James Montalvo

Tags	Installation, Third Parties
Primary Session	Supporting Third-Party Use of MediaWiki
Secondary Sessions

MediaWiki has evolved away from easy installation. Yes, there is still the web-based installer, but it only gives you the most basic version of MediaWiki and the extensions that provide the best features are increasingly more difficult to install. I installed MediaWiki for the first time six years ago. Since then I've become and active developer and system admin, and despite that experience I still find things like RESTBase difficult to install. The barrier to entry for a newbie to set up a fully-functional MediaWiki (e.g. with all the bells and whistles like Wikipedia) is huge. This should not be the case. It should be easy for a newbie to set up a MediaWiki installation with Visual Editor, Cirrussearch, etc, without first gaining years of experience.