Thread:Project:Support desk/Be Our Hero! Please?/reply

Hi Andy,

Ok, first step would be to figure out if your apache server starts automatically, or if you have to do something to start it. What precisely one would have to do to start apache varries quite a bit between platforms (I'm assuming this is windows, I have no idea what is normally done to start apache on windows, but if its a WAMP style package, there is probably an icon to double click somewhere).

Once you've gotten apache going (Or even if you haven't, you can still try this on the asumption that maybe it starts automatically), you have to figure out where apache is serving the webserver to (specificly what port). Most likely its on port 80, so try just pointing your web browser to http://localhost. failing that, http://localhost:8080 is also common (If it comes up with a page that is not your wiki, but still a page, you can try variants on that like http://localhost/wiki or http://localhost/w/.

localhost is just short hand for the current computer you are on. If you want others to be able to access the wiki from another computer, you have to figure out what the current computer's IP address is. You can do that via the ipconfig command line program. -

If all else fails, keep in mind that all data from your wiki (except for images) is stored in the database, so if you can backup your mysql database, you can probably re-install mediawiki and keep all your data (Also make sure to keep the file LocalSettings.php which includes all the config settings for your wiki)