Now you will get yourself your own personal server and your own domain, both of which are required for running a public wiki. If you already have a domain name and a server, or if you just want to configure a wiki for use on your own computer only, skip down to the "Install MySQL" section.

You can buy a domain name from namecheap.com. A domain name is like your personal name/the name of your house on the internet. My main domain name is "aurellem.org", because it means "little gold", and because it sounds like my initials, RLM. The steps to getting a domain name for yourself are as follows:

1.) Decide on a domain name. This is an important name that you might be using for a long time, so choose wisely. Be prepared to try multiple variations on your domain name as many domain names are already taken.

2.) Go to http://www.namecheap.com/ and register the domain name. The cost is about $12 per year for a domain name.

I recommend Linode, since you can load the server you get with my favorite operating system, Arch GNU/Linux, and because I have experienced stellar service from them for about a year so far.

Steps towards getting a Virtual Private Server:

1.) Go to https://linode.com/ and buy a Virtual Private Server of your very own.

• Select the Operating System as "Arch Linux", and set the physical location to the nearest location to you. You will then decide how to partition your server; the defaults that Linode offers are fine. Finally, you will have to set the root password which is how you will access the server from your computer. Be sure to choose a secure password or your server can be easily compromised.

This is a two step process – you have to set your domain to point to the nameservers at linode.com, and you have to tell linode.com to point requests to your new virtual private server that you just bought.

1.) Go to namecheap.com again, select your domain, go to "Domain Name Server Setup", select "Specify Custom DNS Servers" and enter:

• ns1.linode.com
• ns2.linode.com
• ns3.linode.com
• ns4.linode.com

• ns5.linode.com

  as the 5 DNS servers.

2.) Go back to linode.com and go to the "DNS Manager". Select "Add a domain zone" and enter your domain name. Select the defaults to get yourself started.

It may take up to a day for the DNS system to sort itself out and for the entire world to recognize that your new domain name points to your new virtual private server.

After that, you will be able to ssh into your new server using your new domain name. Once you are able to do this, you know that you have properly set up your domain name and new server.

The point of this section is to create the "wiki.<your-domain-name>" domain. I like this setup for aesthetic reasons because it keeps your domain name open for other services you might install in the future, such as webmail at "email.<your-domain-name>" or an FTP server at "ftp.<your-domain-name>". If you want your new domain name to serve as a wiki exclusively, feel free to adjust these directions accordingly. On my system visiting http://wiki.aurellem.org/ will bring you to the wiki, while http://aurellem.org/ will take you to this blog.

1.) Go to linode.com and select DNS Manager.

2.) Click "Add a domain zone" at the bottom right corner of the screen and enter the following values.

Select "Yes, insert a few records to get me started", using the default IP suggested.

3.) Delete the "mail" A Record, the "www" A Record, and the "mail.<your-domain>" MX Record. (This is not strictly necessary, I just like to keep the records clean).

Login to your shiny new server by using:

ssh root@<your-domain>

You should fully upgrade your system by performing:

pacman -Syyu

Now, you will want to create a new user for your machine.

useradd -m --groups wheel <your-username>

Finally, log off and log back on again as your new user.

exit
ssh <your-username>@<your-domain>

Tell systemd to start MySQL when the system starts.

sudo systemctl enable mysqld.service

MySQL is like a file system, and just like the filesystem on your server, MySQL needs to have a root user that can access everything and create new users.

To create sensible defaults and a root user for your MySQL database, run:

sudo systemd start mysqld
mysql_secure_installation

Note that when the script says:

In order to log into MariaDB to secure it, we'll need the current
password for the root user.  If you've just installed MariaDB, and
you haven't set the root password yet, the password will be blank,
so you should just press enter here.

It is talking about the root user for the MySQL system, NOT the root user for your server. You should just press enter and not enter the password for the root user on your system.

When it says:

Set root password? [Y/n]

Select "Y" and create a new password for the root MySQL user. As with all passwords, I recommend that you set the root password on your MySQL database to a passphrase that is easy for you to remember but hard for anyone to guess. Four random English words such as "meticulous cougars flavorsome waltzing" should work very well and be essentially impossible to break. (Don't actually use "meticulous cougars flavorsome waltzing" now that I've written it here.) You should avoid using the same password for both your root server account and your MySQL account so that if someone compromises your wiki, they don't also get access to your server. Be sure to remember this root password as you will need it later to set up your wiki!

Select "Y" for the rest of the options to remove unnecessary database elements created when MySQL was installed.

