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WHAT YOU NEED

 

> Mac OS 10.4 ($129, www.apple.com)
> PHP 4.x or later (free, www.php.net)
> MySQL 4.x or later (free, www.mysql.com)
> MediaWiki (free, www.mediawiki.org)

 

Wikis - those collaborative hypertext things where users can remove, add, edit, or change content - are one of the original Web 2.0 solutions (circa 1996) and deliver on the oft-stated bit of wisdom that two (or 20, or 200) heads are better than one. But the important thing to know about wikis is that they are also a great way to share information, ideas, plans, or gossip with your family, friends, and coworkers. And there are lots of ways to wiki, ranging from the supereasy (signing up for a free hosted wiki at www.elwiki.com), to slightly more involved (setting up a wiki on a hosted Web server with preinstalled MySQL and PHP support), to the old-fashioned way: creating one from the ground up on your Mac. Here's how to set up your own wiki using all three methods.

 

Note: If you're not up to speed on all things wiki, you might first want to read "Wiki 101."

 

WIKI ON YOUR WEB SPACE

 

Setting up a wiki with a hosted ISP account is simple if your host provides the required MySQL and PHP services. If it doesn't, you'll have to settle for a hosted wiki (see "Wiki the Supereasy Way,"). We used a fairly typical broadband Web-hosting package from AT&T Yahoo with a standard setup that you should be able to adapt to your specific situation.

 

1. Suss Out Your Services
Go to your Web host's Domain Control Panel (that's AT&T Yahoo parlance - your host may call it something else) and browse what services are available to you. If you've got the required MySQL and PHP support, find out which versions your provider supports thusly: Follow your Web host's instructions to install phpMyAdmin (AT&T Yahoo users: Click the Install Admin Tool link), a freebie that provides version information, as well as tools that help you activate MySQL and create your master (sometimes called "root") MySQL username and password. Follow the onscreen prompts to install and launch phpMyAdmin, where you'll see the active version of PHP listed. Click the MySQL Info link to see what version of MySQL you've got. Our server software is a bit outdated, so that's why we chose to use MediaWiki (free, www.mediawiki.org). Not only does it power the mighty Wikipedia, but it's also available in older versions that work with older server software.

 

Most modern broadband accounts provide frills such as Perl, PHP, and MySQL. Just make sure to download the version of MediaWiki that works with your host's setup.

 

2. Download, Upload
Download the appropriate version of MediaWiki for your server's MySQL and PHP configuration, double-click the package to unzip it, and upload the resulting directory to your Web host using Cyberduck (free, www.cyberduck.ch) or your preferred FTP client. You'll probably want to change the directory's original name (mediawiki-1.6.10) - we called ours "wiki" and put it at the top level of our Web directory (www.mysite.com/wiki/) to keep things simple.

 

Find all of your PHP and MySQL info here. If you ever lose the master password, you can reset it by clicking Privileges.

 

3. You May Install at Will
MediaWiki uses a handy installer script - just load www.mysite.com/wiki/config/ in a Web browser to access it. Fill in the text fields as prompted, following our screenshot example below for the tricky ones. You'll be asked for three different usernames. First is the Admin Username, the name of your wiki's administrator (that is, you). Second is the DB Username, which interacts directly with the database and can match the master name you set in step 1 - or for tighter security, you can enter a new username that will only be used for accessing this part of the database. Third is the Superuser Account, yes, the same master MySQL user you created in step 1. Once you've chosen your usernames, click Install. If you get a page marked red with errors, go back and verify your database username and password and the SQL Server Host name - the latter stymied us for a while until we gave up and consulted our host's documentation.

 

Big tip: We had to dig through AT&T Yahoo's documentation to learn that the MySQL Server Host is called mysql, rather than the default localhost.

4. Clean Up

The installer creates a file that you need to move - find it in wiki/config/LocalSettings.php, move it into the /wiki directory (or whatever you named your main wiki directory in step 2), and then delete the config directory. Now go to www.mysite.com/wiki and admire your handiwork. To add your own logo to the upper-left corner and otherwise customize your wiki, click the Configuration Settings List link and open the LocalSettings.php file that you just moved. You may notice that there are way more settings than we can cover here, and that's OK, because most are superfluous to the average wiki. Smart people will make a backup of the LocalSettings.php file and/or tweak only a few settings before testing the results. Note that you can add to this file by copying and pasting directives from another file, DefaultSettings.php (in the wiki/includes folder) - it's a bit tricky, but full directions are provided.

 

The good news: You don't have to touch most of the settings in LocalSettings.php (right). The better news is that each title links to a primer on that setting (left), including the default and allowable values.

 

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WIKI ON YOUR MAC
On a home or office Mac, a wiki can help you organize and interlink your notes and ramblings. All the better if your Mac is on a network where others can access the wiki as a communal virtual whiteboard. But you'll need to set up a server first.

