Currently http://wikimedia.org.za and a number of related projects, such as http://wikilovesmonuments.co.za, http://joburgpedia.co.za, http://wikiindaba.net and http://2017.wikiindaba.net are hosted by Wikimedia South Africa. We would like to move these to be hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation.
New wiki should be on: za.wikimedia.org
Although hosting the chapter wikis is almost a no brainer (we do that for other chapters etc), I'm not so sure on the scope of the other wikis; Wikimedia isn't a catch all MediaWiki host.
Do you have any other requirements? Such as MW extensions that aren't deployed elsewhere...?
It is possible that some extensions are in use, but if they do, part of the migration would be to work around these. We have a volunteer on our side willing to assist with the migration, and I will be able to help to a limited degree as well.
If those other related project wikis are all small, then I strongly recommend simply importing the pages to Meta-Wiki.
There are many benefits to putting information there, including... centralized watchlist, global notifications system, part of the single-login system, pre-existing templates/gadgets/etc, large community of janitors and interested by-passers, adding this useful info to a centralized site-search, easy access to Commons files, etc.
E.g. You could import the useful pages from http://2017.wikiindaba.net over to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiIndaba_conference_2017 (although it looks like most of the content is already duplicated there?)
Doing it that way would massively decrease the future maintenance burden for everyone, and also remove the need to create new tiny wikis all the time!
Doing this would also match the existing good practices of items like https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference and most of https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:WLM-2017
I think the technical process is best described at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Import if a larger-scale import is needed.
After that, I believe it should be a simple process (?) to setup a domain redirect, so that the former domain simply redirects users to the relevant metawiki page (but probably only at a domain-wide level, not for individual subpages).
Does that sound like a reasonable alternative?
Importing the related projects to Meta-Wiki sounds reasonable to me, though I will need to confirm with the rest of the chapter that they are happy with this solution.
Note that wikiindaba.net has extensions (NoTitle, CleanChanges) that are not deployed/available on WMF sites and are partially unmaintained, plus runs an old version (some other potential customizations might need rework).
Note that MW versions on wikimedia.org.za and wikilovesmonuments.co.za are even older (some other potential customizations might need rework).
Note that wikilovesmonuments.co.za has extensions (FacebookLikeButton, TwitterButton, Google_Analytics_Integration, LanguageSelector, PCR_GUI_Inserts) that are not deployed/available on WMF sites and are partially unmaintained/archived.
The sites have to be updated one way or another, so we will need to work around the unsupported extensions. We can take care of any manual tweaks on our side as long as the hosting infrastructure is taken care of.
As part of our hosting package for wikimedia.org.za, we have a number of email addresses. Can WMF take care of these as part of the transfer as well?
No. The WMF doesn't host their own email, and hasn't from years. Have a look at something like https://www.google.com/nonprofits/products/
OK, people are happy to move the other sites to meta-wiki. Does that imply wikimedia.org.za will not be part of single-sign on etc?
This seems to be vandalism - how do we go about reverting this sort of thing in phabricator?
I don't think we'd host the wiki at wikimedia.org.za.
We haven't done this for other chapter wikis coming in; it would become za.wikimedia.org. Because an extra top level TLD adds extra maintenance burden, and cost (SSL certs)
Say, with za.wikimedia.org would you also be able to host mail for chapter members in your G Suite instance as well?
PS: With @za.wikimedia.org addresses or @wikimedia.org addresses?
I'm not sure, but I don't think we'd start giving chapters @wikimedia.org emails. I don't think we'd host emails for chapters in our Google Apps either. It's likely just to cause too many problems.
There may be scope to verify za.wikimedia.org to a google apps account setup by yourselves, but I'm not the person to make that call, nor have we done this before for anyone else, so there is no precedence to do so.
You would probably be best setting it up and managing it for wikimedia.org.za yourselves
@Reedy Thanks for your help so far. What are the concrete deliverables we as a local chapter need to provide you with to move forward with the migration? We'd like to make a concrete decision pro/con WMF-hosting (generous offer, btw) soon. And then plan accordingly. Thanks.
So, to confirm, we wouldn't be able to give you @za.wikimedia.org or @wikimedia.org email addresses.
If the domains are pointed at our nameservers, we should be able to help you configure wikimedia.org.za to use the google non profit provisions, while redirecting to za.wikimedia.org to host the wiki
Hosting the chapter wiki is definitely fine, and within scope. No custom extensions that aren't currently deployed on Wikimedia wikis will be deployed. But we will be able to deploy any that are already currently
As for http://wikilovesmonuments.co.za, http://joburgpedia.co.za, http://wikiindaba.net and http://2017.wikiindaba.net need to confirm where they are going to go...
Sorry, I should've been less ambiguous. We'll migrate mail by ourselves later on. Our current concern is only MediaWiki.
Do we provide with you with an account of our MediaWiki installation; do you need a dump; or maybe something else? Keep in mind we're running 1.19.2 [1].
For the special-interest wikis: would it be possible to import them all to sub pages (eg. wikilovesmonuments.co.za --> za.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Monuments)?
Change 468073 had a related patch set uploaded (by Dzahn; owner: Dzahn):
[operations/dns@master] add za.wikimedia.org and za.m.wikimedia.org
Change 468074 had a related patch set uploaded (by Dzahn; owner: Dzahn):
[operations/puppet@production] mediawiki/apache: add za.wikimeida.org as prod_site
Change 468073 merged by Dzahn:
[operations/dns@master] add za.wikimedia.org and za.m.wikimedia.org
Change 468074 merged by Dzahn:
[operations/puppet@production] mediawiki/apache: add za.wikimedia.org as prod_site
https://za.wikimedia.org
https://za.m.wikimedia.org
have been created in DNS and added as a server alias to Apache cluster config
You should be able to create a wiki now.
Lowering priority to Low, generally can take more time than "create a wiki" usually takes. Removing other projects than Wiki-Setup, as those are less relevant and Operations isn't usually added to those tasks directly. Claiming, will upload initial configuration. For it, I need answering following questions:
This should be all I need now. If I need other info, I'll ask in comments.
It's the right thing to add operations because we need to do DNS and Apache. But after that is done you can remove it. ACK.
Renaming this to make scope of this task smaller, it was decided above to create only one wiki.
It's because you approve users by simply creating them an account (there is no public registration). With entriely public wiki, there is no approving and therefore account can be taken from SUL.
Yesterday at the Annual General Meeting of Wikimedia ZA we made the decision to not go forward with the migration of the Mediawiki to WMF.
This now has been a long and tedious discussion. We appreciate the help and offer of the foundation.
We will use Meta and the the other projects accordingly to coordinate our work and collaboration. The board and administrative members will switch to a feed style CRM for their communication.