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History: Requirements

Preview of version: 194

2012-09: A Server Check script has been developed that will make everything easier! Just upload a single PHP file to your server and you will get advice on your server configuration.

See also Tiki Lifecycle and Browser Compatibility.

Requirements and Setup

This page lists the minimum requirements and recommended settings to install Tiki.

If you are using a standard shared webhost, your webhost most likely meets these requirements and you should be able to install Tiki with no problems. Tiki is designed to run on shared hosting, using the LAMP stack.

These instructions are useful for people that are configuring their own server for Tiki.


Shared Host

Tiki will run in most shared webhost environments. Many hosts offer Tiki installation via a control panel application (such as Fantastico).

You should verify that your webhost meets the minimum requirements:


See Tiki Friendly Hosts for a list of working shared host environments.

Requirements

Webserver

You must have a fully operational webserver in order to install and use Tiki. Tiki should run on any webserver that supports PHP (such as Windows IIS or lighttpd), but is most widely tested and used with Apache. You may need to make minor modifications for non-Apache webservers.

To simply installation on Windows IIs, Tiki is included in the Windows Web App Gallery and can be installed with the Microsoft Web Platform Installer. See Microsoft Web Platform installer for details.

Your webserver should be configured with the following minimum requirements:

  • 512 MB RAM
  • 100 MB free storage

Database

Tiki requires one of these RDBMS-s:

MariaDB (version 5+). Tiki versions 15 to 18 support MariaDB 10.1 (once the database is in the version 15 format, i.e. upgrade scripts from earlier versions may not support running on MariaDB 10.1).
MySQL (version 5+). Tiki versions 12 to 15 support MySQL 5.5. Tiki 18 supports MySQL 5.7.

The database can be installed in the same physical location of the webserver (that is, as localhost) or Tiki can access a remote database.

PHP

Tiki Version Minimum PHP Version Maximum PHP version Notes
Tiki20 or Tiki21 LTS in discussion Too soon to know
Tiki19 (unreleased) 7.1 7.1 (7.2 probably works for most configurations/features)
Tiki18 LTS 5.6 7.0 (7.2 probably works for most configurations/features)
Tiki16 or Tiki17 5.6 5.6 Tiki 17 will run 99% ok on PHP 7.1 - a couple of known issues are spreadsheet import/export and html mode diff view
Tiki15 LTS 5.5 5.6
Tiki13 or Tiki14 PHP 5.5 PHP 5.6 With a focus on the new Zend OPcache
Why 5.5 and not 5.4
Tiki10, Tiki11 or Tiki12 PHP 5.3 PHP 5.6 PHP 5.3 was released in June 2009 and PHP 5.2.x reached end of life in December 2010, which is nearly two years before Tiki10 will be released


The following versions are unsupported. Historical information below is just provided as a reference. Maximum PHP is unknown because these older versions are not actively tested against PHP versions that are released several years later.

Tiki Version Minimum PHP Version Notes
Tiki7, Tiki8 or Tiki9 LTS PHP 5.2 with the PDO extension If PDO is not available, you can revert to ADOdb. See ReleaseNotes40 for details.

If you can't get PHP 5.2 (released in November 2006!), you can keep on using Tiki6 LTS (end of support for Tiki6 LTS is when Tiki 10 13 is released)
Tiki5 or Tiki6 LTS PHP 5.1 with the PDO extension If PDO is not available, you can revert to ADOdb. See ReleaseNotes40 for details.

PHP 5.2 is preferred primarily to access features in Zend libraries and can be necessary for some of the newer features like WebDAV, however, globally, Tiki works with PHP 5.1

Tiki6 LTS End of life is November 2012 has been extended until May 2014 (when Tiki 13 is released).
Tiki4 PHP5 with the PDO extension If PDO is not available, you can revert to ADOdb. See ReleaseNotes40 for details.
Tiki3 LTS PHP5 This was a Long Term Support (LTS) version. End of life was May 2011, where you should upgrade to Tiki6 LTS


Interesting links about PHP lifecycle


For all versions, MySQLi extension is recommended but the Tiki installer will fall back to the older MySQL driver if MySQLi is unavailable.

Note on PHP Memory Limits:

The default memory_limit in a standard PHP 5.3 installation is 128M, and this should be fine for the vast majority of Tiki installations. Some web hosts install PHP with a lower default. Although Tiki may appear to install successfully, you will continually face issues with pages failing to load and system errors.

To review your PHP Memory Limits, access http://www.example.com/tiki-phpinfo.php and review the following values:

  • max_execution_time = 60 ; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds
  • max_input_time = 60 ; Maximum amount of time each script may spend parsing request data
  • memory_limit = 128M ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume


For some shared webhosts, these values may not be user-configurable and you may need to request changes from your webhost, whereas in other hosts you are allowed to fine tune these settings for your needs. You can try uncommenting the corresponding lines in the .htaccess file at your tiki root folder on the server, like:

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# increase memory php_value memory_limit 128M # increase execution time... php_value max_execution_time 90

More information

Required PHP Functions

Some webhosts tend to disable some functions which are required for Tiki to run flawlessly.

Function Notes
eval() Required by Smarty templating engine.
Causes "Please contact support about" messages appearing instead of Modules when eval() is disabled in php.ini.

