How to Install Mediawiki

MediaWiki is an open-source Wiki web application that is used by Wikipedia. It is written in PHP and requires a Database backend to function. It has been publicly released on the Open Source community.

Details are on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki

Instructions to Install MediaWiki on Ubuntu

Step 1 – Update your local Repositories

apt update -y

Step 2 – Install Pre-Reqs

Install MediaWiki Application Pre-Requisites

sudo apt-get install Apache2 PHP texlive php-mbstring php-xml php-apcu php-horde-cache -y

Step 3 – Download MediaWiki and Unzip

Next download the MediaWiki zipped application and move to /var/www

wget https://releases.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.30/mediawiki-1.30.0.tar.gz

sudo gunzip mediawiki-1.30.0.tar.gz

sudo tar -xvf mediawiki-1.30.0.tar.gz

sudo mv mediawiki-1.30.0/* /var/www/html/wiki/

Step 4 – Install and Configure MariaDB

Install MariaDB

sudo apt-get install mariadb-client mariadb-server

Log into the MariaDB database, create a Database and grant privileges

sudo mysql -u root

Create database ps_wiki;

GRANT INDEX, CREATE, SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, ALTER, LOCK TABLES ON ps_wiki.* TO ‘wiki’ @ ‘localhost’ IDENTIFIED by ‘password’;

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Exit;

This will grant the permissions needed and create DB username called WIKI and Password password. Remember this as you will need it later.

Step 5 – Restart Apache to apply all configuration

sudo service apache2 restart

Step 6 – Navigate to the Web interface installation

Launch the wiki in your favourite web browser.  This will usually be the server IP followed by index.php

For Example,  http://192.168.1.157/index.php/

Click “Setup your first wiki”

Look for any warning messages

Step 7 – Setup Database in Web Interface

You will need the username and password created earlier

Under MySQL Settings

Database host = localhost

Database name = my_wiki

Database table prefix = LEAVE BLANK

Database Username: wiki

Database Password: password

Step 8 – Database settings

Leave at default

Storage Engine = InnoDB

Database character set = Binary

Step 9 – Wiki Name

Enter details as you require:

Name of Wiki: YOUR WIKI NAME

Project namespace: Leave set as “Same as the wiki name”

Your Username – ENTER NEW WIKI ADMINISTRATOR ACCOUNT

Password – ENTER NEW PASSWORD

Email – ENTER EMAIL ADDRESS

Step 10 – Options

User Rights – chose what type of wiki you want. I recommend either:

Open wiki means ANYONE can write to it

Account Creation required means your users must log in

Leave all other settings as default

Step 11 – Install

Click the install button and wait for media wiki to install.

This can take over 5 minutes dependant on hardware.

Once the installations are completed you will be prompted to download the localsettings.php  the installer has just created. Download, and then FTP these files to the UBUNTU server. Must be copied to /var/www/html/.

FTP programs like WINSCP.

Here is a video of the entire process