Personal Wiki
I've been using a wiki at work for documentation since at least 2001. In 2003 when I started looking for a house I setup a wiki at home. I decided to use UseModWiki since it looked like the easiest to install at the time. It was a great tool for a house search because it allowed Laurel and I to add links to houses we liked and make comments. We could both do this independently from our respective workplaces and share information during the day. Over the last two years I've really come to rely on wiki for my notes, thoughts, and anything else I don't want to forget. I use it for recipes, travel research, wedding research, home improvements I want to make, and much more.
It's become so useful that I've finally decided to spend the time to update to a better wiki. UseModWiki is ugly, very ugly. It doesn't allow you to upload files, it doesn't show images very well, it doesn't do a lot of things a modern wiki does. I looked at a few wikis: Erfurt Wiki, Tiddly Wiki, and then I came to Media Wiki which is the wiki software used by wikipedia. Media Wiki is very beautiful and it allows for a very rich page to be displayed. At first I dismissed it because I assumed that it would be difficult to install and maintain, but today I gave up and took a quick look at the installation page. It was way simpler than I had expected. So I downloaded it, installed it, and I had a running wiki in about ten minutes. I've been very surprised how easy installion of open source software has been in the last few months. I guess the developers have finally realized that easy installation is important.
If you already have UseModWiki running and you want to convert the database to MediaWiki then follow this. This wasn't in any documentation so I had to figure it out myself. It works. Just remember that your homepage will have a different name so you'll need to find it under Special Pages / All Pages.
% cd maintenance
Now edit importUseModWiki.php and change the location of your UseModWiki database.
% php importUseModWiki.php > /tmp/usemod.txt
Now edit /tmp/usemod.txt and remove the HTTP lines at the top.
% cat /tmp/usemod.txt | mysql -u root -p<password> <database name>
It's become so useful that I've finally decided to spend the time to update to a better wiki. UseModWiki is ugly, very ugly. It doesn't allow you to upload files, it doesn't show images very well, it doesn't do a lot of things a modern wiki does. I looked at a few wikis: Erfurt Wiki, Tiddly Wiki, and then I came to Media Wiki which is the wiki software used by wikipedia. Media Wiki is very beautiful and it allows for a very rich page to be displayed. At first I dismissed it because I assumed that it would be difficult to install and maintain, but today I gave up and took a quick look at the installation page. It was way simpler than I had expected. So I downloaded it, installed it, and I had a running wiki in about ten minutes. I've been very surprised how easy installion of open source software has been in the last few months. I guess the developers have finally realized that easy installation is important.
If you already have UseModWiki running and you want to convert the database to MediaWiki then follow this. This wasn't in any documentation so I had to figure it out myself. It works. Just remember that your homepage will have a different name so you'll need to find it under Special Pages / All Pages.
% cd maintenance
Now edit importUseModWiki.php and change the location of your UseModWiki database.
% php importUseModWiki.php > /tmp/usemod.txt
Now edit /tmp/usemod.txt and remove the HTTP lines at the top.
% cat /tmp/usemod.txt | mysql -u root -p<password> <database name>
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