Additional Libraries

Library Notes
libxml Required
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/ref.xml.php
DOM extension Required starting from version 19
mbstring Required by zend_search_lucene for Admin panel searching and managing preferences in perspectives.
Useful when working with languages that require it
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/ref.mbstring.php. mbstring needs to be compiled with --enable-mbregex or otherwise you will be missing functions like mb_split() which are needed for example by Smarty.
Since Tiki 17, the mbstring PHP extension should no longer be needed in any case, since Tiki depends on the symfony/polyfill-mbstring compatibility library (via symfony-console).
ctype Required
calendar Required for Tiki 6 and higher
iconv Required by certain Zend Framework validation and parsing classes

php.ini Configuration

We recommend using the following configuration in your php.ini file:

PHP.INI Setting Description
memory_limit = 128M Specify the maximum memory for PHP scripts.
_file_uploads = On Required to allow uploads (files, images, etc.) to your Tiki
upload_max_filesize = XXM
post_max_size
Specify the maximum upload filesize (in MB).
allow_url_fopen = On Allow trackback pings in your Tiki blogs. Deprecated since about Tiki4. No trackback feature available.
session.save_path = /tmp The directory where PHP stores session information (for the default handler (files)). Ensure that the location exists and is writable. In Shared Hosting environments, if you do not have access to /tmp, use temp (no slash) instead.
max_execution_time = 60
max_input_time = 60
Specify the idle timeout (in seconds). If you experience timeouts (such as when performing Admin functions) you may need to increase these settings.
magic_quotes_gpc = Off Turn off PHP's Magic Quotes function.
default_charset = "utf-8" Specify the default character encoding.
mbstring.func_overload = 0 Tiki will not work properly with mbstring.func_overload = 7.


The location of the php.ini file may vary, depending on your operating sytem. Some common locations include:

  • /etc/php.ini
  • /etc/php/php.ini
  • /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini (Debian)
  • \windows\system\php.ini (Windows)


Notes:

  1. If safemode is on you may need safe_mode_allowed_env_vars = TZ in php.ini.
  2. To run PHP5 on 1and1.com add the following lines to your _htaccess file (Tiki 3):
    AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
    AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php
    uncomment line 29 and 30 then rename in .htaccess

Optional Software or Libraries

Some Tiki features require the following additional software or libraries:

FeatureAdditional Requirements
The ZipArchive class for php must be installed for some features such as XML Wiki Import-Export and PluginArchiveBuilder
Image processing, used for thumbnail generation, dynamic chart generation, and to prevent bot/automatic registration.Use either GD Library 1.5 (or higher) or ImageMagick. ImageMagick is included, by default with PHP 4.3+
Manage and display maps as a GeoCMS (Geospatial Content Management System).Mapserver 4.6+
Rewrite Tiki's default URLsUse the Apache Clean URLs to create shorter, or custom, URLs.
Elasticsearch See Elasticsearch page (requirements section)

Alias

History

Information Version
bienvenu ushindi Group Tiki 30 with versions sharing the same requirements 294
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bienvenu ushindi Revise the mariadb minimum version for tiki 30 293
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bienvenu ushindi Add tiki30 constraints 292
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Bernard Sfez / Tiki Specialist 291
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Bernard Sfez / Tiki Specialist 290
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Bernard Sfez / Tiki Specialist 289
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Marc Laporte The requirements don't change for Tiki 27, 28 and 29. We don't know yet for 30 288
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Rodriguez Nyiringabo 287
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Rodriguez Nyiringabo 286
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Rodriguez Nyiringabo 285
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Marc Laporte Why it's OK. We are using for a huge project. 284
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Merci Jacob 283
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Marc Laporte 282
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Marc Laporte 281
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Marc Laporte ok, we decided 280
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Marc Laporte 8.3 should be fine as well 279
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drsassafras 278
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Marc Laporte 277
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Marc Laporte There was a mismatch 276
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Marc Laporte Expected to be OK until PHP 9.0 275
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Marc Laporte 274
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rjsmelo 273
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rjsmelo Update requirements for Tiki 27 272
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Marc Laporte 2023 271
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Marc Laporte 270
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Kevin Doyle tiki26 is released added strike through 269
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Marc Laporte 268
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Marc Laporte 267
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Marc Laporte 266
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Marc Laporte Burn the bridges! 265
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Marc Laporte 264
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Marc Laporte Adding projections as of now 263
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Marc Laporte Adding Percona Server for MySQL, which is a "a free, fully compatible drop in replacement for Oracle MySQL." 262
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Marc Laporte 261
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Marc Laporte Better link 260
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Marc Laporte This has been retired 259
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Marc Laporte 258
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Marc Laporte Update DB info 257
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Marc Laporte 256
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Marc Laporte Bye maketoc 255
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Marc Laporte Redoing edits I had done on duplicate page 254
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Marc Laporte Putting page in English 253
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Torsten Fabricius Danish Seems to work now: 'Krav og Opsætning' = 'Requirements and Setup', whilst the text is still in English. Sorry. 252
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Torsten Fabricius now changing the name to danish title (krv = requirement(s) ) and regenerate a new english page version ... if that works 251
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Torsten Fabricius 250
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Torsten Fabricius Still trying to change the language for this page to English ... the system states there would be an English version exist, which I do not find. Now this page is Danish ... at least 249
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Torsten Fabricius just formatted and added {maketic} - no content change today - still not getting english laguage for the page 248
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Torsten Fabricius fix auto-Jumbotron, try to set language=English to the page 247
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Marc Laporte 246
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Marc Laporte It is better explained on the Tiki24 page 245
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