MediaWiki

Chapter 16. Wiki Administration

A wiki administrator is a system administrator who installs and maintains the MediaWiki software and associated infrastructure. This is different from a sysop, a wiki user with special rights and privileges within the wiki. MediaWiki sites don’t need much day-to-day maintenance, but wiki administrators should:

• Set up regular processes, such as backups and upgrades

• Improve performance as needed

• Be prepared for emergencies, such as vandalism

• Know the maintenance scripts supplied with MediaWiki

We’ll cover these topics briefly, enough to get you started, and supply pointers to further information. These kinds of topics require experience not only with MediaWiki, but also with system administration and security, as well as thorough knowledge of your wiki server’s operating system and application programs. This chapter assumes you are already a competent system administrator for your host operating system of choice.

In addition to the topics in this chapter, many wiki administration tasks are described at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:System_admin

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:FAQ

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Administration

Tip

Many tasks that seem “administrative” can be accomplished more simply within MediaWiki by a sysop, as discussed in Chapter 12.

Maintenance Scripts

The MediaWiki distribution includes a maintenance directory full of useful scripts. Their purposes include changing passwords, deleting uploaded files, running administrative ...