1. Goal
At a meeting of Murray Leach?, David Earle? and John Rankin? on 2 March 2004, the Ministry decided to make the following actions a priority.
- Move to a Wiki Farm model, so that different users groups can choose to have their own area, while sharing common elements, such as the Documentation Index, common help pages and the PmWiki engine.
- Move the wiki closer to the Ministry’s mainstream web presence, by adopting an education-related URL, Ministry colours and logo, and linking to it from other Ministry web sites.
- Move to a more flexible security model, by taking advantage of PmWiki’s support for site, group, page, read, edit and upload passwords.
The Ministry also wants to raise its in-house knowledge of the various wiki administration and support tasks.
2. Current State
In the last month, a major upgrade to the wiki software has been released and is now stable. The wiki currently runs pmwiki-2.1.27. It was running 0.5.24. This new release gives wiki administrators much more control over page layout and use of style sheets. It also introduces the ability to associate an author with page changes. Finally, all views (edit, browse, search …) have a consistent look, so the site looks more finished.
Access to the wiki is through Apache security and uses a single user name and password for access to all services, including upload.
3. Future State
- Software upgrade
- The first step is to upgrade the site to the new software, and take advantage of the template facility to implement a site with a suitable Ministry look. The tertiary wiki staging area, on Affinity’s in-house server, is running the current PmWiki version, along with all the Ministry’s local customisations. It’s available here for testing. It includes an example of a completely different style sheet, applied to the same basic layout.
Milestone 1 is to migrate the existing tertiary wiki to the latest software release. completed
- Wiki farm
- We will develop a local customisation to support a series of “wiki fields”, arranged around a “home field”. The farm will share the code base, documentation and general information across all fields. Each field will have its own URL and act as a wiki within a wiki. A field may have its own unique functional or presentation customisations if needed, within the overall farm structure. There will be an easy way to refer to a page in a different field or the home field. All existing pages will continue to work without change, although some WikiGroups may move into their own field. By default, a new field will use the template and style sheet from the home field, but can add its own look at any time. The Wiki Farm Design discusses implementation considerations.
Milestone 2 is to add wiki farm support to the tertiary wiki, and a new URL structure. {:) completed.
- prove the design concept (completed)
- create a functional prototype (completed — see Wiki Farm Test Plan)
- transition to production system
- Ministry template
- We will develop a template and style sheet to reflect the desired look for the new wiki. This will probably be based on an existing skin, modified as needed. The Ministry team member, Stuart King, will advise what’s required and may choose to carry out this task. If possible, we will use page colours from an existing Ministry style sheet and apply them to the wiki’s existing one. Field owners are responsible for specifying the look for their fields, provided that it is consistent with the Ministry’s style guide. It can be helpful to use a standard layout, with different colour elements to distinguish the location. This is the current practice: each group has its own background colour.
Milestone 3 is to introduce a Ministry page skin. completed
- Enhanced security
- Field owners will be responsible for defining up and looking after the security for their fields, through the local/config.php file for that field. The home field will probably be open. The PmWiki security model is resource- and action-based: we associate passwords with a site, group, or page, and the action required. Visitors need to know the resource password. It is possible in future that the Ministry will want to move to a user-based scheme, where authorised users have assigned rights. This would sit between the wiki and the world, controlling access. Once everything else is working and stable, we will enhance the security approach. The Ministry is responsible for deciding how it wishes to use the Password model.
Milestone 4 is to introduce resource- and action-based security. completed
4. Communication
The Ministry will consider how it wants to communicate with wiki users about the Upgrade Action Plan. The first step is to advise people when Milestone 1 is happening. Basically, this is ready to go and awaits Ministry approval to go ahead. It would be better to do it over a weekend, after we tell people that it’s happening and not to use the wiki while it’s going on. In the past, we have used email to let people know what’s happening; this seems to work pretty well.
