USB Tiki

This needs some testing and your feedback!


Goal: to have a running Tiki usable on a USB key, from an existing Tiki instance.

This is useful for a portable backup of a live site. Beyond having a backup, this can be useful to use/present a Tiki site without an internet connection. This is not read-only like the TikiLiveCD but a fully editable instance of Tiki.

Requirements

  • A running Tiki site (if not, you can install one with the general idea of this procedure)
    • phpMyAdmin and FTP access to this live site
  • A Windows computer (tested with XP, but should work with any version of windows)
    • XAMPP has versions for Linux and MacOSx so you can get it to work too but the instructions will be a bit different than below
  • A USB Key, external hard drive, MP3 player, etc (anything recognized by Windows as storage)


We'll assume the USB Key has the letter F: Replace with the appropriate letter in the instructions below.

  1. Plugin a USB key
  2. Get Latest available version of XAMPP lite, without installer
  3. Double click the .exe and indicate the destination for the files (the USB Key)
    • Answer all the questions
    • Xampp will be installed at F:/xampplite/
    • The last step is to start XAMPP Control Panel
  4. From the XAMPP Control Panel, start Apache and start MySQL
    • If you have a Firewall, it may notice this and ask you to approve.
  5. Copy Tiki files to F:/xampplite/htdoc/tiki/*
    • This is all the files that are in the www directory of your live server. ex.: tiki-index.php, tiki-read_article.php, etc.
  6. Migrating the data
    • Use phpMyAdmin to export from live site (you'll get a .sql file)
    • Use phpMyAdmin (which is bundled in XAMPP and available at http://localhost/phpmyadmin/) to import the .sql file
      • create a database. Ex.: "tiki"
      • use the "import feature"
  7. Changing the DB connection
    • Edit F:/xampplite/htdoc/tiki/db/local.php
    • database name: tiki
    • MySQL user: root
    • MySQL password: (by default in XAMPP, this is empty)
  8. Visit http://localhost/tiki/
    • You should have a live local copy!

You may need to change some settings in php.ini and/or my.ini if you are above the following:
  • phpMyAdmin max upload file: 128 MiB
  • max_execution_time = 60
  • max_input_time = 60
  • memory_limit = 128M


Limitations

  • This is not a secure instance (XAMPP doesn't put passwords on MySQL by default) See XAMPP security
  • The system won't send emails
  • This assumes all files are stored in www or in MySQL. If you have binary files outside the web directory (which is recommended), you need to copy them as well, and configure your local Tiki to tell it where the files are