MediaWiki

Installation and configuration

MySQL database server and PHP Ubuntu

For more info: MySQL

sudo apt install imagemagick php-fpm php-intl php-xml php-curl php-gd php-mbstring php-mysql php-apcu php-zip

Create wiki database:

sudo mysql -u root mysql -p

SQL:

create database wikidb;
grant index, create, select, insert, update, delete, alter, lock tables on wikidb.* to 'wikidbadmin'@'127.0.0.1' identified by '**pwd**';
\q

Make sure the settings for your database in LocalSettings.php are correct, then go to the configuration web page, here you can create or upgrade the database:

• http://localhost/mediawiki/mw-config/index.php

MediaWiki website files

Download the code and copy to /var/www/mediawiki

• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download

Edit LocalSettings.php to add extensions and to customize.

Configuration LocalSettings.php

Note:

• Generate a new LocalSettings.php during installation and use this example to make your changes.
• Include your LocalSettings.php in your backup to make your upgrades easier

Some things you can tweak:

• WikiEditor - a bit more help while editing
• Syntax highlighting - easier reading of code
  • Also look at "Performance"
• MobileFrontend - a view for smaller screens
• Permissions - allow only registered to edit pages and view history
• Allow anonymous talk - everyone is allowed to start a discussion
• ConfirmEdit - anonymous users need to answer a simple question

sudo gedit /var/www/mediawiki/LocalSettings.php

System permissions for uploads

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/mediawiki/images/
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/mediawiki/images/

Change user password using commandline

Set the password for username 'user1' to '**pwd**'.

cd /var/www/mediawiki
php maintenance/changePassword.php --user=user1 --password=**pwd**

Apache2 webserver configuration

If you login using http your password will be send over the net in 'clear text'. To force login via https the RewriteRule is added, however, you will also need to configure the SSL part of your website. Read Create certificates for Apache2. See also Apache2 configuration for SOGo and MediaWiki.

Nginx conf webserver configuration

See:

• https://www.nginx.com/resources/wiki/start/topics/recipes/mediawiki/

PHP configuration

With wikimedia, when you import or export all pages or when you upload images and files, this will take more space and time that normally is allowed by PHP. Change these settings:

sudo gedit `locate php.ini | head -n 1``

#where is php.ini
php -r \@phpinfo\(\)\; | grep 'php.ini' -m 1

	...
	upload_max_filesize = 5M
	...
	post_max_size = 5M
	...
	max_execution_time = 180 ; 3min
	...
	max_input_time = 180 ; 3min
	...
	#logon session time (garbage collection)
	session.gc_maxlifetime=3600 ; 60 min
	...
	#nginx webserver requirement
	cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0	
	...
	date.timezone = Europe/Amsterdam

Restart Apache2 to apply the settings:

sudo service apache2 restart

Backup

The most important part to backup is the database, see MySQL#Backup for more information.

The second part is the files that where uploaded, these are typically located in:

/var/www/mediawiki/images/

We could backup this folder but then you will also have thumbnails and other temporary files. Instead we will use the following command to list the mediafiles we want to backup:

cd /var/www/mediawiki/
php maintenance/dumpUploads.php | sed 's~images/~./images/~' | zip ~/Mediafiles.zip -@

To add these to a zip file for example:

cd /var/www/mediawiki/
php maintenance/dumpUploads.php | sed 's~images/~./images/~' | zip ~/MediaWikiImages.zip -@

Categories

Use categories to group your pages by including one or more Category tags:

 [[Category:Name]]

Try to distribute your pages evenly over categories, first look here if any of the available categories can be used:

Special:Categories

Tips

Keywords

You can make the search tool more efficient if you add synonyms and keywords to a page. You might want to keep these hidden from the reader to keep the text readable . Insert like this:

<!-- hidden text -->

Special Import / Export pages

Import (as Admin)

Special:Import

Export pages

Special:Export

Export full contents

Uploaded files (like images) are not included an need to be copied and linked separately.

cd /var/www/mediawiki/
sudo php maintenance/dumpBackup.php --full --uploads > ../wiki_dump.xml

Change where "Main Page" in the menu links to

By default "Main Page" in the menu links to 'Main Page' but you can replace this with with your own page.

Change where "Main Page" in the menu links to:

1. Go to MediaWiki:Mainpage ( http://www.yourdomain.com/mediawiki/index.php/MediaWiki:Mainpage )
2. Edit the page so it is the name of the page you want and save it
3. Now click "Main Page" in the menu and create it

Note: you need to be Administrator to be allowed to do this.

