MediaWiki + phpSuEXEC = Fail?

[Xudikkor]

FYI to MediaWiki users whose script no longer functions;
First solution worked for me.
Be advised that these solutions comes with a cost (highlighted in red marking).

Originally Posted by Frank / Dec 10, 2005

A heads-up to anyone who may be using MediaWiki out there, this change may also break existing installations. If your MediaWiki now shows a blank page, or if it tries forever to load the page without success (infinite redirection loop), this is the cause.

There are two options when fixing it:

a) in your config file (LocalSettings.php):
Find the area where it says,

## If using PHP as a CGI module, use the ugly URLs
$wgArticlePath = "$wgScript/$1";
# $wgArticlePath = "$wgScript?title=$1";

(around line 30 for me)

And change it to:

## If using PHP as a CGI module, use the ugly URLs
#$wgArticlePath = "$wgScript/$1";
$wgArticlePath = "$wgScript?title=$1";

This will get the Wiki working again, but search engines will no longer index your site; the URLs are also a bit longer/messier (but old bookmarks should still work, I think)

b) There's a second way to fix it:
Open up includes/DefaultSettings.php, and find:

/**
* Whether to support URLs like index.php/Page_title
* @global bool $wgUsePathInfo
*/
$wgUsePathInfo = ( strpos( php_sapi_name(), 'cgi' ) === false );

(should be at line 75)

And change that last line to:
$wgUsePathInfo = true;

But note that this MIGHT break other things. I haven't found any problems with it yet, but the MediaWiki people must have done that for a reason... so use at your own risk!

[PsiPro]

Most search engines will continue to index sites with a query string, any engine that wont really shouldn't be a concern to anyway.