Short url
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How to configure Dreamhost hosted MediaWiki to run on short URLs instead of the ugly long php URLs
In <mywikidir>/.htaccess file, so that incoming requests can be short url format, I have these Apache Rewrite rules:
# rewrite rules for Short URLs:
Options FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
# prevent your Dreamhost /stats from breaking
# (see http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Mod_rewrite)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/stats/(.*)$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/failed_auth.html$
RewriteRule ^.*$ - [L]
# end of /stats fix
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
# Use this one if you are using *ugly URLs* -- PHP as CGI:
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ /index.php?title=$1 [L,QSA]
# Use this one if you are using *pretty URLs* -- PHP as Apache module:
#RewriteRule ^(.+)$ /index.php/$1 [L,QSA]
I'm using pretty URLs and the last line above wasn't working for me so I used this line instead:
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /wikidir/index.php?title=$1 [L,QSA]
(found here)Change wikidir to the name of the directory where your wiki is installed. --SimonDorfman 07:17, 31 May 2007 (PDT)
and this in <mywikidir>/LocalSettings.php so the generated pages will contain links in the short url format:
# Short URL stuff # see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Using_a_very_short_URL $wgArticlePath = "/$1";
If you want your mediawiki to be set up like wikipedia etc, where the articles are at your.domain.tld/wiki/TOPIC_NAME etc.
Install your MediaWiki a folder "w" in your.domain.tld. i.e. your.domain.tld/w
then put the above .htaccess file into your.domain.tld (this will now be the only thing at the top of this structure, so you may want a php automatic forwarding page. Except, instead of using:
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ /index.php?title=$1 [L,QSA]
use
RewriteRule ^wiki/?(.+)$ /index.php?title=$1 [L,QSA]
and in your LocalSettings.php, set the $wgArticlePath such that:
$wgArticlePath = "/wiki/$1";
robots.txt
If you have implemented short urls so that wiki article links look like http://wikisite.tld/Articlename or http://wikisite.tld/wikidir/Articlename then please preserve bandwidth on your server -- prevent search engine spiders from crawling all your wiki's action pages (edit, history, discuss, etc.) by putting the following into a file named 'robots.txt' at the root of the site's web directory (/home/yourusername/sitename.org/robots.txt):
User-agent: * Disallow: /index.php
if your urls look like http://wikisite.tld/wikidir/Articlename you can be more specific like this instead:
User-agent: * Disallow: /wikidir/index.php
(Adjust wikidir to whatever your wiki directory is; leave it out if your wiki is the root directory of your site.)
Note that this will ban search engines from everything on your site that has /index.php or /wikidir/index.php in its path depending which of above you use. So if you have other PHP stuff running on that site/[dir/] location besides a MediaWiki with short urls, be awair of that.
robots.txt is only valid when located at the top level of your site (/home/yourusername/sitename.org/robots.txt).
- robots.txt validation tool: http://tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml is a good way to check your robots.txt is valid
