Information Systems:UniKB Wiki Technical Administration Guide

Overview

This page describes the configuration of this wiki. uniKB, as with any other MediaWiki-based site, is a customized installation based on open-source software. This page is dedicated to outlining in detail these custom changes from the default configuration so that the wiki can be administered by any system administrator with some familiarity with open-source software.

Installation

The uniKB MediaWiki software is code that runs on top of Apache/MySQL/PHP. Please see uniPHARM eLearning Web Server Administration for more info.

MediaWiki

LocalSettings.php

This very important file is the main configuration file for MediaWiki. The server reads this file in real-time and operates accordingly. Any changes made to this file is automatically applied when the file is saved and the page is refreshed, and thus a single mistyped character can take down the entire wiki (but rather than this being scary, this also means it's relatively easy to fix a downed wiki). Changes to the wiki installation and configuration are summarized in the uniKB Changelog, but detailed explanations for changes to LocalSettings.php can be found in this section.

Conventions used in this file

The top half of the file contains global variables. The values are obviously non-default (i.e. server name, database username/password), but the layout of the top half of the file is mostly default. The bottom half of the file comprises all the additions to the file. This is where the customizations are declared i.e. this is where the extensions are loaded and where extension-specific settings are set.

Major changes

Namespaces

There is a namespace for each department. The following table outlines the namespaces are their IDs.

Custom namespace names and IDs.

Namespace	ID
Accounting	3000
Accounting Talk	3001
Purchasing	3002
Purchasing Talk	3003
Information Systems	3004
Information Systems Talk	3005

Extensions

Extensions are a major part of MediaWiki. As with most community-driven, open-source projects, the principle of having extensions is to separate the code for add-ons from the core code, which is what is officially supported by the community developers of the main project. The downside of this structure is that extensions that become relied upon can have a lack of support as they are maintained by third-party developers. Extensions can also conflict with each other, as well as break after upgrading the core software (MediaWiki base). Thus it is a fragile practice to maintain and upgrade a customized instance of open-source software like this wiki, and caution must be exercised to ensure all functionality survives an upgrade. The extensions installed on uniKB are discussed below, mainly in order of decreasing importance.

LDAP Authentication

Extension page:

Breadcrums2

Extension page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:BreadCrumbs2