NEWS
28 Nov. 2011
LNCS proceedings is available online
25 August 2011
Pictures from the conference are now on the web.
15 August 2011
Online Registration is closed, but OnSite registration is possible.
26 July 2011
Updated info about venue, etc.
18 June 2011
Program published
13 June 2011
EXTENSION: Doctoral Symposium has the submission site open for 12 more hours (i.e., until midnight, Oslo time).
7 June 2011
Registration page for the main conference is open.
6 June 2011
Author notification: list of accepted papers available
03 June 2011
Submission site opened for the Doctoral Symposium.
04 Apr. 2011
Deadline Extension: submission deadline has been extended to 14 April (midnight Hawaii time)
29 Mar. 2011
Sponsorships are available for participants. See Registration page for details on eligibility criteria.
16 Feb. 2011
FCT 2011 is honored by the invited speakers:
11 Feb. 2011
One can use the FCT11 Posters for display with the purpose of advertising the FCT 2011 symposium.
31 Jan. 2011
A Doctoral Symposium event will be associated with the FCT 2011. See the specific CFP.
10 Jan. 2011
First call for workshops is out
15 Dec. 2010
First call for papers is out
14 Dec. 2010
Web Page is up
administrators (intermediate) There are many ways to configure PmWiki:WikiFarms, and some of the documentation uses different terminology to describe the same things. This page attempts to explain the terminology.
For terms not related to farms, see Glossary.
Why is this page needed?
- to provide a place to find the preferred terminology with definitions
- to explain where the term "farm" came from
- to list various terms that have been deprecated but still exist in the docs
- to suggest alternate terms for the deprecated ones
The origins of WikiFarms
The term WikiFarm is based on the computing term "server farm", which is a collection of servers that use a common infrastructure. A wiki farm is nothing more than multiple wikis that share the same installation of the PmWiki software.
Some recipe and documentation authors, however, began writing about WikiFarms using agricultural terms such as "field", "farmer", "barn", "crop", and "tractor". In some cases these terms made the documentation more confusing. It is suggested that documentation authors avoid the agricultural terms, as tempting as they may be, and keep in mind that a wiki in a wiki farm is like a server in a server farm.
Wikis and components in a WikiFarm
All of the wikis in a farm are more or less the same, except the "home wiki" is a wiki that is located in the same directory as the PmWiki software. The home wiki needs special consideration because it holds the components that are shared by or affect the operation of all the wikis in the farm. In particular:
- the scripts/ directory
- the cookbook/ directory
- the pub/ directory
- the wikilib.d/ directory
It is possible to move the PmWiki software outside of the web document tree, but the pub/ directory needs to be in a web-servable directory (one that can be accessed by a URL).
Authors writing about complex farm setups often have difficulty describing the components and their locations. However, it is probably not necessary or desirable to coin new terms for the components and their locations.
Suggested terms
- WikiFarm
- An installation where one copy of PmWiki is configured to run multiple wikis. Analogous to the computing phrase "server farm". The wikis in a farm can be configured farm-wide (using the farm's local/farmconfig.php) or individually (using the wiki's local/config.php).
- Wiki
- A site with it's own URL and wiki.d/ directory. All of the wikis in a wiki farm are simply called wikis.
- Home wiki
- A wiki in a farm that's located in the same directory as the PmWiki software and therefore shares the farm's cookbook/ and pub/ directories. If you start with a stand-alone installation and add a wiki, the original wiki becomes a home wiki.
- Farm-wide
- Something available to or affecting all wikis in the farm. Typically this means modifying the farmconfig.php file or the contents of the farm's cookbook/ or pub/ directories.
- Local
- Something available to or affecting a specific wiki. Typically this means modifying the wiki's local/config.php file or the contents of the wiki's cookbook/ or pub/ directories.
- PmWiki
engine - The software that makes PmWiki work, as opposed to the content of the wiki that readers see.
- PmWiki
installationdirectory - The directory PmWiki is installed to. It contains pmwiki.php and its subdirectory scripts/, which is used by all the wikis in the WikiFarm.
If you do a standard, single install of PmWiki, it goes into this directory.
Ambiguous terms
- Installation directory
- Installation of what? Some authors have used this to mean the directory that contains most of the shared components on a wiki farm. Others use it to mean a directory that has a complete standalone installation of PmWiki that is not part of a farm. Use PmWiki directory instead.
- PmWiki installation
- This is sometimes used to indicate a process, sometimes used to mean a single wiki in a farm, and sometimes refers only to the shared components of a farm.
Deprecated terms that should not be used
These terms still exist in the documentation (pending revisions), and will live forever in the PmWiki-Users list archive.
- farm directory
- The directory in which the home wiki lives or a directory where the shared components are stored. Use PmWiki directory instead.
- field
- Any wiki in a farm which is not the home wiki.
- farm administrator
- An administrator who has access to all of the wikis in a farm, particularly the home wiki. Use administrator instead.
- field administrator
- An administrator who has access to one or more wikis in a farm, but not the home wiki. Use administrator instead.
- barn
- The place where common components are stored. Use PmWiki directory instead.
- crop
- Packaged content and customizations that can be added to a wiki. See Cookbook:ListOfBundles for similar ideas. Use component bundles instead.
- tractor
- The PmWiki engine or pmwiki.php itself. Use PmWiki instead.
Categories: WikiFarms
This page may have a more recent version on pmwiki.org: PmWiki:WikiFarmTerminology, and a talk page: PmWiki:WikiFarmTerminology-Talk.