Now, restart MySQL for your changes to take effect.

sudo systemctl restart mysqld

Check to make sure that MySQL is running by executing:

systemctl status mysqld

The first few lines of output on my system look like this:

systemctl status mysqld
mysqld.service - MariaDB database server
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/mysqld.service; enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sat 2013-08-31 18:00:38 EDT; 7min ago

Make sure that it says "Active: active (running)".

sudo pacman -S php php-cgi php-xcache php-gd php-intl

These programs provide the php language as well as several helper programs needed for our mediawiki.

php is controlled by a global config file called php.ini. This file specifies which capabilities the php language will have on your system. Since we're setting up a wiki, we'll need to enable graphics, mysql, and a few other capabilities.

Locate the "Dynamic Extensions" section of /etc/php/php.ini.

It begins with

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; Dynamic Extensions ;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

Uncomment the following lines:

extension=gd.so
extension=intl.so
extension=mysql.so
extension=zip.sh

Add the following line at the end of the Dynamic Extensions section:

extension=xcache.so

The Dynamic Extension section should now look like this:

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; Dynamic Extensions ;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

; If you wish to have an extension loaded automatically, use the
; following syntax:
;
;   extension=modulename.extension
;
; For example, on Windows:
;
;   extension=msql.dll
;
; ... or under UNIX:
;
;   extension=msql.so
;
; ... or with a path:
;
;   extension=/path/to/extension/msql.so
;
; If you only provide the name of the extension, PHP will look for it
; in its default extension directory.
;
;extension=bcmath.so
;extension=bz2.so
;extension=calendar.so
extension=curl.so
;extension=dba.so
;extension=enchant.so
;extension=exif.so
;extension=ftp.so
extension=gd.so
extension=gettext.so
;extension=gmp.so
;extension=iconv.so
;extension=imap.so
extension=intl.so
;extension=ldap.so
;extension=mcrypt.so
;extension=mssql.so
;extension=mysqli.so
extension=mysql.so
;extension=odbc.so
;zend_extension=opcache.so
;extension=openssl.so
;extension=pdo_mysql.so
;extension=pdo_odbc.so
;extension=pdo_pgsql.so
;extension=pdo_sqlite.so
;extension=pgsql.so
;extension=phar.so
;extension=posix.so
;extension=pspell.so
;extension=shmop.so
;extension=snmp.so
;extension=soap.so
;extension=sockets.so
;extension=sqlite3.so
;extension=sysvmsg.so
;extension=sysvsem.so
;extension=sysvshm.so
;extension=tidy.so
;extension=xmlrpc.so
;extension=xsl.so
extension=zip.so
extension=xcache.so

sudo pacman -S imagemagick mediawiki

You may eventually host many websites and many wikis from your server, and accordingly, you should make things easier for yourself and setup your first wiki so that you can easily make more of them in the future. (Instead of setting it up so that you can only serve a single wiki from your machine.)

Choose a directory on your system that will serve as the base directory for your system. On my system, my user is called r, and I use /home/r/wiki/aurellem to serve http://wiki.aurellem.org/. Other wikis I host get their own directory in /home/r/wiki. If your domain was lolcatsforever.com and your username on your server was catz, you might consider using /home/catz/wiki/lolcatsforever as the base folder for the wiki at http://wiki.lolcatsforever.com/. Whatever you pick is entirely your choice, and from now on I'll refer to the directory you chose as <wiki-base>.

You will now need to create <wiki-base> and link some files to prepare your wiki.

mkdir -p <wiki-base>
cd <wiki-base>
ln -s /usr/share/webapps/mediawiki/* .
rm images
mkdir images
sudo chown :http images
chmod g+w images

This creates symlinks from the files you installed from the mediawiki package to your <wiki-base>. You create symlinks instead of copying the files so that whenever you upgrade mediawiki, the files for all of your wikis will be updated as well.

You remove the symlink to /usr/share/webapps/mediawik/images and replace it with a folder of the same name because mediawiki stores images related to a wiki in the images folder and thus each wiki needs its own images folder.

The chown and chmod commands enable lighttpd to access the images folder an put images into it whenever someone uploads an image to your wiki.

sudo pacman -S fgci lighttpd

Instruct systemd to start lighttpd on boot.

sudo systemctl enable lighttpd

Start the lighttpd server.

sudo systemctl start lighttpd

The config file for lighttpd is the most complicated file to prepare because lighttpd can do so many different things.

