Wiki

For couple of weeks i have this urge to install a wiki on my personal computer, and yesterday that urge finally satisfied, and I'm so Happy :D.

The quest start about a week a go, i'm looking for ready to be download wiki's on the internet. To my surprises i found out there's so many available wiki to be downloaded out there. It's like every one in the internet trying to make their own wiki :). So i try to compare some of them, and the more confused I've become.

Actually i already have a wiki in mind, its MediaWiki. A Wiki that being used for wikipedia, i've gotten used to reading wikipedia formatted article, and the interface is just so clean and nice :D. But at the first glance at MediaWiki site, i see that MediaWiki only provide online hosting for people that wanted to create their own wiki. So it doesn't suit my purpose and i began to look at other wiki. I found couple of good ones such as trac, and tikiwiki and starting to download them. Luckily, thats when i realized that MediaWiki provide a downloadable source. I'm so ashamed i didn't see it at the first time:P

So i download MediaWiki and try to install it at home.

First Day
MediaWiki is based on php with mysql or postgres as the Database. I Couldn't find any java based wiki that i can give more point than MediaWiki. So i stick with the best.

I'm a java developer for almost 3 years. My php skill sucks, i stuck at the beginner level and decided immediately not to pursue that path and stick to java. But i've previously succeded couple of time installing php on my computer. So i started installing apache httpd server on my computer, which is a piece of cake. And then installing php 5.0 which i try for couple of hours, but didn't work. Damn, its seems so easy 3 years a go. So i give up and decided to look for clue's in the internet tomorrow.

Second Day
I've download a step by step guide for installing php and httpd server from the internet, and also download the newest source for php and apache httpd server. Just in case my source conflicted with each other.

After following the guide, i've finally got php working on my computer. I've just missing a line from php.ini *yeah, that one annoying unimportant line:P*. So i tried installing media wiki, but when i try to configure it, a message saying that my php doesn't support mysql. No driver found for that database. I tried loading the module, restarting apache, but still it shows the same message.

I didn't have the source to compile php from scratch, and besides the docs definitely said that mysql support is already built in. So i tried installeng the newest php version. But still the same problem showed.

I'm thinking of giving up and look for some info the next day. But for one last try i try a futile effort and usually cure most wierd problems in windows. Restarting the computer. And magically it worked :P

Wikipedia only for me
And its totally worthed, i finally got my wiki working. And start creating a few docs for my project. The MediaWiki is so intuitive so i've got to almost 70% productivity just by guessing how it worked. By the time this is the first time i ever tried to edit a wiki. Argh, i'm so excited and delighted. I can also finally organize my ideas and though from my notes to a more organized media.

But got to learn the tutorial though :P