How to Set up your personal Wikipedia

What you'll need:

- Free WAMP server (click here for download)
- MediaWiki (click here for download)

STEP by STEP

I. Install WAMP

WAMP is an all-in-one PHP/MySQL/Apache installation for Windows. Install WAMP in the C:\wamp\ directory. (Idefault.) Check the Autostart option. When the installation is complete, visit http://localhost/ or http://127.0.0.1 in your web browser to see the front page of your new web server.

II. Change your MySQL database server password

Now we're going to assign a password to your new database server . From the homepage of your WAMP installation (http://localhost/), go to the link on the page on the left under Tools that reads PHPmyadmin . From there click on the "Privileges" link. Check all users besides "root" and choose Delete. Then, click the edit button next to the root user, and change the password to something you'll remember and save. Once that's done, PHPmyadmin will no longer be able to access your database because it doesn't have your new password. We can remedy that easily.

Open the C:\wamp\phpmyadmin\config.inc.php file in a text editor. Change the line that reads:

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = '';

to

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = 'yournewpassword';

Where yournewpassword is the password you just set up in PHPmyadmin.

III. Install MediaWiki

Unzip and untar the package . Rename the resulting folder from "media-wiki-1.5.8" to "mywikipedia" (only a sugestion) and move the entire directory to c:\wamp\www\mywikipedia\.

IV. Configure MediaWiki.

Access your new MediaWiki installation at http://localhost/mywikipedia/. Click on the "set the wiki up!" link. The next screen requires all of MediaWiki's configuration options. Be sure to choose a site name (mine is "Ginapedia") and a WikiSysOp password. Under the Database Configuration, set the Database User to root and the password to whatever you chose in step 2. This seems like a long and complicated questionnaire, but it's not.
Then click the "Install!" button and let MediaWiki work its magic. All goes well, you'll get a message at the bottom of the screen that reads, "Move the config/LocalSettings.php file into the parent directory, then follow this link to your wiki." So let's do just that: Cut and paste the c:\wamp\www\mywikipedia\config\LocalSettings.php file to c:\wamp\www\mywikipedia\LocalSettings.php .