A minimal wiki config for lighttpd follows. Replace <your-domain> and <wiki-base> with the appropriate values and replace /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf with the following:

server.modules    = (
        "mod_accesslog",
        "mod_cgi",
        "mod_fastcgi",
        "mod_rewrite",
        "mod_auth"
)

server.document-root    = "/srv/http"
dir-listing.activate    = "enable"

server.port         = 80
server.username     = "http"
server.groupname    = "http"

server.errorlog     = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log"

index-file.names    = ( "index.html", "index.php" )

mimetype.assign     = ( ".html" => "text/html", 
                        ".txt" => "text/plain", 
                        ".jpg" => "image/jpeg", 
                        ".png" => "image/png", 
                        ".css" => "text/css",
                        ".php" => "text/x-php",
                        "" => "application/octet-stream" )

fastcgi.server = ( ".php" => ((
       "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi",
       "socket" => "/tmp/php.socket"))) 

$HTTP["host"] =~ "^wiki.<your-domain>*" {
       server.document-root  = "<wiki-base>"
}

Be sure to replace <your-domain> and <wiki-base> above with the appropriate values for your system.

For example, on my system, I use:

$HTTP["host"] =~ "^wiki.aurellem.org*" {
       server.document-root  = "/home/r/wiki/aurellem"
}

Execute

sudo systemctl restart lighttpd

To restart lighttpd with the new settings, and then check

systemctl status lighttpd

To confirm that lighttpd is still running.

Now you can visit http://wiki/.<your-domain> and configure your new wiki. You should be greeted with something that looks like this.

Click and follow the on screen directions.

Below are the settings I used on for my own wiki. Modify yours accordingly.

The configuration will end by offering you a file called LocalSettings.php.

Save this file to your computer and then upload it by opening a terminal, changing to the directory into which you downloaded LocalSettings.php, and executing:

scp LocalSettings.php <your-server-username>@<your-domain>:<wiki-base>

on my system, I executed:

scp LocalSettings.php r@aurellem.org:/home/r/wiki/aurellem

Create a logo image and upload it to your wiki base with

scp <your-logo-image> <your-server-username>@<your-domain>:<wiki-base>

I used the following image:

and executed:

scp sun.png r@aurellem.org:/home/r/wiki/aurellem

Then edit <wiki-base>/LocalSettings.php and find the part where it defines $wgLogo

I changed mine from :

$wgLogo             = "$wgStylePath/common/images/wiki.png";

to:

$wgLogo             = "/sun.png";

Notice that the initial "/" is required.

Congratulations! You have a shiny new wiki that your and your friends can edit and use to collaborate.

Here are a few commands that you can use to examine your new system.

Disks fail, companies go out of business, and you may be hacked at some point, so you should know how to backup your wiki and also how to restore it from the backup. In contrast to normal files, in order to backup your wiki you have to use a specialized MySQL "data dumper" to get the information contained in your MySQL database.

To backup your database, use:

mysqldump -u root -p <wiki-database-name> > <backup-file-name>

On my system, this command is:

mysqldump -u root -p aurellem > aurellem-wiki-backup.sql

The wiki database name is the name you selected for the database when installing your wiki. If you don't remember it then you can execute:

mysql -u root -p

And then enter:

show databases;

at the SQL prompt.

The backup file is a human readable sequence of SQL statements that together restores the wiki's tables when executed. Take a look at it – it's quite interesting. You can only run this command from your server, but once you have generated the backup file, you should copy it to another location to protect from the possibility of your server being destroyed.

To restore your wiki after a catastrophic failure, run the following commands.

First, an empty database with the same name as your wiki database.

mysql -u root -p

At the sql prompt, type:

create database <wiki-database-name>;

On my machine I typed:

create database aurellem;

The output should be:

Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

Then, restore the contents of your wiki database from backup:

At a terminal prompt, type:

mysql -u root -p <wiki-database-name> < <backup-file-name>

On my machine this command would be:

mysql -u root -p aurellem < aurellem-wiki-backup.sql

Your wiki database will be restored.

You will also want to backup the files in <wiki-base>. You can do this by simply copying them to another computer. One nice way to do this is:

tar cvjf "wiki-backup-`date`.tar.bz2" <wiki-base>

This will create a dated archive file with all your wiki files (including symlinks) which you can restore anytime by unpacking the archive file with:

cd <wiki-base>
cd ..
tar xvf <your-arvhive-file>

Now that you've created one wiki, creating another one can be done in 5 minutes or less. Here are the steps.

• This org file