MediaWiki

Installation

If you're installing for the first time, don't expect to get it right on the first pass. Install the wiki, then play around, it can be much easier to scrub and start again than to faff around changing settings.

On 3rd Party Webserver

You'll need a web host that supports PHP and provides a MySQL database (most do, its pretty basic stuff), you need to know

1. FTP access details to be able upload the MediaWiki files to your host
2. MySQL database login credentials

...the above should be readily available from your provider's support pages

To install...

1. Download the latest package from http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download
2. Uncompress the rar locally and rename the folder to the name of your wiki (eg vWiki)
3. Upload the folder to your host
4. Check that the conifg folder is writeable
5. Browse to your wiki
6. Complete the config
7. Move /config/LocalSettings.php to the root of your wiki site

Onto Dedicated Machine

1. Download apache and php (plus mysql if you need a db)
   • apt-get install apache2 php5 php5-mysql
2. Exit root and cd to /tmp
3. Download latest version (see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download for latest version)
   • wget http://download.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.16/mediawiki-1.16.2.tar.gz
4. Uncompress
   • tar xvzf mediawiki-1.16.2.tar.gz
5. Move to web folder
   • mv /tmp/mediawiki-1.16.2 /var/www/
6. In /var/www/ rename the folder
   • mv mediawiki-1.16.2/ mediawiki
7. Browse to the wiki's index.php page, and setup the site
   • EG http://server/mediawiki/index.php

Configuration

Sidebar Menu

Navigate to ./wiki/MediaWiki:Sidebar or ./wiki/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Sidebar&action=edit depending on whether your using short or long URL's respectively

Extensions

Install Geshi Syntax Highlighting

1. Download the files from http://svn.wikimedia.org/svnroot/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi/ to a local folder called SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi/
2. To ensure syntax is encapsulated in a dashed border change the following line in SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi.class.ph (around line 239)
   • Originally: $css[] = "\tline-height: normal; border: 0px none white;";
   • Change to : $css[] = "\tline-height: normal; border: 1px dashed #2f6fab;";
3. Download the latest release of the syntax formatting files from http://sourceforge.net/projects/geshi/files/ into SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi/geshi/
4. Upload the entire SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi/ folder to <wiki-root>/extensions
5. Enable the extension by adding the following to your LocalSettings.php
6. Browse to Special Pages | version to confirm the extension has been installed