Pages to configure MediaWiki

• Mediawiki:Sidebar
• MediaWiki:Common.css
• MediaWiki:Mobile.css
• MediaWiki:Lastmodifiedat NB: $1=date, $2=time)

More info:

• https://how-to.fandom.com/wiki/How_to_customize_MediaWiki

You might want to hide when you have been editing pages. We want to show the date but hide the time.

Require login for certain pages with Extension:Lockdown

Enable this extension and configure LocalSettings.php to hide pages you only want to logged-in users to see.

• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Lockdown

For example, these pages show user/date/time information of edits.

$wgSpecialPageLockdown['ComparePages']        = [ 'user' ];
$wgSpecialPageLockdown['Redirect']            = [ 'user' ];
$wgSpecialPageLockdown['PermanentLink']       = [ 'user' ];
$wgSpecialPageLockdown['PageInfo']            = [ 'user' ];
$wgSpecialPageLockdown['ApiSandbox']          = [ 'user' ];
$wgSpecialPageLockdown['Contributions']       = [ 'user' ];
$wgSpecialPageLockdown['Recentchanges']       = [ 'user' ];
$wgSpecialPageLockdown['Recentchangeslinked'] = [ 'user' ];
$wgSpecialPageLockdown['Ancientpages']        = [ 'user' ];
$wgSpecialPageLockdown['Newimages']           = [ 'user' ];
$wgSpecialPageLockdown['Log']                 = [ 'user' ];
$wgSpecialPageLockdown['Diff']                = [ 'user' ];
$wgSpecialPageLockdown['Export']              = [ 'user' ];
$wgSpecialPageLockdown['Newpages']            = [ 'user' ];
$wgActionLockdown['info'] = [ 'user' ];
$wgActionLockdown['history'] = [ 'user' ];
$wgActionLockdown['historysubmit'] = [ 'user' ];

Hide 'last modified' time from the pages

Allowing 'Search' to be used you might want to hide the 'last changed' time from the search results. Unfortunately this is not a standard function but we can get what we want if we modify a .php file.

sudo nano -l +66 /var/www/mediawiki/includes/search/searchwidgets/FullSearchResultWidget.php

$date = $this->specialPage->getLanguage()->userTimeAndDate(

Replace with:

$date = $this->specialPage->getLanguage()->userDate(

Note: these are both functions defined in 'languages/Language.php'.

Performance

MediaWiki on RapberryPi would be quite slow with some pages and especially while saving edits. This seems to be caused by the syntax highlighting extension (GeSHi). Although I can't explain why it has such high impact, the performance improved greatly with switching to client-side highlighting (HighlightJS). See below information:

• Highlightjs Integration
• https://highlightjs.org/download/

VisualEditor

VisualEditor is a WYSIWYG editor that generates readable Wiki text. Due to limitations I prefer to use WikiEdit.

Note: Parsoid is no longer a separate service and included in the extension, the extension is also included in the Mediawiki download.

Limitations

• You may not be able to edit syntax parts or other type of blocks, for this you still need to edit the wiki text.
• The generated wiki-text might be difficult to read and edit as wiki-text

Info:

• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VisualEditor
• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid

At the time I needed to checkout beta version 'MediaWiki 1.22wmf8':

git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/core.git
cd core
git branch -r | sort -V
git checkout origin/wmf/1.22wmf9
cd extensions
git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor.git
git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/extensions/Parsoid.git
node.js

Download 'node-v0.8.22.tar.gz' (the core files) and 'node-v0.8.22-linux-x64.tar.gz' (the 64 bit specific files) from http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.8.22/ extract these in this order in one folder.

It needed to be exactly this version, newer and older did not work yet.

Go into the folder and build and install this version of node:

./configure --prefix=/opt/nodejs
make -j 3
make install

Install Parsoid using npm. Note: you can uninstall by deleting /opt/nodejs:

sudo -i
cd Parsoid/js
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/nodejs/bin
npm install

Start server:

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/nodejs/bin
cd /var/www/mediawiki/extensions/Parsoid/js
node api/server.js

Go to:

• http://localhost:8000/

If you want to modify this service you can edit this file:

sudo gedit /var/www/mediawiki/extensions/Parsoid/js/api/ParserService.js

See also

Go to Apache2 webserver to read about installing and configuring Apache2 webserver.

Accidentally committed information that really needs to be removed? Go to: Permanently remove a MediaWiki revision using SQL.

MediaWiki.org help pages

• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Configuration_settings
• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Formatting
• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installing_MediaWiki
• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Running_MediaWiki_on_Ubuntu
• http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Configuration_settings#Database_settings

Other sources

• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MediaWiki
• http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/MediaWiki_tips

Mediawiki upgrade

• Example Mediawiki upgrade to 1.37.1