Setting up a private mediawiki on your windows 7 (or Vista, you poor, unfortunate soul) machine

Configuring your own PC to host a website, private or public, used to be much more of a tremendous pain than it is now. First things first, you'll need to grab Microsoft's Web Platform Installer.

You can grab it from here: http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx

It's a relatively fast download, as all that it provides is a platform for downloading bigger, better things, which is what we'll do presently.

OK, I got the web platform installer, now what?

You're going to want to go to the "Products" heading, the one that has the red box around it in the screenshot.

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/O7OEP.png

This should bring up a list of things, and we're going to go down and select the ones you'll need to make this happen.

IIS 7.5 Express
PHP Manager for IIS
MySQL Windows 5.1
IIS: Management Console (NOT IIS6)
IIS: Basic Authentication
IIS: HTTP Redirection
IIS: Server Side Includes
IIS: HTTP Errors
IIS: Directory Browsing
IIS: Default Document
IIS: Static Content

You don't actually *require* the last handful, but you'll probably be happy you have them one day.

Click "Install".

You'll be presented with a few dialogs, setting things such as a password, maybe a username for your MySQL database, and some IIS passwords. You can go with your windows password if you'd like, I'd say go with something simple and easily memorable (eg, for my MySQL setup, I'm admin/admin).

After that, you'll want to go have a cigarette or a coffee, or both, depending on your preferred vices, while the software packages are fetched and installed.

Do I need anything else?

You'll need to grab the mediawiki software itself. You can download it from http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download and like the page kindly suggests, you can use 7-zip to decompress and inflate the archive.

As part of the install of IIS, you should now have a new directory, C:\inetpub\. Move the folder from the .tar.gz file into C:\inetpub\wwwroot\ and rename it something more pronounceable than "mediawiki-1.16.5". I find 'wiki' rolls off the tongue. You'll probably need to give Windows administrator credentials for moving things around, but don't worry about it.

OK, the stuff installed, the wiki source got downloaded, now what?

Cheers friend, I'm so glad you asked.

You're going to want to run the newly-installed "Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager" as an administrator (right click, run as administrator).

Step 1: on the right side of the window, click "Stop"

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/Qq0kz.png

Step 2: on the left side of the window, expand the 'Sites' folder. There should be a default site in there that you don't care about. Right click that puppy and remove it.

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/RT0HI.png

Step 3: Right Click, choose "Add Website". Give it a really clever and original site name, something like "wiki". For "Physical Path", give it the folder you extracted the mediawiki source to, eg 'C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wiki'

Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/tW3Ym.png

Step 4: Click "Start" on the right side of the window, right near where you clicked 'stop.' I don't think you need a screenshot for this.

Step 5: Open up your favorite browser, and in the address bar, type "http://localhost"

If everything went well, you should be presented with a mediawiki configuration page, where you'll need to regurgitate things like the password you set for MySQL. The nice thing about this configuration is that you can't possibly mess it up, it will just keep looping back to the same page and telling you what you did wrong.

Am I Done Yet?

Almost! You have one, small, infinitesimal thing left to accomplish. I take that back. Two things. Two trivial, minute expenditures of your doubtlessly hard-won calories.

1 - Once the config stuff is done, Mediawiki will suggest you move your LocalConfig.php file to the parent directory. Nothing will blow up if you don't, but it's good practice and you might as well.
2 - Have you considered making a donation to the Mediawiki project, or me, personally?

Address all complaints to

/dev/null

Address all compliments to

dmbeiler@gmail.com