 

1. Shortcut to the Server
If we want to use the latest version of MediaWiki, we need the latest versions of MySQL and PHP, available in the free MAMP kit (www.mamp.info). The catch: MAMP doesn't upgrade your Mac's Apache server or PHP engine so you can host your wiki on your Mac's built-in Web server. Instead, MAMP installs a completely new server environment - perfect if you don't already run a site on your Mac, but problematic if you do. To run your wiki on the same server as your website, skip MAMP and update your Mac's existing Web server by downloading the latest MySQL and PHP distributions from Marc Liyanage's Mac OS X Packages site (www.entropy.ch/software/macosx). Then skip ahead to step 3.

 

MAMP includes a control panel, handy Web interface, and phpMyAdmin for configuring the MySQL database.

 

 

2. MAMP = Macintosh Apache MySQL, PHP

If you don't need to upgrade your Mac's Web server, download MAMP and drag the MAMP folder to your /Applications folder. Double-click the MAMP icon to open the MAMP control panel, which should automatically load the MAMP Start Page into your default Web browser (if it doesn't, click Open Start Page). The Start Page contains the MySQL server information that you'll need to install MediaWiki, including a link to the phpMyAdmin app for configuring and managing MySQL. Unless you change MAMP's settings, your wiki directory and any other Web documents should go into the htdocs directory inside the MAMP folder.

 

Unless you change its settings, the MAMP server uses port 8888 and its own htdocs folder.

 

3. Just Add Wiki
Download and uncompress MediaWiki, rename the folder wiki, drop it into your /MAMP/htdocs folder, and load the installer by loading localhost:8888/wiki/ in a browser. If you changed MAMP's ports to the default (see "Make MAMP Your Main Server"), omit the port number (:8888). Set up MediaWiki using the MySQL server location and root user info from step 2. Once installed, move the wiki/config/LocalSettings.php file into your main wiki directory.

 

If you updated your existing Web server in step 1, drop the wiki folder into /Library/WebServer/Documents and load localhost/wiki/ in a browser. Follow the prompts to complete the setup.

 

Using the (MySQL) superuser account gives MediaWiki's installer the teeth to create a wiki MySQL user and database table for us.

 

BONUS TIP: Make MAMP Your Main Server
If you want to replace your built-in Web server with the MAMP kit, open the Apache section in MAMP's Preferences and enter /Library/WebServer/Documents in the Document Root field. Then go to the Ports section and click Set To Default Apache And MySQL Ports.

 

 

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WIKI THE SUPEREASY WAY

 

If all this talk of initializing databases and hacking config files has dashed your wiki dreams, buck up - there's a much easier way. Take advantage of one of the numerous free wiki-hosting services (there's a long list here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_farms). You may have to put up with a banner ad or two on your free wiki, but you'll be spared all the setup geekery. We like ElWiki (free with discreet Google text ads, www.elwiki.com) and Wiki.com (free for up to 25MB storage, www.wiki.com).

 

If you just want to use the thing, rather than futz around setting it up, consider a prefab, hosted wiki.

 

BONUS TIP: Wiki for One
If your needs are more modest - say, you just need a place to organize your own thoughts, WikityWidget (free, inkspotting.com/wikity) is a slick wiki kit that, once installed, lives in your Mac OS 10.4 Dashboard. WikityWidget was partially influenced by TiddlyWiki, a righteously cool, completely portable wiki kit that's based on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - so there's no messy server installation or configuration required. Check it out at www.tiddlywiki.com, and see how easy it is to create your own WikiOnAStick (where the stick is a USB flash drive)

 

Look, Ma: Wiki in a widget!

 

WIKI 101

The concept of the wiki can seem confusing - in fact, even after using the mighty Wikipedia for years, you might not have a clue how it all comes together. Here's a quickie on the ways of wiki.

 

Hyper Hypertext: Wikis are based on hyperlinks, which organize the pages of a wiki together in a browsable format. Yep, just like on the Web, with the key difference that wikis can be open, in the sense that anyone can edit, add to, or delete the content through a Web browser.

 

Link First, Edit Later: Since wikis are link based, creating a new page starts with creating a new link. Simply add a page name to the end of the URL string in your Web browser's address bar. To create a page called New Page, for example, you'd type www.localhost:8888/wiki/index.php/New_Page.html and then click the Edit This Page link and have at it. Alternately, use the Search box - enter a term or page name in the field and then click Go (not Search). If a wiki can't find the page, it'll offer to create a blank page named after your search term.

 

Link, Interlink: Wikis use a markup language all their own, and also support some standard HTML conventions. Since wikis are all about links, here's how they work: While editing a page, you can create a link to a related page in the wiki by entering the target page's title in double brackets, like so: [[pigdog]]. If the pigdog page hasn't been created yet, clicking the pigdog link that you just created will bring up the new-page editor so you can create the page. MediaWiki's handbook covers it all; find it linked on your wiki's main page or at meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents.

 

The Massive Undo: The wiki's open-authoring setup is ripe for abuse - a good case for keeping your personal wiki behind your company- or home-network firewall. Ultimately, wikis support massive undo - in the form of manually combing through pages to edit or delete erroneous content.

 

Hmm, no page about the mythical pigdog? We'll fix that, wikity split.