Hi Ole, > We're happy users of MoinMoin wikis for a long time now, but when I had to > upgrade our MoinMoin version recently, I was quite frustrated about how > difficult it was to find answers to the simplest of questions.
One part of that problem is maybe that docs are too widely distributed over lots of places (on the moin wiki, in docs/*, on the web). Another part is that moin is changing rather quickly and docs get outdated. Another problem is that some docs are wrong or contain errors. > I documented all the simple steps of installation, configuration and > upgrading MoinMoin on our RedHat Linux server in our wiki. This is the page: > > https://wiki.fysik.dtu.dk/it/MoinMoin_Wiki You just added another place. ;) > I'm sure that MoinMoin gurus will find this information trivial, but I bet > that > most beginners will find lots of hints here that it would take hours to locate > in http://moinmo.in/ or elsewhere on the web. Well, maybe all doc related efforts would be more productive if everybody worked on the same docs/sites, not on lots of different docs/sites. Of course docs in general are not trivial, because if one documents on a beginner level, there is lots of system specific information included that is different for different systems (and rather unrelated to moin itself). E.g. using rpm vs. dpkg, linux vs. windows vs. mac, different web server software, different setups at different providers, etc. Thus, our recent approach is that we primarily document moin and don't care too much about OSes, web server software, how to do basic system administration task (like changing owner/mode of files), etc. You see this in moin 1.9 docs a bit (super-easy desktop install docs for end-users, but for server installation, we require admin knowledge), maybe we'll get more in that direction for moin2. Of course, if you have trouble then with apache configuration, the moin docs won't help you and you will have to learn that apache has docs, too. Same for linux, for mod_wsgi, for flup, ... But maybe that strategy helps us to make moin's docs better and more focussed if we don't try to explain the world. > I'm offering this "HowTo" information to the web now, hoping that some experts > on MoinMoin would take a little time to review it and offer me information > on how to improve it. So I welcome comments and suggestions. Well, I had some ideas, but I think I would prefer to have that on the main site (moinmo.in), feel free to create or, preferably, improve some existing docs there. Also, maybe don't link to random french wiki sites if you just want to refer to a system page we deliver with moin (and have on master18.moinmo.in). BTW, as a general note, don't expect big changes happening to moin 1.x releases, development has moved on to work on moin2, which is very different anyway and will need a docs review / rewrite anyway. If you like hacking and helping with moin2, feel invited to help that it gets better / easier to locate docs. BTW, try to move to 1.9.x soon, the end of 1.8.x is rather near. The primary change is that it's all based on wsgi then, but if you run apache, you can use the great mod_wsgi module. Will be faster than your current cgi based setup also. Cheers, Thomas ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Nokia and AT&T present the 2010 Calling All Innovators-North America contest Create new apps & games for the Nokia N8 for consumers in U.S. and Canada $10 million total in prizes - $4M cash, 500 devices, nearly $6M in marketing Develop with Nokia Qt SDK, Web Runtime, or Java and Publish to Ovi Store http://p.sf.net/sfu/nokia-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Moin-user mailing list Moin-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/moin-user
