[pmwiki-users] RFC: PITS 00701 -- WikiFarm confusion

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2006 at 11:09:18AM -0500, Neil Herber wrote:
> At 2006-03-14  09:36 AM -0600, Patrick R. Michaud is rumored to have said:
> >So, I could use some help here from people who have set up
> >WikiFarms and struggled with it -- what is it about WikiFarms
> >(and the associated documentation) that is confusing?
> 
> What confused me right off the bat was the terminology.
> 
> I expected a "farm" to be a collection of "fields", just as in the 
> agricultural world. But in the original instructions I read, the 
> place where pmwiki.php was installed seemed to be called the "farm 
> field" or something similar, and it could be an active field, as well 
> as being the code repository for the farm.

Perhaps "farm" and "field" are the wrong terms here, or invoke
the wrong metaphor.  The essential idea behind wikifarms is that
a single installation of PmWiki can be used for multiple, almost
totally independent wikis.  This allows them to share a common
set of core files (which makes it easier to upgrade them all at once),
and a common configuration file (farmconfig.php) that makes it
easier to institute a common set of settings and configurations
across the multiple wikis.  

So, we can even consider a change in terminology if anyone has
a better term for what happens.

Pm