How to install PhpWiki in XAMPP Windows 11

PhpWiki was the first ever wiki written in PHP. It was first released on December 1999 by Steve Wainstead. It is currently developed Marc-Etienne Vargenau. And for this tutorial, we are going to create another Wiki website out of it. But first, you need to download the XAMPP and PhpWiki installers below.

Requirements:

• xampp-windows-x64-5.6.40-1-VC11-installer [download here]
• phpwiki-1.6.1 [download here]

Assuming that you downloaded the files above, continue to the tutorials below.

Table of Contents

• XAMPP Installation
• Opening XAMPP and running Apache and MySQL
• Copying and pasting PhpWiki installation folder inside htdocs
• Creating a database needed for PhpWiki installation
• Installing PhpWiki website using localhost via web browser
• Opening PhpWiki website homepage
• Accessing PhpWiki website admin page
• Sample PhpWiki Themes
• Editing config.ini file
• config.ini file important line of codes

Here are the steps on how to install PhpWiki website using XAMPP in Windows pc

XAMPP Installation

1. Open the XAMPP file that you downloaded. If a Warning regarding User account Control (UAC) appears, just press OK to proceed.

2. Under Setup - XAMPP, just press the NEXT button to proceed.

3. In the Select Components, just leave it as it is and press NEXT to continue.

4. In the Installation folder, do not change the default location which is C:\xampp. Just press NEXT to proceed.

5. In the Bitnami for XAMPP, just uncheck "Learn more about Bitnami for XAMPP" and press NEXT to proceed.

6. We are now ready to install XAMPP. Press NEXT to confirm.

7. Wait for the installation to finish.

8. When done, press Finish to exit the installer.

Opening XAMPP and running Apache and MySQL

1. To open XAMPP, just go to Start and search for xampp. You can also go to This PC > C drive > xampp and click "xampp-control.exe". Inside XAMPP Control Panel, click the Start buttons for Apache and MySQL.

2. Apache and MySQL are both running now if you see two Stop buttons.

3. If a Windows Security Alert appears, just press Allow access.

Copying and pasting PhpWiki installation folder inside htdocs

1. Extract the PhpWiki zip file that you downloaded. Rename the extracted folder as phpwiki. Copy your phpwiki folder and go to This PC.

2. Inside This PC, open your C drive.

3. Inside C, open xampp folder.

4. Now, open htdocs folder.

5. Paste phpwiki folder inside htdocs.

Creating a database needed for PhpWiki installation

1. We are now creating the database needed for our PhpWiki website installation. Open your web browser and go to 127.0.0.1 and press ENTER. Inside, click phpMyAdmin. And in phyMyAdmin, click Databases.

2. In the Create database, name it as phpwiki_db. Next to it, set it to utf8mb4_unicode_ci and press Create.

3. In the Create table, name it as phpwiki_table. Make sure number of columns is set to 4. Press Go to proceed.

4. For structure, name it as phpwiki and set the Type to INT.

5. For Collation, set it to utf8_unicode_ci and leave all the other fields as blank.

6. Save your work.

Installing PhpWiki website using localhost via web browser

1. We are now ready to install our PhpWiki website. I already prepared the needed config.ini file for this tutorial. I also included the needed config.ini file inside the zip file that you downloaded so that you do not have to encounter any errors and problems during the installation. To start, open your web browser and go to 127.0.0.1/phpwiki/index.php and press ENTER.

2. In the Loading up virgin wiki - This page does not exist. Create it. Just press the Create it link to proceed.

3. Done! You have successfully and instantly installed your PhpWiki website with the WordPress theme.

Opening PhpWiki website homepage

1. To open your PhpWiki website homepage, just go to 1270.0.1/phpwiki/index.php or localhost/phpwiki/index.php.

Accessing PhpWiki website admin page

1. To open your PhpWiki website admin account, just type your username which admin under the User Info. You will be automatically redirected to another page. Continue to STEP 2.

2. Under Sign In, type admin again in the UserID and password is youradminpassword and press Sign In to proceed. Note: The admin password for this tutorial is actually youradminpassword. I will show you how to change it in the tutorial below.

3. Here is the sample administration page for your PhpWiki website with WordPress theme selected.

Sample PhpWiki Themes

1. THEME = default (fast to load).

2. THEME = Sidebar (slow to load).

3. THEME = MacOSX (fast to load).

4. THEME = smaller (fast to load).

5. THEME = MonoBook (slow to load).

6. THEME = Wordpress (fast to load).

7. THEME = Portland (fast to load).

8. THEME = Crao (fast to load).

9. THEME = wikilens (fast to load).

10. THEME = blog (fast to load).

11. THEME = shamino_com (fast to load).

12. THEME = SpaceWiki (fast to load).

13. THEME = Hawaiian (fast to load).

Editing config.ini file

1. Important note: The 13 themes above are all can be activated by editing your config.ini file located in This PC > C drive > xampp > htdocs > phpwiki > config. As you can see the theme I selected for this tutorial is Wordpress. To activate a theme or any other settings and configurations inside config.ini file, all you need to do is remove the semicolon that you will see in the beginning of the line of code. Example: to activate the ;THEME = Hawaiian, you just need to change it to THEME = Hawaiian and then Save your config.ini file. Just make sure to put back a semicolon to the theme that you just replaced. By the way, you can edit your config.ini file using Notepad.

config.ini file important line of codes

As I have mentioned above, you can easily activate a setting or configuration for PhpWiki website by just removing the semicolon located in the beginning of that line of code. Now, to Rename your wiki, you just need to find (CTRL + F) the line of code WIKI_NAME and put a name for your Wiki inside the double quotations. Same goes for your ADMIN_USER. To change your admin password then you have to search for ADMIN_PASSWD and change "youradminpassword" to your desired password. For DATABASE_DSN, root is the default Username. localhost is the default host, and phpwiki_db is the database that we created earlier in the above tutorial. You can replace these values if you are setting up your PhpWiki website online to a web hosting.

• WIKI_NAME = "name of your wiki"
• ADMIN_USER = "admin"
• ADMIN_PASSWD = "youradminpassword"
• DATABASE_DSN = "mysql://root@localhost/phpwiki_db"
• THEME = Wordpress
• DEFAULT_LANGUAGE = en

Thank you for reading this tutorial guys. It is quite long but it is worth reading. If you have a question, do not hesitate to leave a comment below. Cheers!