MediaWiki Experiment
2005-09-07 01:41:00
I started playing around with MediaWiki. I don't really have any need or desire to start a public Wiki on any topic, but I do like a place to keep notes for myself. Currently, I have a "doc" directory that I keep in my various unix home directories; it is under CVS control, so I can keep in reasonable synch across the dozen or so unix systems where I have accounts.
This works amazingly well for scripts and emacs files, as well as .cshrc and other shell configs. It's sort of OK for little text files. The problem is that often I need to look at a little document, but I might not be at a place where I can easily get a shell prompt.
I haven't liked most Wiki software I've tried, but I do like MediaWiki, the software that powers Wikipedia. So I set up my own install, locked it so that only I can write articles, and put it behind .htaccess so no one can even see it but me. Curiously (or not, I suppose) there is no way in MediaWiki to easily add read restrictions. There is a sort of hackish patch, but it is for exceptions and not to lock down the whole site.
I like it. Set up was very simple; install the files into web root; chmod a+w config; create a mysql db; go through the web based install; delete config dir. Done.