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 thus a single mistyped character can take down the entire wiki (rather than being scary, this also means it's relatively easy to fix a downed wiki).

Customizations

Timezone

$wgLocaltimezone was added to correct time displayed in wiki (edit timestamps etc.)

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