MediaWiki and no-ip

I am on a laptop connected to the wifi, with a vmware player - when i try bridged its not working, so thats wy its in NAT.

i will just move the VM machine to another to test further.

I have configured hubdns with a (tklapp.com)hostname and i get a ip, so i think its ok -

But the thing that iam wondering about, i want this wiki to be availeble from the internet, so that other could use it-

could this be done with (tklapp.com) hostname, in the browser or does this require a domain like www.my-wiki.com?

And are there any security issues that i should not forget, when its online.?

thank you for a great product and best of all: Its opensource.

If your mediawiki server is behind NAT (ie. it doesn't have a public IP on the internet), then you need to configure you router to do reverse-NAT or PAT (port address translation).

What this basically means is you need to map a port (or multiple ports) on your router to route traffic to your mediawiki server. 

As for which Dynamic DNS service to use, I'd recommend HubDNS (announcement, docs), though I may be a little biased :)

And IIRC I did start, but obviously got sidetracked and never actually hit the 'save' button.

The domain name from tklapp eg mysite.tklapp.com should be fine to get your site online. For all intents and purposes there is no difference between a tkl app domain name (such as my example above) and your own domain name such as my-wiki-page.com, other than you have more control and you can have your own sub-domains (such as stuff.my-wiki-page.com).

If you can't get the tklapp domain to work, then chances are that another domain won't work either! Personally I'd focus on getting your networking sorted out so that your site can be viewed via it's external IP address first (remember though this may change - that's the nature of dynamic IPs and the reason for Dynamic DNS like TKLHub or No-IP). Get your external IP via a website like http://www.whatismyip.com/

While it is theoretically possible to do this from a laptop, personally I'd be inclined to have it running on a desktop (or probably better still on a server). That will reduce your issues straight off the bat I imagine. Bridged networking is what you'll want to be using from VMware or VirtualBox. But as Alon said, you'll probably also need to configure port forwarding (and/or firewall exceptions) through your internet gateway. Because routers, modems and firewalls are all configured so differently it is way beyond the scope of this forum to be able to take you step by step through that. If your work is big enough to have an IT person then you'll need to talk to them about it. Otherwise you'll need to find out the make and model of your router/modem/firewall and do a google search on how to allow external access to your wiki.

As for limiting access, there are a few ways to go. You could use Apache (the webserver in the TKL MediaWiki appliance) to password protect your whole site. I don't know much about how you actually do this, but you should find plenty of info via google. Or you can use MediaWiki itself (a quick google found this MediaWiki doc).

ok, so the dns from tklapp is nor enough to get it online, so i have decided to get a domain like; my-wiki-page.com and the use wiki-info.com as a sub domain for ease of access.

but how do you prevent it from being seen by everybody on the internet?

An easy free online one is ShieldsUp. How do you connect to the net? Through a router/modem? If so, a lot of them have built in NAT (so you'll need to port forward) and/or firewall (need to make an exception - if it's enabled). Another possibility is that it may be blocked by your ISP. Not sure about how it is where you are, but here in Australia many ISPs block common ports (25, 80, 443). If ShieldsUp says the port is closed (or stealthed?) and you have configured your router/modem/firewall to allow port 80 then you'll need contact your ISP. However if you are planning on using a password then I would suggest that you set it to HTTPS only (port 443 by default).

Another option is to use an alternative port (8080 is the usual http alternative port).  If you can forward other ports ok, just not 80 (or 443 etc) then you could consider using a dynamic DNS provider like ChangeIP which will allow you to forward a standard port to a non standard port (I don't think TKLHubDNS can do that). If you have a NAT router and use an external non-standard port, possibly the easiest way to go is forward the non-standard port to port 443 on your VM.

As for password setting the LocalSettings.php file mentioned in the link I posted (previous post above) should be in the /etc folder (IIRC TKL MediaWiki is installed from package management so there should be a mediawiki folder there, or should at least contain a link to where it is). If you want to password protect the whole thing using Apache check the /etc/apache2/sites-enabled folder to see which coresponding config file to edit in /etc/apache2/sites-available (or that too may have a link that goes somewhere else...)

yupp, i have gotten it on a server (the laptop was for testing purpose,but because of the wifi-it dident work in bridged mode,just NAT)

i can ping the host name ip and i can connect to the wiki trough the LAN but not WAN- so i think there is a port thats closed, i guess its port 80 - how do you change the port, just in case there is no chance to open port 80.

ok, so the Apache webserver - do i use the "default server", i looked at the Mediawiki docs, but i dont know where to find the parameters to change or how to edit them.