Cloud instance

This page is about installing MediaWiki on an Amazon EC2 cloud. For other situations, see installing MediaWiki.

Set up the instance

 * I followed these instructions:http://bitnami.org/tutorials/amazon_machine_images
 * I chose an EC2 instance but perhaps should have gone with EBS; I am not clear on the difference
 * Everything worked perfectly! Amazing but true.

Customizing the wiki

 * Back up LocalSettings.php
 * chmod 600 LocalSettings.php
 * Edited LocalSettings.php to change skin and icon and wiki name
 * Change the password of the default Admin user, called User
 * Add extensions, etc (especially Cite)
 * Change skin, add logo, etc, etc

Getting math working

 * As user bitnami, logged in to your AMI: sudo aptitude install ocaml
 * Do make in math directory, as usual
 * Edited LocalSettings.php to change skin and icon and wiki name
 * Right now, I am not using local LaTeX but doing this instead

Making nice URLs – I

 * I wanted to use a custom domain name, so deleted existing DNS records with my host and made two new ones:
 * CNAME for @ pointing to the public address of the EC2 instance
 * CNAME for * pointing to ditto

Making nice URLs – II

 * Modded httpd.conf to rewrite URLs
 * Followed this: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/misc/rewriteguide.html and this: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Short_URL
 * Note: doing all this at root level so don't need .htaccess (which is for per-directory rewrites)
 * Also therefore don't need to specify the root, because it's assumed to be '/' in httpd.conf