ISPs - MediaWiki at GoDaddy

I installed MediaWiki on a GoDaddy Linux account. (This requires that php5 is enabled.) After a few minutes, the installation was complete.

Pretty simple ... now you need a couple of days to configure it.

Installation

I installed MediaWiki on a GoDaddy Linux account configured for php 5.1.

Click Install now
Select the appropriate domain (you may have more than one)
Record the database name
Enter and verify a database password
Choose an install directory (default is /mediawiki)
Provide administrator info for mediawiki - username, password, email address
Assign a wiki name - keep this short

It takes a few minutes (more than 5) for the installation to complete.

Versions

The version available at GoDaddy (on 03-04-08) was not the current release.

GoDaddy	Current Version
2007-07-13: 1.10.1	2008-03-02: 1.11.2 security update 2007-09-10: 1.11.0 new stable branch

I don't know exactly what the differences are, but some changes are related to security.

I discovered this after the installation was complete and I was trying to configure the software.

Initial Configuration

Using the installation default directory, the main wiki page is located at

http://yoursite.org/mediawiki

The MediaWiki Installation Guide says to use the configuration script. However, GoDaddy apparently runs this for you.

When I navigated to

http://yoursite.org/mediawiki/config/

the following was displayed

MediaWiki 1.10.1 Installation

Setup has completed, your wiki is configured.

Please delete the /config directory for extra security.

Based on this, and what is visible via ftp, basic configuration (creating directories and a database) was handled by GoDaddy's scripts. However ... that is just a small beginning. Several links on the default page (8 in all) currently point to blank pages. I suspect that you will need a couple of days to edit these.

Logo Configuration

The logo on the default page instructs you to

Set $wgLogo to the URL path to your own logo image.

To accomplish this, add something similar to the following lines to the bottom of LocalSettings.php

# Customization 03-04-08
$wgLogo = "/images/MyLogo_135.gif";

The logo should be 135px square ... if you want a different size, then you should modify the style sheet.

Personally, I prefer to work in Windows (as opposed to Linux). Therefore, I use ftp to copy files from the server to my local machine (where I keep backups), edit the files there, and then copy the new files back to the server. When editing php files, it is important to set the ftp transfer mode to ASCII. (Editing via ftp may not work with binary mode because the Windows and Linux line termination characters are different.)

It is interesting to note that while the $wgLogo manual page instructions state

It is generally a good idea to place this at the end of LocalSettings.php 
(before the ?> however), ...

the provided LocalSettings.php does not contain a closing ?> ... but that does not seem to matter.

Help Page Configuration

There are links to 2 blank help pages

One in the menu at the left of every page
One when editing pages

Help:Installation-Software Configuration provides guidance on linking these to the help pages at wikimedia. Basically, login as an administrator and make the following changes

Search for and edit	From	To
MediaWiki:Helppage	Help:Contents	metawikipedia:Help:Contents
MediaWiki:Edithelppage	Help:Editing	metawikipedia:Help:Editing

Menu Bar Configuration

There are 2 Menu Bars that need configuration

The Navigation bar (sidebar) on the left of the screen - Community Portal, Donations, ...
The menu bar at the bottom of the screen - Privacy, About, Disclaimer

Many of these options point to blank pages ... and you should place content on some of those. However,

I have no idea what a Community Portal is
I want to get the site operational without first producing Donations, Privacy, and Disclaimer pages

Some of these can be removed (or changed) by editing the navigation control on the left of every page (instructions). To do this, you must log on as an administrator.

At this point, you need to produce content for the remaining 3 pages - Main Page, Current Events, About.

That takes care of the 8 pages I've identified as needing immediate attention before going live.

Custom Page Layout

There should have been a link to this on the default page - it would have saved me 2 days of research.

Customize page layout says

Make changes to LocalSettings.php
The default skin is Monobook - its CSS stylesheet is located at skins/monobook/main.css
Change the Logo

It also provides a different method to change the sidebar menus.

Allowing Flash Movies

If you wish to allow Flash movies, you need to copy a single php file to a directory and modify LocalSettings.php to read it. Extension:Flash provides syntax, source code, and installation instructions.

Then you will need to enable file uploads (disabled by default). First make the upload directory (default images) writable by the web server (chmod 777). The modify $wgEnableUploads in LocalSettings.php.

Next you have to enable uploads of flash files.

Combining all 3 changes changes, add the following to LocalSettings.php (remember that Linux filenames are case sensitive)

include('extensions/Flash.php');

$wgEnableUploads = true;
$wgFileExtensions[] = 'swf';

Author: Robert Clemenzi