So I installed MediaWiki to give it a try. I spent a long time today reading about how to use it; trying to figure out how to use templates and tables of contents, the latter of which I couldn’t really find in the help files. Finally I settled on just trying it out. I created the navigation menu and headed off to the first page of sources. I figured I’d start with the sources again. And on my very first source, I tried to upload the image into the database, and it told me that it can’t accept “.jpg” files, only “jpg”. Very funny.

So I quickly scrapped the idea of using MediaWiki. There was nothing in the help files for errors like that. At least, there was nothing I could find quickly enough to not abandon the project immediately. I wasted enough time on it.

What I’m going to do instead is revamp my own database to deal with sources better. Instead of linking to web pages that took me too long to put together, I’m going to just keep all the data in the database. I will link the database to the image files directly, which will be kept in a specific folder just for the database.

I started renaming image files only to find that I really need to rescan almost everything. So that will be my project then. I will alter my database to add links directly to the images and provide extracts of the data. At first, I will add this information, but eventually the old links to the web pages will come out entirely. Instead of “uploading” the files into the database, I will just put them into a folder. I may separate the folders by family groups the way I did in TikiWiki just to keep the document folder from becoming overwhelming.

I also installed phpMyAdmin, so altering the database directly will be easier. I’m sure I’ll have to do plenty of that along the way.

And in the end, my own genealogy database will be what I use to create a wiki-like site if I so desire. I didn’t really want my relatives messing with the data anyways and envisioned them — if they did anything at all — just leaving comments or uploading more files. I’m sure I can figure out a comment and file upload system, even if I have to integrate my database into a blog or something.