Question

I am using a basic hosting plan on Host Gator. I installed MediaWiki and I am getting URLs with index.php?title= in it, i.e. www.domain.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

I want to remove the index.php?title= part and just have the title of the page appear. I am following the instructions from http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Short_URL/Page_title_–_Windows_%26_Apache_without_403_on_Special_Pages, not sure if this is the right instructions I should be using.

Step 1 of the instructions indicate that “If you have vHosts configured, insert the following Rewrite directives into the appropriate <VirtualHost> directive. Otherwise, insert it in the <directory> directive for your wiki’s root directory:” and to insert:

RewriteEngine On    
RewriteRule ^/(.*):(.*) /index.php/$1:$2

Where is the <directory> directive located? What file should I be inserting the code into?

Answer 1

The <directory> block is a httpd.conf Apache configuration file directive.

On a shared hosting enviroment, you don’t generally have directly access to his file. You still have access to an .htaccess file, which allows most configuration directives to be used.

Create a .htaccess at your web root (the same directory you have index.php and LocalSettings.php) and write the RewriteEngine / RewriteRules directives in this file.

If this fails, follow instead this guide, more adapted to your situation:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Short_URL/Apache