MediaWiki - Getting Started Tutorial

This article is intended to be a quick start guide to setting up a first wiki on a Dreamhost server. As such, it strives to presents everything you should need to know without going into details and customizations that you can pick up later. If you are an experienced wiki operator and have a better suggestion, please discuss it on the talk page. If you are setting up your wiki for the first time and find any part of this confusing or you get different results than indicated in the step-by-step instructions, please note that on the talk page so we can make this better for the next user.

Requirements
Apparently all you need is a DreamHost hosting plan and everything else is provided
 * PHP 5 or later (If your current site uses PHP4, you can still have the wiki in a sub-domain that uses PHP5)
 * MySQL 4.0 - already provided
 * optional SQL Admin package - already provided

What you should know before installing your first wiki
''This section needs work but I just created my first wiki and didn't need to know anything else."
 * potential conflicts with an existing site - are all avoided by creating the wiki in a sub-domain and using a different database
 * Security issues - The default installation allows pages to be edited by anonymous users

Recommendation for a first wiki

 * Use a separate sub-domain for the wiki to keep the files separate
 * Use a separate database for the wiki with its own host domain name
 * Use a separate email account for the hostmaster and forward it to whoever manages the wiki. Set the account to delete all mail after 45 days.

Organization and terminology
The wiki server is primarily a set of CGI scripts that dynamically creates web pages from the content stored in a separate database. In setting up the wiki server, you will be creating a sub-domain with files on the hosting server, a managing user for the sub-domain, a database on a separate database host and the user that owns the database. The users created for managing the sub-domain and the owner of the database are different even if you use the same names because they reside on different servers. Usernames however need to be unique on the shared servers so prepending the user name with your domain name (as in example_wiki) is a good idea. The domain names you create for your sub-domain and the database host need to be unique (wiki.example.com and wiki-db.example.com are used here).

The wiki creates its own users within its own little world. The installation prompts you for an initial SysOp user for which you could use the default mundane name of WikiSysop. Use the initial SysOp user to give your own wiki user id the needed privileges then write that initial username and password down and store it in a safe place for when you forget your own password.

You should create a hostmaster email address. This example will use hostmaster@wiki.example.com which puts it in the wiki sub-domain. Email accounts create users on a shared email server which again need to be unique for all users on that server. DreamHost will create the necessary MX records when an email address is created in a sub-domain. (this may be a glitch but you have to create a real email user in the sub-domain before you can create forward only email addresses in that sub-domain)

Step by step
(Sorry, this section is under construction)
 * I do intend to fill this in. "Starting from scratch, do each step, show the results." Let me know if you are waiting for it.

Backing up your wiki
(Sorry, this section is under construction)
 * Where to find the files, how to back them up
 * Restoring a wiki from backups
 * Moving a wiki to from another site

External references

 * http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installation

Erasing the evidence
(What to do if you decide you don't want the wiki or want to start over)
 * (Sorry, this section is under construction)