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 Owerview
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.


 * Aes wi onie saffware that ye expose til the internet, thaur micht be bugs or securitie quirks. Dinna install MediaWiki onless ye'r ettlin tae keep up wi security upgrades (please subscribe tae get propales o securitie updates).


 * MediaWiki is geared taewart the needs o the Wikimedia Foundation.


 * The program is primarilie developt tae rin oan ae muckle server ferm fer Wikipædia n its sister waurks. Featurs, performance, confeegurabeelitie, ease-o-uise, etc ar designed in this licht; gif yer needs ar radiclie differant the saffware micht na be richt fer ye.


 * 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 that ye exerceese yersel wiin oor saunpit. Please isolate yer testin thaur, tho: the admeens micht na tak ower kyndlie til yer mischief itherwise.

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

Some things that MediaWiki disna dae ower weel...

 * Because MediaWiki was designed for open-content, it is often not suitable for situations where you want to restrict access to part of the wiki.


 * MediaWiki has been designed to serve very high-traffic websites such as Wikipedia. It has been optimized for this use and may not be so suitable for smaller sites, where disk space or memory are bigger restrictions than bandwidth.


 * MediaWiki is not normally a suitable replacement for dedicated forum/blogging software if that is what you are after.

In the above cases there may be other wiki software (or non-wiki software) which better serves your needs.