most popular wiki platform, the software that runs Wikipedia and thousands of other websites. Though it appears simple to use at first glance, MediaWiki has extraordinarily powerful and deep capabilities for managing and organizing knowledge. In corporate environments, MediaWiki can transform the way teams write and collaborate.
This comprehensive book covers MediaWiki's rich (and sometimes subtle) features, helping you become a wiki expert in no time. You'll learn how to:
- Find your way around by effective searching and browsing
- Create and edit articles, categories, and user preferences
- Use advanced features for authors, such as templates, dynamic lists, logical parser functions, and RSS, to organize and maintain large numbers of articles
- Install and run your own wiki, and configure its look and behavior
- Develop custom wiki features, called extensions, with the PHP programming language and MySQL database
This book also provides special guidance for creating successful corporate wikis. For beginners who want to create or work on collaborative, community-driven websites with this platform, MediaWiki is the essential one-stop guide.
"I was a MediaWiki newbie before reading this book. Now, many aspects of the platform that were murky before are crystal clear." -JP Vossen, author of O'Reilly's Bash Cookbook
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Daniel J. Barrett | | Paperback:
| 384 pages | | Publisher:
| O'Reilly Media | | Publication Date:
| October 21, 2008 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0596519796 | | Product Length:
| 8.92 inches | | Product Width:
| 6.14 inches | | Product Height:
| 0.85 inches | | Product Weight:
| 1.15 pounds | | Package Length:
| 8.9 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.0 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.9 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.05 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 7 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
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19 of 21 found the following review helpful:
 A great way to familiarize yourself with MediaWikiNov 14, 2008
By calvinnme
This book is for anyone who wants to read wikis, add material to a wiki, or install and run their own MediaWiki site. Each type of user is granted their own section in this book. Part 1 of this book is dedicated to wiki readers, explaining how to navigate a MediaWiki site effectively. Part 2 is for authors, and discusses how to write and edit wiki articles, beginning with the basics and moving to more complex tasks. Part 3 is for administrators and programmers. It covers how to install and maintain a MediaWiki site, how to configure its many settings, and how to program its own features, called MediaWiki extensions. It's a pretty easy and well-organized read in the O'Reilly tradition of technical books. However, if you plan to write extensions, you'll need to know, at minimum, the PHP programming language. This book assumes you already know it. For anything complicated, you'll also need to become familiar with MediaWiki's PHP code - particularly its classes, constants, and global variables - and its database schema. The following is the table of contents, not yet available as part of the product information:
Part 1: Getting Started
Chapter 1. A First Look
Section 1.1. What's MediaWiki?
Section 1.2. A Typical Day on a MediaWiki Site
Section 1.3. When to Use MediaWiki
Section 1.4. When Not to Use MediaWiki
Section 1.5. Additional Resources
Chapter 2. Basic Use
Section 2.1. Quick Tour of a Wiki Page
Section 2.2. Articles
Section 2.3. Editing Primer
Section 2.4. Menu Reference
Section 2.5. Getting Help
Chapter 3. Your User Identity
Section 3.1. Creating an Account
Section 3.2. Logging In and Out
Section 3.3. User Pages
Section 3.4. Signatures
Section 3.5. Watchlists
Section 3.6. Tracking Your Contributions
Section 3.7. Preferences
Section 3.8. User CSS and JavaScript
Part 2: Writing and Editing Articles
Chapter 4. Editing Articles
Section 4.1. Getting Started with Editing
Section 4.2. Creating an Article
Section 4.3. Paragraphs and Headings
Section 4.4. Typestyles and Fonts
Section 4.5. Links
Section 4.6. Images and Uploaded Files
Section 4.7. Lists
Section 4.8. Tables
Section 4.9. Mathematical Formulas
Section 4.10. Escaping Wikitext with nowiki
Section 4.11. Conflicts
Section 4.12. Beyond the Basics
Chapter 5. Links
Section 5.1. Internal Links
Section 5.2. External Links
Section 5.3. Interwiki Links
Section 5.4. Interlanguage Links
Section 5.5. Graphical Links
Section 5.6. File Links
Section 5.7. Linking Tips
Chapter 6. Organizing Articles
Section 6.1. Categories
Section 6.2. Namespaces
Section 6.3. Subpages
Section 6.4. Redirects
Section 6.5. Disambiguation Pages
Section 6.6. Renaming Articles
Section 6.7. Deleting Articles
Chapter 7. Advanced Article Construction
Section 7.1. Maintaining a Consistent Wiki
Section 7.2. Variables
Section 7.3. Templates and Transclusion
Section 7.4. Logical Parser Functions
Section 7.5. Dynamic Page List
Section 7.6. Recipes for Refactoring
Chapter 8. Special Pages
Section 8.1. Maintenance Reports
Section 8.2. List of Pages
Section 8.3. Login/Sign Up
Section 8.4. Users and Rights
Section 8.5. Recent Changes and Logs
Section 8.6. Media Reports and Uploads
Section 8.7. Wiki Data and Tools
Section 8.8. Redirects and Random Pages
Section 8.9. High-Use Pages
Section 8.10. Page Tools
Section 8.11. Other Special Pages
Section 8.12. Special Pages Grouped by Task
Part 3: Running and Administering MediaWiki
Chapter 9. Installing MediaWiki
Section 9.1. Before You Begin
Section 9.2. Installing the Prerequisites
