After a long period of absence,
test.wikipedia.org has returned. Unlike the
old
test.wikipedia.org, it is running essentially the same code as the rest
of the Wikimedia wikis. The difference is that it uses the copy from NFS
rather than the synced copy on the local apache hard drives, which means
that we can more easily test for errors in the Wikimedia environment before
we take the final step and do a sync. Hopefully this will reduce the number
of transient PHP errors seen on the site, which are most often due to
differences between the developer's test environment and the Wikimedia
environment.
The rather cynical protected warning on the main page is my doing, I want to
have at least one goatse-free page on the wiki so that I can test the code
in peace.
-- Tim Starling