User:SPage (WMF)/ZeroPortal

From T87289 "MediaWiki Developer Summit 2015: Building websites with MediaWiki + Lua"

Constraints/opportunities
 * locked-down wiki
 * small userbase
 * use MediaWiki infrastructure

ZeroPortal uses one whitelisted page, https://zero.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:ZeroPortal
 * this is configured as the main page of the wiki
 * this just invokes a Lua module
 * loads other templates and wikitext (that admins can edit)
 * routes to special pages

Configuration
 * Wikimedia Zero is driven by JSON config files edited by operators
 * Lua extended to handle JSON (built-in JSON support in Lua is coming)
 * JsonConfig extension for JSON configuration files in the Zero: namespace

Graphing:
 * Python script uploads blobs of data to the wiki
 * Graph extension to render graphs

Appearance: Instead of a skin, admin just modifies MediaWiki:Content.css (see it)

Performance: Disable caching (small userbase). A Special page is not cached.