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

[Scott Connard]

Some more farming comments...

> I think that perhaps at least two pages are needed:
>
> How to set up a farm from scratch.
> How to convert an existing installation to a farm.
>
> Also some sort of Advanced Farm techniques page (OK that's three  
> pages:)

I'm not really sure why somebody new to pmwiki would want to set up a  
farm from scratch when it is so easy to convert an existing install  
to a farm.  Especially once it's documented clearly.  As a new user,  
I was certainly interested in farms, but wanted to get my feet wet  
with a normal installation first before moving on to farms.  My vote  
is still for just two documents (Converting and Advanced).

> I'd really like to see if PmWiki dropped farming in favor of an  
> optional
> configuration for shared code/separate data. I.e. install PmWiki in  
> one
> place, then have separate data installation directories with index.php
> scripts...

One VERY special consideration with farms and fields is that while  
the code is shared, the configuration IS NOT always shared.  Setting  
up a farm to share configurations is an easy way to start, but  
circumstances can easily change to require massively different  
configurations.  In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, the code  
may not always be shared either - certain fields may want additional  
scripts that the others don't want - of course this probably can be  
implemented as a "configuration" detail with includes in the various  
field config.php files.  My point is that the situation is not simply  
shared code/separate data.

Scott.