This is very commonly asked and answered question. But here is the few uses which I feel about a Wiki.

Educational: It can be used as instrumental tool for building knowledge management system. Wiki is also been used as Text books in few educational institutions.

Collaboration: It allows the project team to collaborate on any specific task / idea.

Documentation: It can be used for the documentation purpose of any project. Draft version of document can be developed greatly using Wiki features.

Personal: It can be used for personal note taking purpose and book marking.

Top 5 -

Here is the list of popular open source Wiki engines. This list is not complied in chronological order according to their popularity.

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is most popular and holds the crown amongst the list. MediaWiki free web based software Wiki engine that was originally written for Wikipedia. MediaWiki is been adopted by several corporate and institutions as their internal knowledge management system. MediaWiki is written in PHP language and supports both MySQL and PostgreSQL RDBMS.

TWiki

TWiki is a flexible, powerful, secure, yet simple web-based collaboration platform. TWiki can be used to run a project development space, a document management system, a knowledge base or any other groupware tool on either an intranet or on the Internet. This Wiki is been mostly used by lot of enterprise including Yahoo and others. TWiki is written in PERL.

PmWiki

PmWiki is a free wiki-based system for collaborative creation and maintenance of websites. PmWiki pages look and act like normal web pages, except they can be edited or new pages can be added. Page editing can be left open to the public or restricted to small groups of authors. PmWiki works over text file and is written in PHP.

DokuWiki

DokuWiki is simple and lightweight Wiki engine. The administration option is very simple and comes with one click installation. DokuWiki is highly customizable with your current website theme. DokuWiki is written in PHP and works on small text file. DokuWiki is my personal favorite since it keeps everything simple!

MoinMoinWiki

MoinMoinWiki is a web application for making large database of knowledge basing. It produces nice structured information with feature of expansion information in cooperation manner with appropriate use it is power full content database. Alternatively, desktop edition of the Wiki is also available. It uses flat file for storing the information.

Here is the list of few other open source Wiki engines which is worth giving a try.

• PhpWiki
• TiwiKiwi
• DekiWiki
• Xwiki
• FlexWiki
• OpenWiki
• Kwiki
• Very Quick Wiki
• TiddlyWiki (Thanks to Binny)

Do you see another use of Wiki? Have you used any of the mentioned Wiki engines? Share your experience.

So to make their/your installation trouble free i’d to write this guide

This method works well with all Windows PC. Hope this helps people.!

Install Apache

Apache is most trusted web server that suits for the installation of PHP on your machine. Apache is an open source web server, which has captured almost 80% of web server market today.

Download latest version of apache windows binary installation from http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi. The latest version that is available today is Win32 Binary (MSI Installer): apache_2.2.3-win32-x86-no_ssl.msi

Before installing make sure to disable IIS web server if running. Since it might conflict with the default HTTP port 80, in which apache runs by default.

Now let us install Apache web server into your PC. Execute the previously downloaded apache installation file which is standard Windows installation file and thus very straightforward. Just fill in the required information on screen and end the installation.

Once you have done your apache installation try visiting http://localhost; you should get an apache test page. If you’re done with successful test page, you’re ready to proceed to next step.

Install PHP

Congrats! You’ve made a wise decision to install PHP, a leading open source web programming language.

Now visit http://www.php.net/downloads.php to download latest version of PHP. Download the latest available windows binary version in ZIP format.

Once download is complete; unzip the package into a directory preferably in root drive say C:\PHP. Now you’ve to move the file named “phpXts.dll” from the PHP installation directory to Windows directory (C:\Windows or C:\winnt depending upon your OS version); X stands for the version of PHP being installed. Make an entry to C:\PHP in the PATH environment variable.

Configuring PHP

Now you need to tell apache web server what to do when it encounters PHP file. To make this work we need to make some modification in both apache and PHP configuration files.

Before doing any modification to configuration files, create a directory where you’re going to place the web application. Say C:\www

First rename the php.ini-dist to php.ini in PHP installation directory, in our case C:\PHP. Then modify the following in php.ini
doc_root = “c:\www”
extension_dir = “C:\php\ext

Change the location if you’ve installed in different location.

Note: Use backslashes while you specify any path in configuration files.

Now open httpd.conf file available in apache configuration directory (generally C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\conf\). Edit the DocumentRoot entry to DocumentRoot “C:/www”

Then change the Directory Entry as . Add the following entry into the configuration file as well before AddHandler section (do a search for “AddHandler” for find the position fast).

ScriptAlias /php/ “c:/php/”
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .php5
Action application/x-httpd-php “/php/php-cgi.exe” # if PHP5
Action application/x-httpd-php “/php/php.exe” # if PHP4
SetEnv PHPRC “C:/php”

Finally add index.php to the DirectoryIndex entry as well like “DirectoryIndex index.html index.html.var index.php”

Now you’re ready before testing the PHP; you need to restart Apache web server to effect the changes.

Testing PHP

Create a file named phpinfo.php in C:\www or whether you configured as home directory. In phpinfo.php add “ and save.

Now point your browser to http://localhost/phpinfo.php and you should be able to see the PHP environmental variables displayed. If you’ve not seen that page you need to review the installation process again, you might have missed or went wrong in any of the above steps

Install MySQL

Now we’re almost in the final stage, we need to prepare a backend so that our web applications can make use of it. MySQL is the best choice to combine with apache and php.

Download the latest version of MySQL from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads. You’ve to download the latest available stable Window MySQL into your PC.

Once download is complete, double click on the MSI installation file, which you have just downloaded. Follow the onscreen instruction to complete the installation. Skip the sign up section and make sure you check “configure the MySQL Server now” option.

Now you will get a configuration dialog box, which can be configured easily by reading the instruction. Make sure “Install As Windows Service” is checked in the configuration page. Then define your admin password as well.

Setting up MySQL

First of all, check the c:\php directory and make sure that the files libmysqli.dll and php_mysqli.dll are both there. If they are not there, check the c:\php\ext directory and copy the files into c:\php

Then open up the file c:\php\php.ini in your editor and ADD the line extension=php_mysqli.dll

Now restart the apache web server to reflect the changes made.

Create a php file and test the mysql functions to connect to the database. Make sure your MySQL server running before executing the php program.

You can use PHPMyAdmin (www.phpmyadmin.net/) to manage your MySQL database through easy to use web interface.

Learning PHP

The complete PHP reference manual can be obtained from the php website itself. You can start learning other basic books to start off with PHP!!!

Have fun with php!!