MediaWiki windows server synchronisation

August 5, 2005 3:09 PM

How can I synchronise a local wiki installation (preferably MediaWiki) with an online server installation?

I have been a longtime user of wiki's. I keep more and more of my stuff locally on WikidPad (which is lovely and has just gone opensource) and online I have tried quite a few online wiki installations, including TikiWiki and PMWiki. I had always intended to find a wiki to which I could import text files from my desktop wiki and set up some kind of synchronisation. But now, since getting to know WikiPedia by editing it, I am seriously in love with MediaWiki, and it occurs to me that I could use it on my Windows PC by creating a server there. Could I perhaps even synchronise it with an online mediawiki? Even if it were a one-way import from desktop to server that would make me very happy.

In the past I have successfully used Mambo stand alone server on my PC and it seemed to worked fast enough, so I wonder if something like WAMP would keep things simple. (I once attempted separate installations of MySQL, php and apache and failed to make it all work.)

Does anyone have experience of doing this kind of thing? Will the speed (on WindowsXP, 1.3GHz, 512MbRam) drive me insane? Are php/SQL applications too slow to use on a PC? Any pitfalls?

posted by suleikacasilda to technology (12 comments total)

I don't know MediaWiki, but PHPwiki allows alternate wiki database formats, including a single-file that could be copied to other PHPwiki installations, overwriting what was already there.

Unfortunately, that IS a one-direction method, and I don't think I've seen anything else that would qualify as 'synchronizing'.
posted by Kickstart70 at 3:12 PM on August 5, 2005

Here are the pages from Wikipedia explaining the various methods of obtaining their database: Link 1 Link 2

I have not actually done this, but this documentation should get you started.
posted by JJtheJetPlane at 3:16 PM on August 5, 2005

Aha, JJtheJetPlane - useful indeed. So I could drop and then populate the tables (or something like that - I will read further) to import one way or the other ....

It seems the Wikipedia site has better documentation than the Mediawiki site. Funny.
posted by suleikacasilda at 3:33 PM on August 5, 2005

Thanks for the hints - I am finding some better information now on how I might synch, at least one way at a time.

So what about running servers on PC's and how well that works?
posted by suleikacasilda at 3:39 PM on August 5, 2005

Running the server on your machine should be fine. It will be plenty fast for you and not take up too much memory. I've used the Wamp install before and it is great.
posted by gus at 3:42 PM on August 5, 2005

I've done this with MediaWiki, the only stumbling block I ran into was that I forgot to synchronize the uploaded files directory. Easily fixed.
posted by Space Coyote at 5:26 PM on August 5, 2005

Have you tried Instiki? It has an export to HTML option, so you can post your Wiki to your server.

Wikipedia also has some great reference on wikis in general: a list of wiki software and a comparison chart. Maybe a hosted wiki would suit your needs?

Let us know what you end up using!
posted by dhammala at 6:15 PM on August 5, 2005

I've seen a wiki out there that has a button labeled, "download the entire thing as a zipped file" which might be helpful, but I can't remember which Wiki it was.
posted by mecran01 at 5:22 AM on August 6, 2005

It's almost bound to be MediaWiki I end up using, now that I know it's a matter of transferring the database. I just love its bells and whistles, even though wikidpad already has quite a few so I've been spoiled!

If the 30-day mefi archive-time isn't up, I'll post about how I get on. Thanks so much for the tips. Good to hear of people who have done this before.
posted by suleikacasilda at 1:46 PM on August 6, 2005

What are some of the bells and whistles? I haven't been able to find too much that's very special about MediaWiki.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:44 PM on August 6, 2005

I was thinking of the categories and subcategories, T.O.C., transclusion (inserting one page into another), easy image upload, smooth interwiki linking, the use of variables - quite a few features.

But actually I have changed my mind. I intend to try Twiki, even though it seems like the most difficult to install. Supposedly synchronisation will be a pain to set up too, but do-able and smooth if I can make it work. It has most of the above features but what I really like is its template/form system. It will be incredibly customisable, and with it I will be able to create something like the tags I use in wikidpad to collect todo's and so on.

Plus I like a challenge.

I'm going to install it first on windows just to see how I get on with it.
posted by suleikacasilda at 1:43 PM on August 8, 2005

In the end I went for PMWiki since TWiki was beyond a pain to install and a lot of the documentation turned out to be old and stale. PMWiki, which is easy to install, has page insert capabilities and lots of customisation possibilities, and the support group (email list) is extremely active and helpful. I have it on wamp on windows and at the moment I am doing a one-way sync to an online version. I've tweaked a few things and it is working well for me.
posted by suleikacasilda at 4:00 PM on August 28, 2005