MediaWiki is a web design and management software that is licensed by the GNU General Public license and can be downloaded from the internet for free. Originally, this software was designed by Lee Daniel Crocker who wrote the program for the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. Today, the software is used by sites on a large server that receive millions of hits per day and is used for internal knowledge management and as a content management system. It is unique in the fact that it allows users to edit the content that is published. However, it stores the previous versions of the page in memory so they can be easily restored in the event of spamming or vandalism. MediaWiki is written in the PHP programming language and uses an SQL database such as MySQL or PostgreSQL. The software has many great features available for use, but also has a few limitations.
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MediaWiki provides a strong, structured core feature set that can be customized and given additional functions by a variety of extensions that have been designed for this product. Astoundingly, this system has become so universal, as it has been translated into more than 300 different languages. MediaWiki features the ability to edit each subsection of a page, support rich content, organize with hyperlinks and namespacing, customize with JavaScript and the use of additional tools, and become more useful through the various extensions that are available. Some of the extensions available include flash inclusion, RSS feed inclusion, YouTube inclusion, rating extension, and category suggestion extension. Plus, there is a team of developers and an operation known as Bugzilla, who work hard to resolve any issues in the system's programming.
One limitation of MediaWiki is the ability to work on the program while offline and have the work uploaded immediately upon reconnecting. This might be unrealistic though because although it would make it possible to back up pages offline, it might also interfere with other user's edits.
In addition, the syntax has no formal definition in the MediaWiki program. This makes it difficult to port the syntax to another language or to create a WYSIWYG editor.
There are many web hosting companies that support MediaWiki such as bluehost and justhost.
As a whole, MediaWiki is an amazing development. It offers a new variety among content management systems and should be considered as a viable program for building websites.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
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