Manual:Contents/To do

We are trying to create a complete Technical Manual for the MediaWiki Software, however there are many areas that are incomplete or missing. Please contribute information about installing, running and developing for MediaWiki software. See also public domain help pages. Currently much content is still on meta (search for "manual" at http://meta.wikimedia.org/ - more than 1,000 references as of April 12, 2007!) Please expand this manual to include all the other nitty-gritty bits of info that are useful to developers and sysadmins.

We desperately need a neat, clean, sophisticated group of accurate and unambiguous instruction manuals for each part of a MediaWiki wiki's life:

  1. preparing gear and software,
  2. creation from scratch,
  3. design criteria for your particular MediaWiki implementation (hardware, software, extensions, organizational structure and customizations),
  4. publicity and community building,
  5. ongoing maintenance and administration,
  6. crash recovery and prevention,
  7. importing (to build your initial resource) and exporting (to migrate your data and to reuse or re-purpose your data,
  8. turning your MediaWiki over to the next generation of WikiMasters,
  9. inheriting an existing Wiki from known or unknown previous WikiMasters

... and so on. Got ideas and experiences? HELP! Anything in red is missing! Please add your own new sections as your experience dictates. Thanks!

Here are some sections that are completely missing - please add what you can!

Private or networked or Internet-connected computer with Operating System
Web Server software - Apache, Microsoft IIs
Database server - MySQL
Management software - PHP
Customizations - MediaWiki and your configuration choices
A web browser!
Detailed step-by-step checklists
Manual:Installation and Manual:OS specific help were moved from Meta, but they still need cleanup.
Designing your organizational scheme for users, data, security, maintenance
Manual:Before installing should deal with this.
How to inherit a MediaWiki and re-set it up
Crash recovery and prevention
Manual:Backing up a wiki exists, Manual:Moving a wiki has some of this information too.