These are the steps I followed to
create the StainWiki web site.
You may freely use them to create your own website, or as a guide before you try it yourself.
If it works for you, send me an email and let me know and I'll add a link to this page pointing to your site.
Getting a Hosting Service
I now use nearlyfreespeech.net for all new sites
I publish. I already had an account with them so creating a new site was easy.
(I already had a MySQL process runnin with them so I will not go into how I set any of that up.)
The site was called stainwiki and had a URL of stainwiki.nfshost.com I used this address until
I got MediaWiki installed and working with a few entries.
Installing mediaWiki
(I followed the directions from the mediawiki install site. The one problem i had was related to
the version of php running at nearlyfreespeech. The run 4.x and I needed 5.x. I sent an email to
the support contact and had that site switch to the "beta" install of php5. After that mediawiki
configured easily (from a web browser) and i had my first few wiki entries up.
Buying DNS Entries
I tried the $1.99 special from domains.yahoo.com
A few clicks and $1.99 later I had confirmation from yahoo that I ownedthe domain stainwiki.com.
Setting Up DNS Records to point to your new site
Log into the nearlyfreespeech control panel.
Add an "alias" for the site stainwiki equal to "stainwiki.com"
Note the IP addresses (3 for your site)
Log into the yahoo domain control panel
Enter a "C" record of stainwiki.nfshost.com
(some debate here, but this allows me to use the nfshost load balancer, while an a record
would skip this.)
I entered aa "A-name" record for the top domain to point to the 1st (of 3) ip address
assigned to me by nearlyfreespeech.
Wait 30 minutes for the a-name/c-name to propogate
create a file named .htaccess in the top dir of the site with the following lines:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^stainwiki.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^.*$ http://stainwiki.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]
Promoting The Site
I've done nothing yet. I'll wait until i have more content.
