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7 Components: the Function Pages - Developers

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2 The Installation<br />

Readers<br />

Authors<br />

WikiAdmins<br />

WebAdmins<br />

In order to become familiar with and test a wiki, it is a good idea to<br />

install a system on your own computer, instead of delving straight<br />

into <strong>the</strong> depths of <strong>the</strong> Internet. Firstly, you have complete control<br />

over <strong>the</strong> software used and its settings. On <strong>the</strong> Net, this is only <strong>the</strong><br />

case if you are an administrator of <strong>the</strong> server on which <strong>the</strong> wiki is<br />

running. Secondly, almost all entries made to an online version can<br />

potentially be read by <strong>the</strong> entire world. You need to ask yourself<br />

whe<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong> world would really be interested in every little test; in<br />

addition, copyright issues could quickly crop up. In a local testing<br />

environment, on <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r hand, you can control who has access to<br />

your computer, and you can experiment without needing to worry<br />

every time about relevance or legal questions.<br />

Basically, installing wikis is always done according to a similar<br />

pattern. First you need to create and adapt <strong>the</strong> environment in which<br />

<strong>the</strong> wiki will run, which primarily means setting up <strong>the</strong> web server<br />

and, if necessary, <strong>the</strong> database. Then you copy <strong>the</strong> wiki software<br />

files to <strong>the</strong> proper location and adjust one or more configuration files<br />

to <strong>the</strong> system environment, ei<strong>the</strong>r manually or automatically. Such<br />

adjustments mainly include <strong>the</strong> indication of paths, language and<br />

connection to <strong>the</strong> database. In addition, some wikis offer <strong>the</strong> possibility<br />

of performing some settings directly over <strong>the</strong> browser. The individual<br />

steps for installing and setting up MediaWiki will be detailed<br />

below.<br />

Note: The installation described refers to <strong>the</strong> software versions on<br />

<strong>the</strong> supplementary CDs. If you prefer to download <strong>the</strong> current packages<br />

from <strong>the</strong> Internet, <strong>the</strong>re may be some variations.<br />

2.1 A Test Environment with XAMPP �<br />

�<br />

�<br />

33<br />

Local installation<br />

Installing wikis

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