Manual:What is MediaWiki?/sco

Ye liklie ken Wikipædia, the free encyclipædia, n micht weel be ae wee bit confused bi siclik, but differant, wairds lik Wiki, Wikimedia or MediaWiki.

Tae haud wide o ae possible bumbasemant atween the wairds ye micht first want tae read the airticle aneat the names whau the differances ar explained.



General overview
MediaWiki is ae free server-based saffware that's licensed unner the GNU General Public License (GPL). It's designed tae be rin oan ae muckle server ferm fer ae wabsteid that gets millions o hits per day.

MediaWiki is aen extreamelie dochtfu, scalable saffware n ae feature-fouthie wiki implementation that uises PHP tae process n displey data stored in ae database, lik MySQL.

Pages uise MediaWiki's wikitex format, sae that uisers wioot knawledge o XHTML or CSS can eedit thaim easilie.

Whan ae uiser hauns aen eedit in til ae page, MediaWiki writes it til the database, bit wioot delytin the afore-gaun versions o the page, thus allouin easie reverts in case o vandaleesm or spammin. MediaWiki can manage eemage n multimedia files, aes weel, thir ar stored in the fileseestem. Fer muckle wikis with heaps o uisers, MediaWiki supports cachin n can easilie be coupled wi Squid proxie server saffware.



Whit MediaWiki is...

 * MediaWiki is wiki saffware.


 * Gif ye dinna ken whit ae wiki is, than please read this Wikipædia airticle afore gaun onie faurer!


 * MediaWiki is server saffware.


 * As with any software that you expose to the internet, there may be bugs or security problems. Do not install MediaWiki unless you intend to keep up with security upgrades (please subscribe to receive announcements of security updates).


 * MediaWiki is geared towards the needs of the Wikimedia projects.


 * The program was primarily developed to run on a large server farm for Wikipedia and its sister projects. Features, performance, configurability, ease-of-use, etc are often designed in this light; if your needs are radically different the software might not be appropriate for you.


 * MediaWiki is free saffware.


 * Nae guarantee or warrantie o onie kynd is provided.

Gie Wikitex ae shot
Ay, ye can easilie modifie pages n ye can (tempralie) publish dummie sentances, n ye can even (tempralie) compleatelie destroy ae page in ae wiki. Ye dinna need onie programmin skeels tae dae this.

We suggest you exercise yourself within our sandbox. Please isolate your testing there, though: the admins might not take too kindly to your mischief otherwise.

Forby, ye can luik up the, this conteens basic formattin commaunds.

Some things that MediaWiki disna dae ower weel...

 * Cause MediaWiki wis designed fer apen-content, it's aften na suitable fer situations whaur ye want to restreect access til pert o the wiki. (Though powering an entirely closed site, like an internal company wiki, is not a problem.)
 * MediaWiki haes been designed tae serve verra hei-traffeck wabsteids lik Wikipædia. It's been optimised fer this uise n michtna be ower suitable fer smawer steids, whaur disk space or memrie ar muckler restreections than baundwidth.
 * Fer ordinair, MediaWiki is na ae suitable replacemant fer dedicatit forum/bloggin saffware gif that's whit ye'r efter.

In the abuin cases thaur micht be ither wiki saffware (or non-wiki saffware) that better sers yer needs.

See aes weel

 * Manual:Deciding which wiki software to use
 * Full list of MediaWiki features and Principles
 * Comparison of wiki software
 * www.wikimatrix.org — side-by-side comparison of various wiki engines.
 * www.wikimatrix.org — side-by-side comparison of various wiki engines.