How to Install MediaWiki on a VPS

By Admin · Mar 1, 2026 · Updated Apr 23, 2026 · 23 views · 2 min read

What Is MediaWiki?

MediaWiki is the open-source wiki platform that powers Wikipedia. It is ideal for creating collaborative knowledge bases, documentation hubs, and internal wikis. MediaWiki supports rich text editing, version history, user access control, and a vast extension ecosystem.

Prerequisites

A Breeze running Ubuntu 22.04 or later
PHP 8.1+ with extensions (mbstring, xml, intl, mysql)
MySQL/MariaDB database server
Apache or Nginx web server

Step 1: Create the Database

sudo mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE mediawiki_db;
CREATE USER 'wiki_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'WikiPass2026';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON mediawiki_db.* TO 'wiki_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Step 2: Download MediaWiki

cd /tmp
wget https://releases.wikimedia.org/mediawiki/1.42/mediawiki-1.42.1.tar.gz
sudo tar -xzf mediawiki-1.42.1.tar.gz -C /var/www/
sudo mv /var/www/mediawiki-1.42.1 /var/www/mediawiki
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/mediawiki

Step 3: Configure Apache

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/mediawiki.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName wiki.yourdomain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/mediawiki
    <Directory /var/www/mediawiki>
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

sudo a2ensite mediawiki.conf
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 4: Run the Installer

Visit http://wiki.yourdomain.com in your browser. The installer will check prerequisites, then prompt you for the database credentials and wiki name. At the end, download the generated LocalSettings.php and upload it to your MediaWiki root:

sudo mv ~/LocalSettings.php /var/www/mediawiki/
sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www/mediawiki/LocalSettings.php

Useful Extensions

VisualEditor — provides a rich WYSIWYG editing experience
Cite — adds footnote and reference support
ParserFunctions — enables conditional logic in templates