@Tgr (WMF), thank you so much for all the information! I really appreciate your help!
I took your suggestion and switched from $wgUseSharedUploads to $wgForeignFileRepos.
Files work but I still no file descriptions show up:
$wgForeignFileRepos[] = array(
'class' => 'ForeignDBRepo',
'name' => 'pool',
'url' => "https://pool.domain.com/w/images",
'directory' => '/path/to/pool/images/',
'hashLevels' => 2,
'dbType' => $wgDBtype,
'dbServer' => $wgDBserver,
'dbUser' => $wgDBuser,
'dbPassword' => $wgDBpassword,
'dbFlags' => DBO_DEFAULT,
'dbName' => 'poolwiki',
# 'tablePrefix' => 'mw_',
'hasSharedCache' => false,
'descBaseUrl' => 'https://pool.domain.com/wiki/Image:',
'fetchDescription' => true,
'descriptionCacheExpiry' => 0,
'apiThumbCacheExpiry' => 0,
);
I also tried to use ForeignAPIRepo since it worked perfectly a while ago but now it doesn't work at all (no files show up, let alone file descriptions):
$wgForeignFileRepos[] = array(
'class' => 'ForeignAPIRepo',
'name' => 'pool',
'apibase' => 'https://pool.domain.com/w/api.php',
'fetchDescription' => true,
'descriptionCacheExpiry' => 43200,
'apiThumbCacheExpiry' => 0,
);
Out of curiosity, I also tried to pull data from Wikimedia. The following configuration doesn't work for me at all (no files, no file descriptions):
$wgForeignFileRepos[] = array(
'class' => 'ForeignAPIRepo',
'name' => 'commonswiki',
'apibase' => 'https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/api.php',
'hashLevels' => 2,
'fetchDescription' => true,
'descriptionCacheExpiry' => 0,
'apiThumbCacheExpiry' => 0,
);
However, this configuration here works perfectly (files and image descriptions show up oh so beautifully :)
$wgForeignFileRepos[] = array(
'class' => 'ForeignAPIRepo',
'name' => 'enwiki',
'apibase' => 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php',
'hashLevels' => 2,
'fetchDescription' => true,
'descriptionCacheExpiry' => 0,
'apiThumbCacheExpiry' => 0,
);
I so don't get it. The file is from Commons but someone I can't pull it directly from Commons but I can get it through the English Wikipedia? What the hell? It's so weird and I just want the MultimediaViewer so badly I could cry.