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Setting up this Wiki is relatively straightforward. You will need the following:
Install MediaWiki on an appropriate server (installation instructions are contained in the MediaWiki (External) manual ), and configure it so your staff have access.
The following is a distillation of the steps needed to install on a Linux (or other *nix) system. These steps will need to be adjusted for other operating systems.
wiki
).
wiki
directory to your web server. Note
that MediaWiki's installation instructions are in the
INSTALL
file in the distribution.
cd wiki
chmod -R a+rX .
config
world-writable:
chmod a+w config
wikiuser
) with full permissions on
that database.
wiki
directory (URL
http://servername.any.ac.uk/wiki
) and click the link to
run the install script.
LocalSettings.php
from the
wiki/config
subdirectory to the
wiki
directory:
cp config/LocalSettings.php ./LocalSettings.php
config
subdirectory:
chmod a-w config
LocalSettings.php
), an FAQ and other documentation.
Now that you have a copy of MediaWiki up and running, you can install the resource.
php maintenance/nukePage.php Main_Page
/tmp/snas-wiki.xml
) which contains the Wiki content.
php maintenance/importDump.php /tmp/snas-wiki.xml
LocalSettings.php
:
$wgEnableCreativeCommonsRdf=true;
$wgSitename="SNAS";
$wgRightsPage="";
$wgRightsUrl="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/";
$wgRightsText="Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 ";
$wgRightsIcon="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/3.0/88x31.png";
/images/anyunilogo.jpg
), in
LocalSettings.php
add the line
$wgLogo="/images/anyunilogo.jpg"
MediaWiki runs in user space, and security should not be a problem, provided your web server is correctly configured (but see the notes on the MediaWiki (External) download regarding security). It is probably also wise to restrict access to users on your institution network in the first instance — attempted spamming is occasionally encountered.
You do have to decide whether you give access to all your staff, or to only a restricted set of users. We suggest that you do not allow anonymous users, and that you enable email authentication.
At present Shibboleth single sign-on is only available as an (External) extension to MediaWiki, and we cannot comment on how robust it currently is.
MediaWiki is fully configurable, and you should consult the documentation to tailor it to your own requirements. One particular extension you may wish to enable is the ability to provide an (External) RSS Feed for changes to the site, which can assist in the timely dissemination of changes to the content of the Wiki.
You will want to backup your data regularly. This can be done in two ways.
Option 1
All the pages (excluding images) are kept in the database. Backup the
database (e.g. using
mysqldump
and take a copy of
the
images
subdirectory located where you installed
MediaWiki.
This stores all the user configurations as well as the content.
Option 2
There is a subdirectory
maintenance
containing useful
scripts, including php code for handling backups. To take a backup and
store in
/tmp/backup.xml
,
php maintenance/dumpBackup.php --full > /tmp/backup.xml
To restore that backup,
php maintenance/importDump.php /tmp/backup.xml
This does not store user configurations, but is more portable, for example if you are upgrading to a newer version of MediaWiki.
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