wheelie34 - 9:28 am on Feb 18, 2009 (gmt 0)

You could have the basic framework of mediawiki up in a couple of hours but after that it will take time to make it how you want it, for example, you will need to setup short URL's to start with as the standard htaccess uses index.php?...... you will also need to add an extension to add meta description tags, the standard installation only has a title element and keyword meta tag, there are hundreds of different extensions that cover almost everything you would want, including different ways and locations for displaying AdSense.

Then as you say you will want to run adsense on it in the future, be careful if you intend to let users add all their content and time only for you to generate revenue from their work, not sure how you will get around this.

Of course you could do all the content yourself and block of allowing users to sign up, that way you would be using the software sort of like a CMS.

To setup mediawiki you don't really need to know any language, it runs on php mysql, to install it all you need to know are the database settings, the installer does the rest.

It's a fairly robust piece of software that you can easily change/modify to suit what you want it to do.

My opinion, do it yourself and ask here if you hit a snag, all you need to do is get your hosting setup with MySql and download the mediawiki package and go for it, what's the worst that can happen? a re install