Submissions:2015/Introduction to MediaWiki Customizations

Title

Introduction to Mediawiki Customizations

Theme

Technology

Type of submission

Presentation

Author

Dave Harris

E-mail address

dave@jupiterduo.com

Username

No account on Wikipedia, WikiconferenceUSA username: DaveHarris

Affiliation

No Affiliation

Abstract

This presentation will include a discussion of how to adapt MediaWiki to meet the needs of a wide variety people and organizations hosting wikis with them. This presentation is not intended to be an exhaustive overview of all possible customizations and how to do them, but to give attendees ideas for how they may want to implement their own MediaWiki websites for their own purposes. Potential implementations of MediaWiki websites may include a public-facing website for an organization that is easy for non-technical users to edit, for internal company (or departmental) use on an Intranet that can be used for announcements, an employee bulletin board, or Knowledge Management and documentation of processes and procedures, for personal or family use, or specific communities such as a sports team, church, user group, organization, class, school, neighborhood, or city. Topics covered include basic graphics customization (such as website logos) as well as context-specific customization administrators may be interested in, which may include (but is not limited to) page editing restrictions, user account sign up restrictions, various authentication mechanisms, limiting access to read wiki pages only to registered users, and having the wiki available only on a certain network. This will also cover an overview of some common authentication mechanisms and scenarios that may be appropriate for using them, including (but not limited to) Facebook login, Shibboleth (for Universities), LDAP authentication, Active Directory, OpenID, PIV (including CAC for DoD users), or other schemas that may support two factor authentication. There will also be a discussion on how the MediaWiki Foundation is benefited by more independent MediaWiki implementations, such as familiarizing a larger user base with the process of editing wiki’s and syntax, which can result in more people getting involved in MediaWiki projects such as Wikipedia. Special pages and MediaWiki extensions will also be covered, including an overview of those most useful to MediaWiki site administrators. A short discussion of how MediaWiki manages files and images will also be discussed.

Length of presentation

30 mins

Special schedule requests

N/A

Will you attend WikiConference USA if your submission is not accepted?

Yes

Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with four tildes. (~~~~).

1. Gaurav (talk) 22:06, 31 August 2015 (EDT)
2. Not sure of available time - Submissions:2015/Introduction to MediaWiki Customizations and Submissions:2015/MediaWiki Install Demo might be similar to someone who knows nothing about MediaWiki. Would like to hear this person speak once for sure. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:27, 8 September 2015 (EDT)
3. Add your username here.

Author Update

I will be unable to give this talk (as well as the other one on the install demo) due to space limitations at the conference, but feel free to talk to me offline if you want to meet up and discuss these topics. I will be checking my email (address above) throughout the conference as well. Look forward to meeting all of you there! DaveHarris (talk) 21:27, 28 September 2015 (EDT)