A short guide to setting up MediaWiki to work on multiple websites using the same codebase.
Prerequisites
- mod_rewrite
- mod_env
- Assumes you are installing multiple wikis on different domains at the root of each domain.
Apache Configuration
Set up a virtualhost block for each domain that you are hosting. All the DocumentRoots will point to the same location, the location that you extracted the MediaWiki files.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName example.com
DocumentRoot /web/sites/mediawiki
<Directory /web/sites/mediawiki>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
allow from all
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/Main_Page [R=permanent,L]
SetEnv MEDIAWIKI_PATH site1
</Directory>
Alias /images /web/sites/mediawiki/images/site1
</VirtualHost>
I use SetEnv to provide PHP with an environment variable accessible via $_SERVER['MEDIAWIKI_PATH'], but you could just as well use $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] if your files are named appropriately.
LocalSettings.php
Replace your default LocalSettings.php file with the following:
define('MW_INSTALL_PATH', dirname(__FILE__));
$wgScriptPath = "";
$wgScriptExtension = ".php";
$wgArticlePath = '/$1';
$wgUsePathInfo = true;
require_once('config/' . $_SERVER['MEDIAWIKI_PATH'] . '.php');
$wgUploadDirectory = $IP . '/images/' . $_SERVER['MEDIAWIKI_PATH'];
$wgUploadPath = $wgScriptPath . '/images';
You will then move your individual sites' LocalSettings.php files into the config/ folder and name them with the name you used for the MEDIAWIKI_PATH environment variable.
Images and Uploads
Create a subfolder in your images folder for each site. Use the identified set by MEDIAWIKI_PATH or use SERVER_NAME instead.
Installation
The only hack you'll have to do is tell config/index.php that your wiki isn't yet installed by commenting out the check for the LocalSettings.php file.
Find the call to writeSuccessMessage(); and comment out that block of code.
You should then be able to visit http://example.com/config/index.php and run through the setup process to create a new wiki. Of course you should disable access to this file as soon as you're done setting it up so it can't be abused.
