Help:Installation-Software Configuration
From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki
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[edit] Links: no help pages
Note that the files in the installation contain many links pointing to documents that are not included in the download. Most important is the empty set of help files, which will be needed by any new user of the site. To remedy these broken links, you must either
- export help pages from this or the Wikipedia site to your installation and modify them,
- Interwiki link (instructions below) to this or the Wikipedia site, or
- modify the installation's parameters to change the help link targets to this or the Wikipedia site.
[edit] Interwiki link to the meta.wikimedia.org site instructions:
- Log in as an administrator.
- Navigate to MediaWiki:Helppage on your mediawiki (just put 'MediaWiki:Helppage' in the search box and hit go).
- The default contents of this page are 'Help:Contents'. Click on the 'Edit' tab and change it to 'metawikipedia:Help:Contents'
- Then navigate to MediaWiki:Edithelppage and change it to 'metawikipedia:Help:Editing'.
That fixes all of the help links that I have found on my 1.9.3 installation. The thing probably should install this way by default.
[edit] Other necessary text and customization
There are also links pointing to an "about" page and a "disclaimers" page, as well as project policy pages with respect to image use, blocked IPs, and protected pages. Text for these pages must be created by you to remedy the broken links. You can find these policy links in the Language.php file by searching for "[[Project:"
It is important to carefully go through the Language.php file, even if your site is in the default language, English, to make sure it is properly customized. For instance, there is the line:
'sitesubtitle' => 'The Free Encyclopedia', # FIXME
Which you will want to change.
(Note that this is no longer the case in recent builds --199.103.142.189 16:06, 22 May 2006 (UTC))
[edit] Set up user accounts with special rights
You may wish to set special permissions for the people who will set up your system, and perhaps to protect some preliminary pages from change as you are setting up the site. For versions prior to 1.5 setting user rights is done by direct SQL query to your database. After 1.5 there is an administrator's interface.
[edit] Customize page layout
[edit] Disable Caching
Page caching is wonderful for speeding up site operation, but it is a nuisance when you are working on page design. You can disable it by copying to the LocalSettings file this change to the DefaultSettings variable:
//CHANGED PARAMETER
$wgEnableParserCache = false;
Don't forget to remove it when you're finished with the design work.
[edit] More information
- There is often useful information under the 'discussion' tab on Help pages.
- There are many extensions of the software available.
- Wikimedia has a very useful mailinglist..
