Deploy MediaWiki in one click

What is MediaWiki?

MediaWiki is the free and open-source wiki software made by the Wikimedia Foundation for Wikipedia, and used by thousands of other wikis, from game and fan wikis to company knowledge bases. Pages link to each other by their titles, every edit is kept in the page's history and can be compared or reverted, and each page has a talk page for discussion. Templates, categories and the Special pages help to organise a large wiki, and its API lets bots and scripts read and edit.

Editors write in wikitext, MediaWiki's markup, or in VisualEditor, which edits a page as it looks. This template enables the extensions that come with MediaWiki, among them VisualEditor, WikiEditor, ParserFunctions, Cite, Scribunto for Lua modules, SyntaxHighlight and DiscussionTools, and the skins Vector, MonoBook, Timeless and MinervaNeue for phones.

This template runs MediaWiki's official image, version 1.46, with Apache and PHP, and its database in SQLite, which MediaWiki supports for small and medium wikis. The wiki is installed before it answers anyone, with the name, username and password you give; anyone can read it, only signed-in users edit, and accounts are made by the administrator.

Hosting MediaWiki on Pethost

1. You sign in to Pethost with a passkey, GitHub or Google. No machine yet? You pick a plan, and the link waits until it is ready.
2. New project opens at MediaWiki. You fill in what it asks for and click Create project: Site name, Username, Admin password.
3. In a minute or two MediaWiki is live at its own address with HTTPS. Its secrets are made at random, and its data is in the nightly backup.
4. It is a project like any other: you or your agent can change it, roll it back or restore it.

Questions about MediaWiki

MediaWiki Docker Compose file

The template is this compose.yaml and the variables written into the project’s .env as it is created. Pethost runs the file as it is written.

Containers: mediawiki (mediawiki:1.46).

Volumes, in the nightly backup: data, images.

services:
  mediawiki:
    image: mediawiki:1.46
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      WIKI_URL: ${URL}
      WIKI_NAME: ${WIKI_NAME}
      ADMIN_USERNAME: ${ADMIN_USERNAME}
      ADMIN_PASSWORD: ${ADMIN_PASSWORD}
    # A new MediaWiki offers its installer, which makes the administrator, to whoever opens it
    # first. So the wiki is installed here before Apache answers anyone: its SQLite database and
    # LocalSettings.php in the data volume, the administrator from the fields. LocalSettings.php is
    # written there only once the install has succeeded; a start that finds none puts what an
    # earlier, failed install left aside in data/failed-<time> and installs again. Every start
    # then runs MediaWiki's update, which a newer image of the line may need.
    command:
      - sh
      - -c
      - |
        set -e
        cd /var/www/html
        if [ ! -f /var/www/data/LocalSettings.php ]; then
          if ls /var/www/data/*.sqlite >/dev/null 2>&1; then
            aside=/var/www/data/failed-$$(date +%s)
            mkdir "$$aside"
            mv /var/www/data/*.sqlite* "$$aside"/
          fi
          rm -rf /var/www/data/install
          mkdir -p /var/www/data/install
          php maintenance/run.php install --dbtype=sqlite --dbpath=/var/www/data --dbname=wiki \
            --server="$$WIKI_URL" --scriptpath= --lang=en --pass="$$ADMIN_PASSWORD" \
            --with-extensions --confpath=/var/www/data/install "$$WIKI_NAME" "$$ADMIN_USERNAME"
          cat /var/www/data/install/LocalSettings.php - > /var/www/data/LocalSettings.php <<'PHP'

        # The wiki's name and address are the project's .env's, read at every start.
        $$wgSitename = getenv('WIKI_NAME') ?: $$wgSitename;
        $$wgMetaNamespace = false;
        $$wgServer = getenv('WIKI_URL') ?: $$wgServer;
        # MediaWiki is at the address's root, and its pages at /wiki/Page_name: Apache sends every
        # address that is no file to index.php.
        $$wgScriptPath = '';
        $$wgResourceBasePath = $$wgScriptPath;
        $$wgArticlePath = '/wiki/$$1';
        # Anyone reads; only signed-in users edit, and only an administrator makes accounts, at
        # Special:CreateAccount.
        $$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false;
        $$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;
        # MediaWiki's flower beside the wiki's name, until a logo of the wiki's own is set here.
        $$wgLogos = ['icon' => "$$wgResourceBasePath/resources/assets/mediawiki_compact.svg", '1x' => "$$wgResourceBasePath/resources/assets/mediawiki.png"];
        # Uploaded files are kept in the images volume.
        $$wgEnableUploads = true;
        # The visitor's address is in X-Forwarded-For, from the machine's proxy.
        $$wgUsePrivateIPs = true;
        $$wgCdnServersNoPurge = ['10.192.0.0/10'];
        PHP
          rm -rf /var/www/data/install
        fi
        # The image's html folder is sticky and www-data's, where Linux lets www-data follow only a
        # link of its own.
        ln -sf /var/www/data/LocalSettings.php LocalSettings.php
        chown -h www-data:www-data LocalSettings.php
        php maintenance/run.php update --quick
        printf 'upload_max_filesize = 100M\npost_max_size = 100M\n' > /usr/local/etc/php/conf.d/uploads.ini
        # The web installer is never needed here, and it would greet a stranger: the wiki is
        # installed above, and updated at every start.
        echo 'RedirectMatch 404 ^/mw-config' > /etc/apache2/conf-enabled/no-installer.conf
        chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/data /var/www/html/images
        exec apache2-foreground
    volumes:
      - data:/var/www/data
      - images:/var/www/html/images
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "curl", "-fsS", "-o", "/dev/null", "http://127.0.0.1/api.php"]
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 30
      start_period: 120s
volumes:
  data:
  images:

compose.yamlSee it on GitHub