Wiki

"2 The Installation (S. 37-39)

In order to become familiar with and test a wiki, it is a good idea to install a system on your own computer, instead of delving straight into the depths of the Internet. Firstly, you have complete control over the software used and its settings. On the Net, this is only the case if you are an administrator on a server on which the wiki is running. Secondly, almost all entries made to an online version can potentially be read by the entire world.

You need to ask yourself whether the world would really be interested in every little test, in addition, copyright issues could quickly crop up. In a local testing environment, on the other hand, you can control who has access to your computer, and you can experiment without needing to constantly worry about relevance or legal questions. Basically, installing wikis is always done according to a similar pattern. First you need to create and adapt the environment in which the wiki will run, which primarily means setting up the web server and, if necessary, the database.

Then you copy the wiki software files to the proper location and adjust one or more configuration files to the system environment, either manually or automatically. Such adjustments mainly include the indication of paths, language and connection to the database. In addition, some wikis offer the possibility of performing some settings directly over the browser. The individual steps for installing and setting up MediaWiki will be detailed below. Note: The installation described refers to the software version 1.10.1, which you can find on the supplementary CD. If you prefer to download the current packages from the Internet, there may be some deviations.

2.1 A Test Environment with XAMPP

Since it is the nature of wikis to be a component of the WWW, you need to create a test environment for the actual software for local operation on your computer. In the case of MediaWiki, such an environment consists of a web server, the script language PHP (Version 5.0 or higher) and the database MySQL (4.0 or higher). The installation and interaction of these components is complex, and descriptions of them fill bookshelves. However, that is not within the scope of our book. Luckily, there is a package that allows us to install all required components with a minimum of configuration effort: XAMPP.

This is the abbreviation for ""Apache MySQL PHP Perl"" (the X is a placeholder for the operating system) and thus for components that together result in possible standard equipment for a web server. If you should already have this software on your computer, you can skip this chapter and go straight to installing the MediaWiki. Tip: If you already have a web server installed on your computer, it is possible that XAMPP may not work. For instance, this is the case with IIS. At the time of this printing, XAMPP is available in Version 1.6.3. It can be found on the supplementary CD in the directory /xampp/ [operating system]. The newest version can be downloaded at the URL http://www.apachefriends.org /de/xampp.html. "