Productive Monday: MediaWiki - Collaborative publishing

In order to use MediaWiki, you will need a database server. Since this may be on another computer, there is no dependency noted in the RPM file -- if you want to run the database server and MediaWiki on the same system, you'll need to select and install the database server manually. I usually use MySQL, but PostgreSQL can also be used.

To set up your wiki, you'll need to start Apache and your database server, if they're not already running:

# service httpd start
# service mysqld start # <---- Assuming you use MySQL!

If you have freshly installed MySQL, you'll need to set a password for the root user (replace YourBigSecretPassword with the password of your choosing):

# /usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password "YourBigSecretPassword"
# /usr/bin/mysqladmin -p -u root -h $(hostname) password "YourBigSecretPassword"
Enter password: YourBigSecretPassword

Next, create a symbolic link from the desired wiki location to /var/www/wiki. For example, if you want to host a wiki with an address of http://Hostname/wiki, then execute these commands:

# ln -s /var/www/wiki /var/www/html/wiki

You will also need to create a link to the skins directory:

# ln -s /usr/share/mediawiki/skins /var/www/wiki/skins

Then access the wiki's address (http://localhost/wiki) using a web browser on the the computer running MediaWiki. You'll see a welcome page with a setup link; click on that link to go to a setup form. Near the bottom of the form, select the User Superuser option and enter the root MySQL password where indicated -- MediaWiki will login to the server and create the required databases.

MediaWiki will then inform you of the success or failure of the setup operation (if it fails, read the message to find out why, correct the errors, and try again). Once you have successfully completed the setup step, copy the config file to the final location:

# cp /var/www/wiki/config/LocalSettings.php /var/www/wiki/LocalSettings.php

Your Wiki is now ready for use.

Tip: To set the logo that appears in the upper-left corner of the wiki pages, add a line to the end of /var/www/wiki/LocalConfiguration.php (just before the line which reads "?>" ) which sets $wgLogo to the URI of a 153 x 153 pixel image:

$wgLogo='http://Hostname/wiki/mylogo.png';

If your image is less than 153x153, add a transparent border to make up the difference.

Installing from the command line: yum install mediawiki
Installing using the graphical installer: Servers > Web Server > mediawiki
Menu location after installation: (none -- access using a browser)
Command: (none)
Upstream website: http://www.mediawiki.org