Chapter 3. Getting Started with MediaWiki
In the previous chapter, you learned how to set up the Web servers and PHP implementations necessary to run MediaWiki. In this chapter, you will learn about the basic configuration options for MediaWiki, and get a general overview of how the software works "out of the box." Many of the topics touched on lightly in this chapter are handled in much greater depth in subsequent chapters. When appropriate, cross-references are provided directing you to the chapter of the book that covers a given topic so that you can jump directly to it if you are particularly eager to learn more.
The authors of MediaWiki are unabashed in their commitment to develop MediaWiki primarily for Wikipedia. The fact that others can also make use of it is an added bonus, and certainly a "nice-to-have," but at the end of the day it's not their primary goal. Despite this, the developers have been generous by making MediaWiki highly configurable. You can customize a great deal of your wiki without doing any kind of programming other than changing the values of a few variables.
Much of this chapter serves as an introduction to how MediaWiki is organized. In addition to covering the basic features of the software, it also describes how to customize those features when appropriate. You should have a fresh, virgin wiki at your disposal to experiment with. In some instances, it may be most useful to look at an actively maintained wiki to see how a certain feature works; and in ...
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