Advice for integrating a blog and wiki in a custom site

Question

I've been tasked with building a site for a client. They want it to include a wordpress blog and a wiki with both integrated apps sharing the look and feel of the main site. Currently, they use MediaWiki and would like to stick with it, but they are flexible with respect to the software we choose.

I've nailed down two fairly discrete approaches to this problem:

1. Build custom themes for both Wordpress and MediaWiki
2. Strip Wordpress and MediaWiki of most of their respective visuals and include them both in the site using iframes.

I'm fairly comfortable with the technical requirements of option 1 and am only entertaining option 2 because the allotted development time for this project is extremely limited. My experience with framing external sites is fairly limited and thus I am a not entirely sure what the technical ramifications are for option 2. For instance, will it require a ton of extra work to link to specific pages within the blog/wiki if I'm using an iframe? What about forms included in the framed pages?

I guess I'm just wondering what you fine people would do here. Any advice/insight you may provide is appreciated!

Answer 1

Personally I'd plump for option 1, but I can see the benefits of option 2. A possible option 3 is to use the Wordpress Comments extension to MediaWiki, or look at a similar integration of the two (see this StackOverflow thread), so you only have to change the look and feel of one product.

Answer 2

It is almost always a mistake to try to strip out functionality and do things the "wrong way" in an effort to save time. It's really not that hard to make a WordPress or MediaWiki theme. Just look at some of the themes that are there and take out the tags that you don't like.

Maintaining a stripped-down version of WP or MW will become a maintenance nightmare for you. What do you do when security problems are discovered?

If there isn't enough time or money to do this job right, don't do it the wrong way --- avoid the job. Because they won't have enough time and money for maintenance or fixing, either.