We were approached by Graces Guide in 2021 as they needed to upgrade their Wikimedia platform and needed us to help with supporting it in the future.
The initial challenge was that the ‘core’ Mediawiki platform which underpinned the archive had been extensively adapted at source. This meant we had to ‘unpick’ these changes and move them all to modules. Modules in MediaWiki are way of handling bespoke functionality to an installation, this is the method that should always be used rather than adapting the source. This movement to a module-based way of working was needed to ensure that all updates to MediaWiki could be applied in the future without any problem or manual intervention. Without doing this it was necessary to maintain a large list of changes which had to be manually applied back to the source code each time an update was applied to the system.
We also needed to make the archive work on all platforms. Prior to our involvement the archive only worked well on large ‘desktop type’ screens. Obviously, with more and more people using mobile devices, this needed to be rectified. We did this by creating a design that altered with screen size, ensuring all information was presented in the best way possible regardless of device type.
Finally, we needed to apply any updates and bring the version of MediaWiki used up to its latest available version.
Since the work was completed we have continued to support Graces Guide with support for the platform and any changes they need to make as part of their operations.