Mediawiki Configuration

Mediawiki is a great tool that can accompany any blog. There are a couple of features that Mediawiki makes use of that require configuration in the LocalSettings.php file. To force users to register and login before editing add the following line to the LocalSettings.php file; “$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;”.
Another commonly desired feature is the <ref>. To achieve this upload the following 2 files to the extensions/Cite directory. If the Cite folder does not exist, simply create it.

Cite.php

Cite.i18n.php

Now the LocalSettings.php file must reference the files to properly use the Cite.php file. Add the following line before the closing ?>; “require_once( “{$IP}/extensions/Cite/Cite.php” );”.

The third thing is a custom logo. This is simply achieved by adding the line “$wgLogo” to your LocalSettings.php file. Do it like so:

$wgLogo = “path to the image”

Maximizing Bandwidth on a Home Network

Because home networks tend to be limited on their upload speeds, it is recommended to limit website visitors to a maximum of 3 connections per section, and 1 sustained connection. The amount of connections per section may have to be optimized depending on the quantity of content on any particular website. For instance this website, using 3 connections per section, allows for all images to be loaded without overloading the bandwidth limiting configuration. Currently this website is limited to 3 sustained connection (ie. downloads) at a time to allow for up to 10 website visitors. For instance if 10 people are online, each downloading a single file @ 6kbps, the total upload speed with obviously be 60kbps. On most standard home network this is reaching toward the upper limit of available upload bandwidth. This is obviously a serious issue because 6kbps is extremely slow, and will remind website visitors of their old days with 56k dial-up modems.  Considering this, as web site traffic inevitably will increase, it is worthwhile to either consider paying a hosting charge with a mainstream company like Yahoo or Godaddy, or consider upgrading you home based internet to a commercial level with an increase bandwidth allotment.

Netgear Router, Port Forwarding and required ports for a webserver

Most routers allow for a reasonable level of configuration to balance protection and connection capability. Most routers have a built in firewall that will block ports, behaving essentially as a hardware firewall. If you have a router with a hardware firewall, it is reasonable to disable the software firewall on your computer as it is redundant security.

To use any web serving application with a firewalled router you must enable port forwarding. To simplify things you should provide the computer that will serving the website with a static local IP address. Once you do this, setup port forwarding to forward any specific port (ie. port 80 for apache, port 21 for FTP, port 143 for Dovecot IMAP, port 25 for Sendmail) to the local IP address of the server.

SELinux/Software Firewall Configuration

SELinux, out of the box, needs some modification to work properly with Apache. I truly believe that it is best to try and work things out with SELinux instead of simply disabling it. The simplest way of making SELinux work with apache is to set to policy that allows Apache to read “Users Home Directory”. Then setup Apache to serve from a particular users home directory and everything will gel nicely. The best part of using a users home directory to serve a website is that it is consistent with FTP setup. Now when you want to login remotely to a users account, if VSFTPD is setup to Chroot the user, the FTP client will automatically load the users home directory, which is the Website being broad-casted by Apache. Note to make sure that in Fedora Core 6 that the firewall specifically allows port 80, as for the FTP the requirements for VSFTPD are at least port 21 for the initial connection, and then it requires a HIGH port that is default chosen by random. In my previous VSFTPD setup lost I provide a configuration that allows the specification of what high port is to be used. By specifically declaring what high port is to be used, configuration of the firewall and the route can be made a bit safer; by specifying the high port you only have to PORT FORWARD and FIREWALL APPROVE the exact port that you specified instead of a large range of random high ports.