Quick PHP / Mediawiki question

[sathid]

Trying to install a suite of extensions to a mediawiki install I'm running on ubuntu (http://wiki.ontoprise.de/).

After messing about with deployment frameworks that don't seem to like my combination of mediawiki/php versions, I've given up, and have decided to (bravely) go the manual install route. I pick things up pretty quickly, but all of the guides/info I've come across seem to written for people who know what they are doing, and aren't much help to the novice.

First step is to install semantic mediawiki.

Tried following the instructions here, but they made no sense to me.

Turned here instead, and it seems much more straightforward, but still quite lacking in the details...

Basically, they have suggested adding the following code to the mediawiki localsetting.php file:

include_once("$IP/extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/SemanticMediaWiki.php");
enableSemantics('example.org');

Where I am getting stuck, is:

a) does "$IP" refer to the directory the file is in? (the reason I ask, is because my extensions folder is in a different location to their example)
b) does it matter where in the php fileI put the code snippet?


Apologies for the verbose question!

Cheers,

Troy

[Captain Starfish]

Remember that in PHP you can dereference variables inside a double quoted string - so in "$IP/blahblahblah" it's using the value of the variable $IP in the string.

Search "mediawiki $IP PHP" and you get things like

The $IP (include path) variable holds the local file path to the base installation of your wiki. Make sure you refer to the fully qualified file path. Do not include a slash at the end of the path.

Dunno whether you need to set this yourself in a config file or in code, or it's configured for you automatically - you'll need to hunt that down. But other things depend on it being right so don't just substitute the "$IP" with the actual path for that code excerpt you listed: get the variable set properly

[sathid]

Cheers CS.

Turned out I didn't need to change the file path afterall (still figuring out the file structure in ubuntu...)

I think this is going to be a long bumpy road!

[Captain Starfish]

PHP itself can be a pain in the tit to get working right under apache etc. But once it's going, it's all fairly simple.

What totally screws your head is every little app and include that have all been written with different standards and paradigms that sit on top of PHP.

Yes, it will be a long road. But stick with it, and in 6 months you too will be a proud guru of some application written in PHP that has since been superseded.

/cynicism.

[sathid]

I don't know the meaning of superseded...

I'm still championing VBA...haha

[sathid]

Hrm...lost again...

This page appears to be written for windows users...

1. Copy the files of the folder skins into the directory <mw-dir>\htdocs\mediawiki\skins
2. Open the LocalSettings.php
3. Adjust or add the path to the PHP interpreter (php.exe) accordingly to your Xampp directory: $phpInterpreter=">C:\Xampp\xampp\php\php.exe";
4. Add following lines to initialize the Halo Extension:

What would the equivalent file to php.exe be in ubuntu?

I've got an executable file called php5 in usr/bin/, that seems to be about it...