Semantic MediaWiki and related extensions
Installation guide (brief)

This is a brief installation and configuration guide for ../README.md "Semantic MediaWiki" (SMW) that only contains the core steps. More verbose installation instructions with additional explanation and upgrading instructions can be found here.

A list of supported PHP versions, MediaWiki versions and databases per SMW release can be found in the compatibility matrix.

Download and installation

Installation

The recommended way to install Semantic MediaWiki is with Composer using MediaWiki's built-in support for Composer.

Step 1

Change to the base directory of your MediaWiki installation. If you do not have a "composer.local.json" file yet, create one and add the following content to it:

{
"require": {
"mediawiki/semantic-media-wiki": "~3.2"
}
}

If you already have a "composer.local.json" file add the following line to the end of the "require" section in your file:

"mediawiki/semantic-media-wiki": "~3.2"

Remember to add a comma to the end of the preceding line in this section.

Step 2

Run the following command in your shell:

php composer.phar update --no-dev

Note if you have Git installed on your system add the --prefer-source flag to the above command.

Step 3

Add the following line to the end of your "LocalSettings.php" file:

enableSemantics( 'example.org' );

Note that "example.org" should be replaced by your wiki's domain.

Step 4

Run the MediaWiki update script. The location of this script is maintenance/update.php. It can be run as follows in your shell:

php maintenance/update.php

Step 5

If you are installing SMW on a freshly installed wiki then you are done. If the wiki already has content pages run the Semantic MediaWiki data rebuild script. The location of this script is extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/maintenance/rebuildData.php. It can be run as follows in your shell:

php extensions/SemanticMediaWiki/maintenance/rebuildData.php -v

Installation without shell access

As an alternative to installing via Composer, you can obtain the SMW code by creating your own individual file release most likely if command line access to the webspace is not available or if the hoster imposes restrictions on required functionality.

Note that SMW no longer provides file releases (See #3347).

Step 1

Create your individual file release using the respective script. Please pay attention to the MediaWiki version used in the script and adapt to your setup if necessary.

Step 2

Transfer the code thus compiled to the appropriate folders on your webspace.

Step 3

Add the following lines to the end of your "LocalSettings.php" file:

enableSemantics( 'example.org' );

Note that "example.org" should be replaced by your wiki's domain.

Step 4

Log in as a user with administrator permission to your wiki and go to the "Maintenance" tab on special page "Special:SemanticMediaWiki":

Click on the "Initialise or upgrade tables" button in the "Database maintenance" section to setup the database.

Step 5

If you are installing SMW on a freshly installed wiki then you are done. If the wiki already has content pages also do the following on page "Special:SemanticMediaWiki":

Click on the "Start updating data" button in the "Data rebuild" subsection of "Maintenance" tab to activate the [automatic data update](https://www.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Repairing_SMW's_data).

Installation of development versions and release candidates

If you would like to install a development version or release candidate then replace the lines as stated in step 3 of the "Installation with Composer" section with the following line

More instructions


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