Ebersbach / Glaser / Heigl Wiki

Web Collaboration
2. Auflage 2008
ISBN: 978-3-540-68173-1
Verlag: Springer
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 483 Seiten, eBook

A book about wikis! That’s what people need. Because with wiki technology, lots of people can freely work - gether – they can even generate very large works in the intellectual realm. See for yourself: Today, we still marvel at our massive church buildings, each c- structed over a period of centuries, requiring an immense amount of labor and often bearing the cultural stamp of all of the epochs during which it was created. Someone just has to begin by placing stone upon stone and motivating the people nearby to help out a bit. In places where such enthusiastic fellow men and women lend a hand and donate materials, great things can emerge. And where they are absent? Either scant ruins remain, or the iron will of a pharaoh is required, an army of drivers, the sweat of a people and a mountain of gold. Great things can also be created in that way – take the Py- mids: a clear concept, no blending of styles, pure will. Those are two very different paths. The one entails passionate people devotedly building something together for the common good; the other: A single will manages a variety of resources to achieve a set goal. Wikis are tools with which lots of people with a minimum of - ganization, planning, money and time can create something together and communicate with each other from several scattered computers or over the Internet.

Zielgruppe

Professional/practitioner

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ebersbach, Anja

Glaser, Markus

Heigl, Richard

Warta, Alexander

Weitere Mitwirkende

Dueck, Gunter

Adelung, Andrea

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface.- Preface.- Wiki!?.- The Wiki Concept.- Our First Wiki: MediaWiki.- The Installation.- First Steps.- The Core Functions of MediaWiki.- Formatting.- Multi-Page Structures.- Components: the Function Pages.- Administration.- Extensions.- Life in MediaWiki.- TWiki, the Jack of all Trades.- Installing TWiki.- Working with TWiki.- Formatting in TWiki.- Searching in TWiki.- Structured Data with Forms.- Installing TWiki.- Administering TWiki.- Designing a TWiki..- TWiki as a Project Kit.- Preliminary Thoughts: What is a Project?.- Conceptual Phase: Collecting Ideas and Outlining the Project.- Composing the Project Plan.- Preparing for your Event.- Executing and Documenting an Event.- Go with the Flow: Confluence.- Installing Confluence.- Overview.- Formatting.- Organization.- Settings.- Tools with a Future.- Technical Challenges.- A few Wiki Projects.- The Art of “Sowing” Wikis.- Social Perspectives.

Leseproben

"2 The Installation (S. 37-39)

In order to become familiar with and test a wiki, it is a good idea to install a system on your own computer, instead of delving straight into the depths of the Internet. Firstly, you have complete control over the software used and its settings. On the Net, this is only the case if you are an administrator on a server on which the wiki is running. Secondly, almost all entries made to an online version can potentially be read by the entire world.

You need to ask yourself whether the world would really be interested in every little test, in addition, copyright issues could quickly crop up. In a local testing environment, on the other hand, you can control who has access to your computer, and you can experiment without needing to constantly worry about relevance or legal questions. Basically, installing wikis is always done according to a similar pattern. First you need to create and adapt the environment in which the wiki will run, which primarily means setting up the web server and, if necessary, the database.

Then you copy the wiki software files to the proper location and adjust one or more configuration files to the system environment, either manually or automatically. Such adjustments mainly include the indication of paths, language and connection to the database. In addition, some wikis offer the possibility of performing some settings directly over the browser. The individual steps for installing and setting up MediaWiki will be detailed below. Note: The installation described refers to the software version 1.10.1, which you can find on the supplementary CD. If you prefer to download the current packages from the Internet, there may be some deviations.

2.1 A Test Environment with XAMPP

Since it is the nature of wikis to be a component of the WWW, you need to create a test environment for the actual software for local operation on your computer. In the case of MediaWiki, such an environment consists of a web server, the script language PHP (Version 5.0 or higher) and the database MySQL (4.0 or higher). The installation and interaction of these components is complex, and descriptions of them fill bookshelves. However, that is not within the scope of our book. Luckily, there is a package that allows us to install all required components with a minimum of configuration effort: XAMPP.

This is the abbreviation for ""Apache MySQL PHP Perl"" (the X is a placeholder for the operating system) and thus for components that together result in possible standard equipment for a web server. If you should already have this software on your computer, you can skip this chapter and go straight to installing the MediaWiki. Tip: If you already have a web server installed on your computer, it is possible that XAMPP may not work. For instance, this is the case with IIS. At the time of this printing, XAMPP is available in Version 1.6.3. It can be found on the supplementary CD in the directory /xampp/ [operating system]. The newest version can be downloaded at the URL http://www.apachefriends.org /de/xampp.html. "

Über Autor(innen)

Anja Ebersbach is an information scientist. She is a university and technical college instructor, and is also active as a freelance IT trainer. She is working on her dissertation on the topic of "Wikis as Tools of Scientific Work." Markus Glaser, also an information scientist, primarily works as a web and application programmer, where he specializes in MediaWiki and TWiki systems. Dr. Richard Heigl, a historian, works as a freelance instructor, IT trainer and moderator of large group seminars. He is primarily occupied with the planning and moderation of wiki projects. Alexander Warta, information scientist, is a doctoral candidate employed at Robert Bosch GmbH in Stuttgart. He is a specialist for the wiki software Confluence.