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Requirements

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

See also Tiki's Lifecycle and Browser Compatibility.

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.

 Tip
A Server Check script has been developed that will make everything easier! Just upload a single PHP file to your server before installing Tiki and you will get an advice on your server configuration.

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 nginx, Windows IIS or lighttpd), but is most widely tested and used with Apache. You may need to make minor modifications for non-Apache webservers.

Your webserver should be configured with the following minimum requirements:

  • 512 MB RAM
  • 100 MB free storage

Database MariaDB MySQL

Tiki requires MariaDB, MySQL or Percona Server for MySQL.

We are moving to a machine readable format: https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki-manager/-/blob/master/config/tiki_requirements.yml

Tiki Version MariaDB Versions MySQL Versions Notes
Tiki28 10.5+ 8+
Tiki27 LTS 10.5+ 8+ MariaDB 10.2.2+ or MySQL 5.7+ are the versions where the InnoDB row format is by default Dynamic, required for some tables.
Tiki21 to Tiki26 5.5+ 5.7+ No known issues as of 2023-06-15
Tiki19 or Tiki20 5.5-10.4 5.5.3-5.7 MySQL 5.6+ or MariaDB 10.1+ are recommended. First version to support utf8mb4
Tiki18 LTS 5.1-10.4 5.0-5.7 MySQL 5.6+ or MariaDB 10.1+ are recommended as not all features will be available at lesser versions.
Tiki15 LTS 5.0-10.1 5.0-5.6 In Tiki 15+ Upgrade scripts in in MariaDB 10.1 / MySQL 5.6 may not work from earlier versions of Tiki.
Tiki12 LTS 5.1-5.5 5.0-5.5

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 PHP

We are moving to a machine readable format: https://gitlab.com/tikiwiki/tiki-manager/-/blob/master/config/tiki_requirements.yml

Tiki Version Minimum PHP Version Maximum PHP Version Notes
Tiki28 8.1 8.4 Expected to be OK until PHP 9.0
Tiki27 LTS 8.1 8.4 Expected to be OK until PHP 9.0
Tiki26 8.1 8.1 (8.2 and 8.3 as Beta) Related: PHP 8
Tiki22, Tiki23, Tiki24 LTS and Tiki25 7.4 7.4
Tiki21 LTS 7.2 7.3 You can safely use 7.4 if you disregard or suppress the notices and warnings (They are indicating that certain things will no longer work in PHP 8.x).
Tiki19 or Tiki20 7.1 7.2 (maybe 7.3 as well) There is known issue with Tiki 20.2 where PHP requirement was bumped up to PHP 7.2 accidentally
Tiki18 LTS 5.6 7.2
Tiki15 LTS 5.5 5.6
Tiki12 LTS 5.3 5.6

Interesting links about PHP lifecycle

Note on PHP Memory Limits:
The default memory_limit in a standard PHP 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
DOM Required starting from Tiki 19
mbstring Useful when working with languages that require it
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 symfony/polyfill-mbstring compatibility library (via symfony-console) is used in core functionality, but mbstring is still required for some functionality.
ctype Required
calendar Required
iconv Required by certain Zend Framework validation and parsing classes
MySQLi In Tiki 12+ MySQLI is recommended but the Tiki installer will fall back to the older MySQL driver if MySQLi is unavailable.
zip The ZipArchive class for php must be installed for some features such as XML Wiki Import-Export and PluginArchiveBuilder

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).
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.
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)
  • /etc/php/7.x/apache2/php.ini
  • \windows\system\php.ini (Windows)

Optional Software or Libraries

Some Tiki features require the following additional software or libraries:

Feature Additional Requirements
Rewrite Tiki's default URLs Use the Apache Clean URLs to create shorter, or custom, URLs.
Elasticsearch See Elasticsearch page (requirements section)
Manticore Search See Manticore Search page (requirements section)

Tiki Manager

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