Documentation:Configuration
This is part of the MediaWiki Documentation.
Contents
General Considerations
Everything related to configuring the MediaWiki software is set first in includes/DefaultSettings.php. Your LocalSettings.php calls that in, and then resets and overrides individual values.
If one of the base variables (such as $wgScriptPath or $wgScript) is wrong by default, you need to override every default setting that makes use of it. Study DefaultSettings.php to see what might need to be changed. Note that you'll have to rebuild the Language files if you use the strings from the database instead of the static files. Instructions on MediaWiki_i18n#Updating_messages_.2F_changing_the_language.
Beautifying the URL: Enabling the Apache httpd's Rewrite Engine
The URLs generated by the MediaWiki software by default are pretty ugly; they are hard to remember and contain characters that might disturb search engines when indexing your site.
Since we are using the Apache httpd, its built-in Rewrite Engine can help. It is called mod_rewrite and is also available in version 2; it's also called "the Swiss Army Knife of URL manipulation". It helps us to construct clean URLs.
This module uses a rule-based rewriting engine (based on a regular-expression parser) to rewrite requested URLs on the fly. It supports an unlimited number of rules and an unlimited number of attached rule conditions for each rule to provide a really flexible and powerful URL manipulation mechanism. The URL manipulations can depend on various tests, for instance server variables, environment variables, HTTP headers, time stamps and even external database lookups in various formats can be used to achieve a really granular URL matching (description from [1]).
See Rewrite_Rules
Further Information
For more information about regular expressions either have a look at your local regex(3) manpage or its src/regex/regex.3 copy in the Apache 1.3 distribution. If you are interested in more detailed information about regular expressions and their variants (POSIX regex, Perl regex, etc.) have a look at the following dedicated book on this topic:
- Mastering Regular Expressions
- Jeffrey E.F. Friedl
- Nutshell Handbook Series
- O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. 1997
- ISBN 1-56592-257-3
For further information and help about this module see also:
- Apache URL Rewriting Guide,
- another URL Rewriting Guide,
- mod-rewrite forum, the place to exchange ideas, code, and frustrations,
- Apache Reference: mod_rewrite, and
- mod_rewrite: A Beginner's Guide to URL Rewriting.
Securing your MediaWiki
Please visit the Security Guide for further information on securing your MediaWiki installation.
Troubleshooting
(tbd)
Please note that wrong setting in the $wgArticlePath in LocalSettings.php can lead to unnecessary path rewriting through HTTP 302 redirection causing some functions to fail. (Upload form)
