Installation

Fundamental Introduction to MediaWiki

Contents

• How does MediaWiki work?
• Documentation
• Customization
• Versions & Download
• Installation
• Support & Contact
• Development

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All other topics

• See navigation on the left

Installation guide

If you would like to install MediaWiki on your server, our comprehensive Installation guide will help you get up and running in no time.

Upgrade guide

If you are already running MediaWiki, see the Upgrade guide

Requirements

• Download MediaWiki (current stable version is 1.17.0)
• Web server such as Apache or IIS
  • Local or command line access is needed for running maintenance scripts
• PHP version 5.2.3 or later. PHP 5.3.1 is incompatible with MediaWiki due to a bug.
  Due to a security issue with PHP it is strongly advised to use PHP 5.2.17+ or PHP 5.3.5+ (see here for more details).
  • with Perl Compatible Regular Expressions
  • with Standard PHP Library
• Database Server
  • MySQL 4.0 or later (*)
  • or PostgreSQL 8.1 or later
    • Requires PL/pgSQL (contained in contribs)
    • Full-Text searching (Native in >=8.3, requires tsearch2 extension <=8.2)

Some users find it helpful to install an additional software package such as phpMyAdmin (MySQL) or phpPgAdmin (Postgres) to help administer the database server.

For image thumbnailing and TeX-support, additional programs are required.

(*) – Even though it may not be officially supported yet, MariaDB, a GPL fork of the MySQL code by Monty Widenius, the founder of MySQL, is an alternative and can also be used by MediaWiki. Debian/Ubuntu repos.

Notes

• MediaWiki ships with an installation script which allows web-based configuration
• MediaWiki can share the database of another web-based application, e.g. phpBB etc.
• Knowledge of PHP is required in order to customize the software
• PHP 5 support has been required since MediaWiki 1.7 – if you are using an older version of PHP and cannot upgrade then you should use MediaWiki 1.6.12 (download). Note that this version is no longer supported.
• MySQL 4 support has been required since MediaWiki 1.6 – if you are using an older version of MySQL and cannot upgrade then you should use MediaWiki 1.5.8 (download). Note that this version is no longer supported.

Alternative to manual installation

Some users may prefer to skip manual installation by using a pre-integrated MediaWiki software appliance.

Installation assistance

• FAQ: FAQ#Installation and configuration
• mediawiki-l (Mailing List) is the high-traffic mailing list to ask for support.
• MediaWiki Users (Forum) is a user-to-user MediaWiki support forum