Fedora Linux

Installing and Configuring a Wiki

A Wiki is a series of web pages that can be easily edited using only a web browser—a simple and convenient way of producing a collaborative web site. Perhaps the most impressive examples of Wikis are those operated by the Wikimedia Foundation (http://wikimedia.org), including Wikipedia, the Wiktionary, and WikiBooks.

Fedora Extras includes the Wiki software used by the Wikimedia Foundation, named MediaWiki. Once installed, it can be configured and ready for use in a few minutes.

How Do I Do That?

MediaWiki requires a MySQL server. yum won’t automatically install a MySQL server when you install MediaWiki because MySQL isn’t truly a dependency: the database server doesn’t have to be on the same computer—but for a small installation, that makes the most sense.

To configure MediaWiki, start your web server (if it’s not already running) and then, using a browser on the same computer as the MediaWiki software, go to http://localhost/mediawiki/. You will see an introduction page like that in Figure 7-27, informing you that the software must be configured before use.

Figure 7-27. MediaWiki before initial configuration

To configure the software, click on the link provided. The page shown in Figure 7-28 will appear.

Figure 7-28. MediaWiki configuration page

This ...