Section 9.3. Installing MediaWiki
Section 9.4. Important Optional Features
Section 9.5. A Tour of MediaWiki's Files
Section 9.6. Maintaining the Code
Chapter 10. Practical Wiki Design
Section 10.1. Adopting MediaWiki
Section 10.2. Planning
Section 10.3. Establishing Standards
Section 10.4. Governance
Section 10.5. Integrating with Other Websites
Chapter 11. Configuring MediaWiki: An Overview
Section 11.1. Administrative Roles
Section 11.2. Advanced Page Constructs
Section 11.3. Special Pages for Sysops and Bureaucrats
Section 11.4. System Messages
Section 11.5. Cascading Stylesheets
Section 11.6. JavaScript
Section 11.7. Configuration Settings
Section 11.8. Extensions
Section 11.9. Skinning
Section 11.10. SQL Programming
Section 11.11. Maintenance Scripts
Chapter 12. Controlling Wiki Features
Section 12.1. Users
Section 12.2. User Rights and Permissions
Section 12.3. Article Content
Section 12.4. Configuring the Editing of Articles
Section 12.5. Maintaining Articles
Section 12.6. Configuring Namespaces
Section 12.7. File Uploads
Section 12.8. Search
Section 12.9. Special Page List
Section 12.10. Database Configuration
Section 12.11. Email Configuration
Section 12.12. JavaScript Configuration
Section 12.13. Logging and Debugging
Chapter 13. Changing Appearances
Section 13.1. The Basics
Section 13.2. Menus
Section 13.3. Search Box
Section 13.4. Tables of Contents
Section 13.5. External Link Appearance
Section 13.6. Page Credits
Section 13.7. Overall Look and Feel
Section 13.8. International Support
Chapter 14. Installing Extensions
Section 14.1. Obtaining Extensions
Section 14.2. Installing an Extension
Section 14.3. Recommended Extensions
Chapter 15. Creating Extensions
Section 15.1. Overview of Extension Types
Section 15.2. Creating a Variable
Section 15.3. Creating a Parser Function
Section 15.4. Creating a Tag Extension
Section 15.5. Behavior Changes
Section 15.6. Creating a Special Page
Section 15.7. Useful Tasks for Extension Writers
Section 15.8. Creating a Skin
Section 15.9. Publishing an Extension
Section 15.10. Other Extension Topics
Section 15.11. Finding a MediaWiki Programmer
Chapter 16. Wiki Administration
Section 16.1. Maintenance Scripts
Section 16.2. Backups
Section 16.3. Upgrades
Section 16.4. Read-Only Wiki
Section 16.5. Performance and Scaling
Section 16.6. Security
Section 16.7. Vandalism
Section 16.8. Common Maintenance Tasks
Section 16.9. For More Information
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Excellent Guide To MediaWiki for Users, Administrators & DevelopersFeb 03, 2009
By Ira Laefsky
"Ira Laefsky"
This O'Reilly Technical Guide provides an excellent introduction and reference to the most popular and successful wiki software for a variety of audiences. Whether you are a newbie who wants to know how Wikipedia works, a site administrator hosting a corporate wiki, the author of an entry who wants to ensure optimal presentation and usability, or the software developer who needs to extend this technology; you will find reference material to meet your needs. Two minor nits, which may be a result of my personal predilections are: I could have used a top-down architectural summary to guide my understanding of the MediaWiki architecture, and would have liked more than a one page reference to Semantic MediaWiki an important extension of this technology. But in being a valuable reference to a wide range of audiences on how to use, administer and extend this technology--the only reference on the internals of this important technology; this book provides an invaluable service.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
Good basic primerDec 28, 2008
By Cindy Krueger
"Web Manager"
For someone who is just getting started with MediaWiki this is a good basic primer. Using this book I was able to answer many of the questions directed to the wiki development team. This book is very well organized and written in easy to understand language for anyone technically minded. It meets or exceeds expections of O'Reilly books.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Handy reference, but...May 01, 2010
By James J. Lisk
As far as editing info goes, there was nothing included that I couldn't find for free in the supporting documentation on the Mediawiki site. The skin customization stuff was a plus though. But I never dug around for that online, so who knows if it was actually worth the money.
Bottom line: if you want to have everything you need to know in one handy reference, this is the book for you. Otherwise, if you don't mind hunting around online for tips, save yourself some cash and hit up the Mediawiki site.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Mostly thereDec 01, 2009
By R. A. Kelley Jr.
Background: I'm as techie who for various reasons has avoided Wiki up until now. Now, I am told, get one running for a new project. So, after a serious amount of research, I purchased the MediaWiki book. I have not finished the book cover-to-cover, but thus far, I am finding it covers 80% of what I need. The 80% it covers has been enough to point me in the right direction for additional digging on-line for other documentation. As a starting point (after you have gotten past the actual installation of MediaWiki), it is a great resource. For what appears to be common configuration and usage, it is a great text. When it comes to fine-tuning configuration issues (say a mixed public and private configuration), it starts to run thin. When it comes to the messy issue of uploads, it does a pretty good job, but misses the mark slightly.
See all 7 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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