[pmwiki-users] Wiki farm confusion

Neil Herber nospam at eton.ca
Thu Mar 16 21:45:21 CST 2006


At 2006-03-16  07:39 PM -0700, H. Fox is rumored to have said:
>That echoes DaveG's sentiment.  How would this be reworded, then?
>
>      Start by installing a fresh copy of PmWiki. It's not
>      necessary to set up a wiki.d/ directory because
>      we'll disable the home wiki and use only field wikis.

Start by creating your "home wiki". This is the wiki that will hold 
all of the common components that the rest of the wikis in your farm 
will share.

Install a fresh copy of PmWiki. You do not need to set up a wiki.d/ 
directory in this case, because the home wiki will have no servable 
pages. It is just present to hold the shared components.

ALTERNATE: Install a fresh copy of PmWiki. You do not need to set up 
a page store (the wiki.d/ directory) in this case, because the home 
wiki will have no servable pages. It is just present to hold the 
shared components.



>If you just take the word "field" out, it doesn't make any sense.
>
>A couple of questions...
>
>Is it accurate to call farmconfig.php a "global configuration file"
>for the farm?

I suppose so, although I prefer "a farm-wide configuration file".

>Is it reasonable to refer to a copy of PmWiki without a wiki -- or
>maybe the distribution minus the pub/ directory -- as "the wiki
>engine"?  Uh-oh... Is that another metaphor creeping in?  :-)

I would call it a wiki with no servable pages or a wiki without a page store.

For example, say you have 3 wikis in your farm:
1 is what I call the "home wiki" with all the PmWiki code
2 has a page store but no PmWiki code
3 has an empty page store and no PmWiki code

If you move the page store from 1 to 3, everything still works, 
except that now there are no servable pages in wiki 1 and getting to 
the content it used to contain requires you to use a different URL, 
the one that accesses wiki 3.

I am not at all convinced that we need a word to describe every 
possible permutation of PmWiki. I suggest that part of the problem 
with all the (former) field and farm terminology was that we had too 
many terms. They were difficult enough for a native English speaker 
to keep straight - I really pity the PmWiki admins who don't have 
English as a first language trying to follow that stuff.

We should also remember that the original idea behind a "wiki farm" 
was inspired by server farms - not by agricultural metaphors.



Neil

Neil Herber
Corporate info at http://www.eton.ca/
Eton Systems, 15 Pinepoint Drive, Nepean, ON, Canada K2H 6B1
Tel: (613) 829-4668 





More information about the pmwiki-users mailing list