Manual:Before installing

So you have been thinking about the idea of installing MediaWiki. Before actually beginning the installation process, there are several factors to consider, to save time and prevent wasted effort

Do I want MediaWiki?
One recurring problem is that system administrators decide to create a wiki, without taking into account many issues. Ask yourself the following questions, to see if a wiki is the right software for you:
 * 1) What is my site's intended purpose?
 * Wikis are ideal for collaborative editing and creation of content; they are not very well suited for other purposes, like blogging. Consider whether a wiki is an adequate option for your goals.
 * 1) How many users will this wiki be exposed to?
 * With a few exceptions, installing wiki software is unnecessary when there is a very small group of people interested in editing the wiki. The larger the user base, the higher the probability a wiki makes more sense for you.
 * 1) How many active editors do I expect to edit my wiki?
 * Wikis, due to their open nature, require some maintenance. The larger the editor base, the more hands available to perform those maintenance tasks.
 * 1) What can I do with MediaWiki?
 * MediaWiki is an extremely versatile wiki engine; it is relatively easy to install, but more importantly, allows for the use and creation of extensions. These allow your MediaWiki installation to be extremely customizable with some knowledge of PHP. With the proper motivation, MediaWiki can be "abused" to do almost anything.
 * 1) Is MediaWiki right for me?
 * MediaWiki has its limitations. Currently, there is no support for WYSIWYG editing, so all editors need to learn wikimarkup. That presents a small barrier to entry. A more considerable limitation is that MediaWiki is not meant to be an access control list. MediaWiki raison d'etre is to provide open content; while recent versions have a much stronger security model, there are still significant gaps in individual-based security access. See Preventing access and Security issues with authorization extensions.

How should I configure MediaWiki?
If you have decided that MediaWiki is indeed an appropriate solution, there are still more things to consider. These questions will hopefully help you decide how to configure your wiki in a way that will allow you to minimize issues in the longer term:
 * 1) Who do I want reading my wiki?
 * In spite of all the issues with individual-based page restrictions, MediaWiki can be configured to restrict or allow access to everyone. So, ask yourself whether you want everyone in the Internet to see the contents of your wiki, or if you want to restrict that privilege to those users who have created accounts in your wiki.
 * 1) Who do I want editing my wiki?
 * Perhaps the most common question is whether you want to permit everyone to edit your wiki, similar to the Wikipedia model. MediaWiki allows for fine-grained writing restrictions; you can allow unregistered users to edit talk pages, for example, but only allow users with accounts older than a certain amount of time to edit your content pages. You can restrict editing to sysops, or even to a custom user group you create and delegate.
 * 1) Who do I want creating my account on my wiki?
 * Depending on some of the answers to the questions above, you may want to decide to restrict who can create accounts in a wiki. You can allow anyone to create accounts; or you can even designate that privilege to administrators, who would then be responsible for creating accounts for new users via some process of your choosing.
 * 1) What powers do I want each user group to have?
 * One of the most important questions you need to answer is this one. Granting or removing privileges to a group can be extremely controversial in a large wiki, so having a good idea of what each user should be able to do is critical. Do you want unregistered users to create pages? Do you want registered users to create pages? Do you want wiki administrators to be able to block and delete pages, or do you want to extend more privileges to them? Who is responsible for granting more privileges? Who is responsible for removing them? Who do you want to have more fine-grained powers, such as oversight, checkuser, and rollback?

With those answers, you should be able to configure the most critical aspects of your wiki.