What is MediaWiki?
MediaWiki is a web-based wiki software application used by all projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, or to put it simply the guys who run the ‘biggest and badest’ Free Encyclopaedia in the World....Wikipedia. It was originally developed to serve the needs of the free content Wikipedia encyclopaedia but today it has also been deployed by companies for internal knowledge management, and as a content management system.
______View a sample here______
Book Review
Getting right to the point....MediaWiki uses an overly complex stylesheet.
This book [written by Richard Carter] is a thorough overview of how to customize the layout, design, look and feel of a MediaWiki wiki. It provides an overview of "skins" and their purposes. Then gets into the nitty-gritty providing a detailed walkthrough of how to make MediaWiki look like an example site which he created.What I like best about this book is that the author outlines which CSS classes control which elements within the template. He also outlines key functions which are part of the MediaWiki template.
Topics covered include not only CSS but also MediaWiki PHP functions that are integrated into a MediaWiki skin. As a bonus, there is information on adding on some of the latest widgets that Web 2.0 has to offer, from thickbox to twitter. The latter half of the book shifts focus to adding more attractive design elements, creating a dynamic UI, and adding media. The discussion of these topics is extremely helpful because most websites today have an engaging user interface and media-rich pages. The discussion of how to embed content from video sites such as YouTube, and social bookmarking sites such as Furl is particularly good.
Overall, this is a great book for designers and programmers who want to get the most out of their MediaWiki site.
GDiz Rating: 8/10