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<seo title="Mediawiki" metakeywords="wiki site,mediawiki
how to create wiki site,mediawiki site,install wiki,install mediawiki,create site,remove toolbox,center wiki" metadescription="Mediawiki" />

<div align=justify>Everyone of us would like to have a site. The reasons may differ: just to try yourself in site creation; create a site for your family or friends; start business on-line. Nowadays there is a huge variety of software, programs, tools to create a site. Some of them require basic knowledge of site building technologies, others can be used by anyone without any difficulties. 


I have also run into the difficulty of choosing a tool that would be easy in use and wouldn't require any complicated actions to create a nice-looking and proper functional site. After making a list of possible site building tools and considering a great number of pros and cons I have chosen '''''wiki''''' (also known as '''''MediaWiki'''''). 


The reasons for our choice were as follows:

* it allows to create a database-driven site, which is useful to keep the data properly organized;

* it is easy to install and manage;

* you can choose the desired skin and easily change it to another one when needed;

* it has a great number of addons available on the net, which help to improve your site performance and customize it the way you want.


To start working with wiki, you need to have a registered domain name and sign up for hosting. Domain name is needed to create a site for it and hosting provides the space on a web server for your site to be available to all Internet users.

Frankly speaking, when I started working with wiki I doubted our original choice. But gradually I've made sure that it was the best decision made.
First of all you need to download the wiki installation from the net. The best source of mediawiki installation is '''http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download'''

Once it it downloaded to your PC, you need to upload it to your hosting account via FTP. If you want to create a site for your main domain then you need to upload it to 'public_html' folder (different hosting providers have different root folder, so you'd better check this with them). Alternatively you can install it into a sub-folder (e.g. '' 'wiki' ''). 

The installation is completed within a few simple steps. Once it is over you'll be prompted to download the file called ''LocalSettings.php'' and upload it to the folder your wiki is installed into. After it is completed your wiki site is ready.

Mediawiki can be easily customized. By default, it covers the whole screen but you can center a wiki skin without any affect on the site content. Also you can also add a logo to your wiki site, rename the navigation links, add or remove sections, change font color and size, etc.


Let's take some examples for you to see how easy mediawiki is. 
To center a wiki skin you need to edit the file called '' 'main.css' '' located in ''skins/your_skin/'' folder and replace the code:

 #globalWrapper {
 font-size: 127%;
 width: 100%;
 margin: 0; padding: 0;}


with 


 #globalWrapper {
 position:relative;
 font-size: 127%;
 width: 900px;
 margin-left:auto;
 margin-right:auto;
 padding: 0;
 }

This will set the width of your site to 900px. This can be replaced with the proper value for each particular site.

'''''Note: replace 'your_skin' with your actual skin name (e.g. MonoBook)'''''


Another example is how to hide/remove the toolbox. By default the mediawiki sites have two blocks called 'navigation' and 'toolbar'. Numerous forums are dedicated to the issue with toolbar removal. You are the luckiest as I will provide you with fast and simple solution.
So, to remove the toolbox from a mediwiki site you need to complete the below steps:

'''1.''' add the following line to your main.css file:

 #p-tb { display: none !important; }

'''2.''' Remove the following line from your_skin.php file located within 'skins' folder:

 if ( !isset( $sidebar['TOOLBOX'] ) ) $sidebar['TOOLBOX'] = true;

'''''Note: replace 'your_skin' with your actual skin name (e.g. MonoBook.php)'''''

That's it! Quite easy, isn't it?


To sum it all up, I would like to say that mediawiki is one of the best (if not the best) tools to create a site both for experienced and non-technically minded users. If you would like to see an example of site built in mediawiki then go to http://myidealhost.com/tutorials/. Oops, this is the page you are currently at!

Hope you'll enjoy working with mediawiki as much as I did! :)
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