How to install WikkaWiki on Ubuntu

How to install WikkaWiki on Ubuntu

In this tutorial we will show you how to install WikkaWiki on Ubuntu.WikkaWiki is a flexible, standards-compliant and lightweight wiki engine software written in PHP, which uses a MySQL database to store pages. It is easy to set up and easy to use. It is fairly easy to install WikkaWiki on an Ubuntu 14.04 VPS. The WikkaWiki installation process should take about 5-10 minutes if you follow the very easy steps described below.

At the time of writing this tutorial, WikkaWiki 1.3.7 is the latest stable version available and it requires the following:

  • Apache web server;
  • PHP (version 5.4 or higher);
  • MySQL(version 4.1 or higher) installed on your Linux VPS;

1. Log in to your VPS via SSH

ssh user@vps_IP

2. Update the system

[user]$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade

3. Install MariaDB 10.0

To install MariaDB, run the following command:

[user]$ sudo apt-get install -y mariadb-server

4. Create a new database

Next, we need to create a database for our WikkaWiki installation.

[user]$ mysql -u root -p

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE wikkawiki;
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wikkawiki.* TO 'wikkauser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-password';
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MariaDB [(none)]> \q

Do not forget to replace ‘your-password’ with a strong password of your choice.

5. Install Apache2 web server

[user]$ sudo apt-get install apache2

6. Install PHP and the required PHP modules

To install the latest stable version of PHP version 5 and all necessary modules, run:

[user]$ sudo apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-mcrypt php5-mysql php5-gd

7. Download and extract  WikkaWiki

Download and extract the latest stable version of WikkaWiki on your server:

[user]$ sudo cd /opt && wget http://wikkawiki.org/downloads/Wikka-1.3.7.zip
[user]$ sudo unzip Wikka-1.3.7.zip
[user]$ sudo mv WikkaWiki-1.3.7/ /var/www/html/wikkawiki

All files have to be readable by the web server, so we need to set the proper ownership

[user]$ sudo chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/html/wikkawiki/

8. Configure Apache web server

Create a new virtual host directive in Apache. For example, you can create a new Apache configuration file named ‘wikkawiki.conf’ on your virtual server:

[user]$ sudo touch /etc/apache2/sites-available/wikkawiki.conf
[user]$ sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/wikkawiki.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/wikkawiki.conf
[user]$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/wikkawiki.conf

Then, add the following lines:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin admin@yourdomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/wikkawiki/
ServerName your-domain.com
ServerAlias www.your-domain.com
<Directory /var/www/html/wikkawiki/>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-error_log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-access_log common
</VirtualHost>

9. Restart Apache

Restart the Apache web server with the command below for the changes to take effect:

[user]$ sudo service apache2 restart

10. Continue the installation via web browser

Open your favorite web browser, navigate to http://your-domain.com/ and if you configured everything correctly the WikkaWiki installer should start. Just follow the instructions by the installer and use the easy-to-use graphical interface you should input the correct information.

That is it. The WikkaWiki installation is now complete.


Of course you don’t have to do any of this if you use one of our Wiki Hosting services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to install Wikkawiki for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

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