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Some books I enjoyed!



Great book on wiki adoption!



A classic on corporate blogging!



The most interesting biography of Billy Joel to date!



New York Times Bestseller!



The Book on My Blogging Platform!



Start your own "revolution" and lead it!



The history of Google and Internet Search!




An interesting and addictive device!

My Review of MediaWiki Administrators' Tutorial Guide

So finally here it is, my review of MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide announced three months ago. I received my review copy of the book end of March and have been reading and even applying the content for the last two months. 

<review>

Before we start…
To start of this review I would like to point out first of all where am I coming from with this. I have about 3 years of practical MediaWiki experience as a user of my companies multiple wiki installations. Prior to reading the book I had little knowledge of the technical background of the software, although I am very interested in customising MediaWiki and writing special pages. I am a PHP newbie.

The book: look and feel
The book is printed in black-and-white (so no colour) and the quality of the print is very decent. The book is rather light (good thing for me commuting).

The book’s accessories
There is no CD delivered with the book, but all code snippets can be downloaded from the book support page at the publishers website.
What I learned from my interview with the author Mizanur Rahman, is that he is quite willing to answer additional questions via his weblog Boolean Dreams and that he is working on a dedicated wiki (haven’t found it to date).

The contents
Please find the names of the eleven chapters of the book (I was not able to find a linkable page of contents):

1. About MediaWiki
2. Installing MediaWiki
3. Starting MediaWiki
4. Advanced Formatting
5. Organising Content
6. MediaWiki in a Multi-User Environment
7. Administrating MediaWiki
8. Customising MediaWiki
9. Hacking MediaWiki
10. MidiaWiki Maintenance
11. Cool Hacks

Overall conclusion
Although a comparison cannot be made, because of the lack of competition (discarding the online help at MediaWiki.org) the MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide is a good and must have reference for anyone working with MediaWiki as administrator but also as user, offering almost anything one would want to know to start off with, to maintain and to customise and even hack a wiki installation. For those wanting to go a bit further with writing real PHP code for creating extensions, custom wiki markup and special pages, the book offers some nice code examples to work with and to modify to one’s needs.
The book could have benefited from somewhat richer content, such as more references to additional sources on the Internet and especially something like break-out boxes presenting experiences from admins of major wiki real life implementations. Next to that it appears that some more time should have been spend on a better index, correcting language, typos and structuring in general.

Book rating: 8

To summarise: the pros and cons

Pros:

  • Almost everything you will need for a basic MediaWiki installation, its maintenance and some customisation is available in this book. It is a complete reference for admins but certainly also for users, that would like some basic understanding of MediaWiki.
  • Very nice and easy to grasp examples of skin customisation and creation (I am no PHP expert!).
  • Good example on creating an article rating system extension and accompanying special page. With this knowledge and some additional PHP you will be able to try out a couple of your extension idea’s quite easily I guess.
  • There is a nice bonus chapter (11) presenting 7 extensions and some support on how to install them.
  • A book is so much easier than an online source! Of course this is not a pro for this book per se, but for others as well.

Cons:

  • Missing 1: some practical case studies of real life MediaWiki implementations and preferably interviews with the admins of the practise of maintaining a wiki
  • Missing 2: More attention to anti-vandalism tools out there, dedicated to preventing rather than cleaning-up.
  • Missing 3: A good index: the index at the end of the book is way too brief to be of real value for someone trying to find something back in the book.
  • Missing 4: Too little in-text references and no references section in the book, for further reading or information, like most important forums for those looking for help (like the MediaWiki Mailing List Archive and MWusers.com).
  • Sometimes the English used suggests a lack of some decent editorial oversight (or shall I call it charming?)
  • Chapter 1, describing wiki’s in relation to weblogs, forums and CMS systems and the position in Web 2.0 is not really convincing. Furthermore, although alternative wiki systems are briefly mentioned, no real and “honest” comparison is made.
  • Images and tables are not numbered, which is not good for readability.
  • The typographical distinction between paragraph and sub-paragraph could have been better

Final words

  • If I find the time, I will e-mail all errors found to the publisher.
  • Disclaimer: I did not personally test all code in the book.

</review>

Related: my interview with the author Mizanur Rahman

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comments image | post image posted May 20, 11:01 pm on May 20, 2007 | category image category: Wiki / Books