Simon-
He beleives that you need root access to be able to install the software which is unfortunate since I do not have a virtual gnu/linux box... as a result, when I run install.php it stops somewhere along the line when it tries to create a wikiadministor in the mysql db..
Any ideas or ways to get around this?
You need to setup the database (use maintenance/tables.sql to do so), then you can copy the files manually and adjust LocalSettings.php by hand (set $wgDBuser and $wgDBpassword to a user that has read/write access to the wikidb). Your wiki directory should look roughly like this:
maintenance/ style/ upload/ - create this and set write permissions if you want to enable uploads Article.php DatabaseFunctions.php DefaultSettings.php DifferenceEngine.php FulltextStoplist.php GlobalFunctions.php Interwiki.php LanguageEn.php Language.php LinkCache.php LinksUpdate.php LocalSettings.php LogPage.php Namespace.php OutputPage.php redirect.phtml SearchEngine.php SearchUpdate.php Setup.php SiteStatsUpdate.php SkinCologneBlue.php SkinFramed.php SkinNostalgia.php Skin.php SkinStandard.php SpecialAllpages.php SpecialAncientpages.php SpecialAsksql.php SpecialBlockip.php SpecialBooksources.php SpecialContributions.php SpecialDebug.php SpecialEmailuser.php SpecialImagelist.php SpecialIntl.php SpecialIpblocklist.php SpecialListusers.php SpecialLockdb.php SpecialLonelypages.php SpecialLongpages.php SpecialMaintenance.php SpecialMovepage.php SpecialNeglectedpages.php SpecialNewpages.php SpecialPopularpages.php SpecialPreferences.php SpecialRandompage.php SpecialRecentchangeslinked.php SpecialRecentchanges.php SpecialShortpages.php SpecialSpecialpages.php SpecialStatistics.php SpecialUndelete.php SpecialUnlockdb.php SpecialUnusedimages.php SpecialUpload.php SpecialUserlogin.php SpecialUserlogout.php SpecialVote.php SpecialWantedpages.php SpecialWatchlist.php SpecialWhatlinkshere.php texvc.phtml Title.php UpdateClasses.php User.php UserTalkUpdate.php UserUpdate.php Utf8Case.php Version.php ViewCountUpdate.php wiki.phtml
Is there any possibility of including access controls into wikipedia? I would like to have some rather delicate documents collectively edited, but I can not have people adding things to the list that would then make it incorrect? (sensitive information...!) (-:
Well, we've built an encyclopedia on that very foundation ;-). But you can give yourself and the people you trust sysop rights (UPDATE user set user_rights='sysop' where user_name='myname';) and protect the pages you do not want to be completely editable. We do this with Wikipedia's English Main Page.
Regards,
Erik