MediaWiki Clean URLs for PHP (compiled as CGI)

[MaestroX]

MediaWiki has issues when attempting to use "clean URLs" (e.g. http://www.mywiki.com/wiki/Main_Page) on a system with PHP compiled as a CGI. This is a workaround to successfully enable clean URLs while maintaining full compatibility with the server configurations

1) Create a blank .htaccess file located in your wiki's directory or in public_html if your wiki is installed on the root directory. For example, if you have your wiki installed at www.mywiki.com/wiki, you'd want to create the .htaccess file in /home/mywiki/public_html/wiki/ server directory. Alternatively, if you have it at www.mywiki.com, create in /home/mywiki/public_html/

2) edit and save the .htaccess file with following contents:

NOTE: If you have the Wiki installed on the root directory, remove references to /Wiki/ in the following code.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wiki/(stylesheets|images|skins|Skins|Images|Stylesheets)/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wiki/(stylesheets|images|skins|Skins|Images|Stylesheets)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wiki/(redirect|texvc|index).php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wiki/(40(1|3|4)|500).shtml
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wiki/favicon.ico
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wiki/robots.txt
RewriteRule ^wiki/(.*) wiki/index.php?title=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^wiki/Skins/(.*) wiki/skins/$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^wiki/Images/(.*) wiki/images/$1 [L,QSA]

3) edit your Wiki's LocalSettings.php file as follows:

## The URL base path to the directory containing the wiki;
## defaults for all runtime URL paths are based off of this.
$wgScriptPath = "/wiki";
$wgScript = "$wgScriptPath/index.php";
$wgRedirectScript = "$wgScriptPath/redirect.php";
$wgArticlePath = "/wiki/$1";

That's it! Hope this helps anyone that has been having problems.

Notes/Known Issues

Above code only compatible for PHP compiled as a CGI. Apache-based PHP installs do not require anything special, use the default instructions that come with mediaWiki instead

[MaestroX]

For better SEO when using this rewrite I recommend creating a robots.txt like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wiki/index.php
Disallow: /wiki/skins/
Disallow: /wiki/bin/
Disallow: /wiki/config/
Disallow: /wiki/docs/
Disallow: /wiki/extensions/
Disallow: /wiki/includes/
Disallow: /wiki/languages/
Disallow: /wiki/locale/
Disallow: /wiki/maintenance/
Disallow: /wiki/math/
Disallow: /wiki/session/
Disallow: /wiki/t/
Disallow: /wiki/tests/

Remeber to modify the directory if your Wiki does not reside in /wiki/ of your site.

[ElfMage]

Thanks MaestroX, this is good information.

[MaestroX]

No Problem, there are many ways out there but many are faulty. So far this one works in 99% of cases.

Also the robots.txt is very helpfull to stop bots looking at edit pages and keep them on content pages only.

[bowie]

Hi,
One question. I have a problem with accents or puntuation simbols (', ¨¨, ^, etc) , if i use them on my tittle then i don't get a clean or clear URL.
For example, i have one article called: Papiros Médicos
and i get this horrible URL:
http://www.egiptoforo.com/antiguo/Papiros_M%C3%A9dicos

Is there a solution for this?

Thanx