MediaWiki 1.1 Beginner’s Guide Install, manage, and customize your own MediaWiki-based site Mizanur Rahman Jeffrey T. Orloff BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI MediaWiki 1.1 Beginner’s Guide Copyright © 2010 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. First published: March 2010 Production Reference: 1220210 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. 32 Lincoln Road Olton Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK. ISBN 978-1-847196-04-0 www.packtpub.com Cover Image by Louise Barr ([email protected]) Credits Author Editorial Team Leader Mizanur Rahman Aanchal Kumar Jeffrey T. Orloff Project Team Leader Reviewers Lata Basantani Richard Carter Project Coordinator Jens Olofsson Joel Goveya Acquisition Editor Proofreader David Barnes Lynda Sliwoski Development Editor Graphics Dhiraj Chandiramani Geetanjali Sawant Technical Editor Production Coordinator Ajay B Chamkeri Melwyn D'sa Indexer Cover Work Monica Ajmera Mehta Melwyn D'sa About the Authors Mizanur Rahman graduated in Computer Science from North South University, Bangladesh. His main interests cover a wide area centered on algorithms, distributed and mobile computing, and new web technologies. He has been programming since 1999. He has been a Research Assistant at the Department of Computer Science, North South University, designing and developing web-based solutions for different software for the university. His area of interest includes Java, PHP, AJAX, and other related technologies. He is a moderator of phpXperts—the largest PHP user group in Bangladesh. He is a certified Internet programmer from the largest online testing site, www.Brainbench.com, including a master certificate in PHP. He is currently working as a Senior Software Engineer at Relisource Technologies Ltd, a USA-based software company located in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is also the technical reviewer of two previous Packt publication books, vBulletin and Smarty. You can reach him at [email protected]. I would like to thank my wife Lily and my son Adiyan for their continuous support to complete the book. I want to dedicate my work to my son. I would like to thank my parents and my relatives for their support. I would like to thank Hasin Hyder and David Barnes for giving me the opportunity to work with Packt Publishing. I would also like to thank all my friends and colleagues for being with me all the time. And finally, I would like to thank Tohin Kashem and Jehad Sarkar, two of my senior colleagues, for their invaluable support throughout my professional career. And last but not the least, all the people who have worked with me on this book. I am thankful to my reviewers, Nikhil, Peter, and Marc for their valuable inputs. A very special thanks to Nikhil for his great work on the book. A special thanks to Rajlaxmi and Akshara, my technical editors, and others who worked with me in different phases of the book. Without the support of these people, I couldn’t have completed the book. Jeffrey T. Orloff has been working with computers since the days of the IBM personal computer. His first foray into the world of computers was a book on programming games in Basic. Since then, he has spent time working with network security, free/open source software, and web technologies. Working as a freelance writer, he has been published in ComputerWorld and IBM developerWorks as well as numerous blogs. He currently keeps a blog titled Insatiable Techknowledgy (http://www.insatiabletechknowledgy.com). Jeff has worked as a technology coordinator for the School District of Palm Beach County for over five years. In addition to his work with educational technology, Jeff served as a consultant to SafeWave.org in helping them build the iLAND5 social network for children. He currently serves as a chief consultant for Sequoia Media, Inc., focusing on the IT side of social media and web content delivery. I would like to thank my family for all of their support in this endeavor. My wife Jackie for picking up all the slack around the house while I was writing and editing. To my daughter Priscilla for being so patient and helpful and to my son Jeffrey for insisting I take breaks to throw the baseball out in the yard. I would also like to thank David Barnes for bringing me into the Packt fam- ily. It has been a great project to be a part of! I would also like to thank Neil Salkind for his work in helping get everything started. Finally, I need to thank all of the people at Packt who put so much time into making sure this book can be the best possible source of information it can be! About the Reviewers Richard Carter is senior web designer at Peacock Carter, a web design agency based in the North East of England. He has had years of experience with MediaWiki as both an end user, and as a consultant for companies and organizations, large and small, looking to use MediaWiki for a huge range of purposes. Richard has written two books, MediaWiki Skins Design and Magento 1.3 Theme Design, and is currently working on a third. My thanks go to the author, who has truly written to the publisher's mantra of "community experience distilled", and to those at Packt who continue to produce these books. Finally, thank you to MediaWiki’s team of developers who, I’m sure we can agree, have produced an incredibly useful piece of software! Jens Olofsson is a freelance marketer and web designer. His formal education includes a Bachelor of Social Science in Marketing as well as numerous university courses within web design, programming and graphical design. His practical work involves mainly commission work but also other projects. He has experience working with various companies and their marketing activities—both on the Internet, as well as in more traditional channels. You may contact him on http://www.jfomedia.se. Table of Contents Preface 1 Chapter 1: About MediaWiki 7 Before we get started 8 An introduction to wikis 8 The history of the wiki 8 Introducing Wikipedia 10 What can you do with a wiki? 11 When wikis are not the best choice 11 Strict access control 12 E-commerce 12 Static content sites 12 Users are unwilling to learn something new 12 What are wikis good for? 13 Community information sharing 13 Project collaboration 13 Creating a user manual/FAQ page 14 Building an entire website 15 Company policies and documents 16 Learning management 17 Comparing wikis to content management systems, blogs, and forums 18 MediaWiki 19 MediaWiki's features 19 MediaWiki and other wiki engines 20 How MediaWiki fits your needs 22 Summary 23 Chapter 2: Installing MediaWiki 25 MediaWiki requirements 26 PHP 27 Software version 27 Extensions 27 Table of Contents Database 27 Database management 28 Web server 28 Hardware requirements 28 The bare minimum 28 One final decision 29 Subdomains 29 Subdirectories 29 Installing to the root folder 30 Using the Fantastico installer 31 Installing MediaWiki with Fantastico 31 Time for action – installing the software 31 Username and password choices 34 Downloading MediaWiki 35 Uploading files using cPanel 36 Time for action – uploading MediaWiki files with cPanel 36 Uploading MediaWiki files with an FTP client 38 Time for action – uploading the files 38 Completing the installation 39 Time for action – getting everything ready 40 Setting permissions 41 Time for action – finishing up 42 Summary 49 Chapter 3: Getting to Know Your Wiki 51 Navigating the Main Page 51 Navigation 54 Community portal 55 Current events 56 Recent changes 57 Random page 58 Help 58 Search 60 Toolbox 61 What links here 61 Related changes 62 Special pages 63 Printable version 63 Permanent link 63 Body section 64 Footer 66 Account section 67 Time for action – creating a user account 67 The logo 70 [ ii ] Table of Contents Time for action – changing the logo method one 70 Time for action – changing the logo method two 72 Summary 73 Chapter 4: Creating Content 75 Planning for new content 76 Creating a new page 78 Editing the Main Page 78 Time for action – editing the Main Page 78 Protect the Main Page 81 Time for action – protect the Main Page 81 Create a new page using the search feature 82 Time for action – create a new page using the search feature 82 Creating a new page using a wikilink 85 Time for action – creating a new page using a link 85 Creating a new page using a URL 87 Time for action – creating a new page using a URL 87 Deleting a page 89 Time for action – deleting a page 89 Formatting pages 90 Wiki syntax 90 The edit toolbar 91 Time for action – editing text with the edit toolbar 92 The nowiki tag 94 Formatting with HTML 95 Links 97 Internal links 98 Interwiki links 99 External links 99 Time for action – creating external links 100 Fixing your external links 101 Summary 102 Chapter 5: Advanced Formatting 103 Anchor