How do I set short URL's for MediaWiki? - apache

Question

I used this guide to install mediawiki version 1.27.0. The install went great, and everything is working.
Currently in the url it still has the index.php in the url, like this: http://example.com/index.php/Main_Page
There is documentation here, and here, but there are sections of these instructions that don't make sense to me.
Here's what I'm using:
Ubuntu 14.04
Apache2
mediawiki 1.27.0
My VM is on Amazon AWS
I'll go through the instructions, and list the problems I'm having.
1. In the instructions they assume that your mediawiki install is setup in /w.
Well, mine is installed here /var/www/html/
2. Find the right apache2 files
I have root access so I'm assuming I will be using two files /etc/apache2/apache2.conf for the AllowOverride All, and /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf to edit anything related to the VirtualHost section.
3. Setting the rewrite rules
In my /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf file, in the <VirtualHost *:80> section, I added these lines
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/?wiki(/.*)?$ %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/w/index.php [L]
I understand that this shouldn't work with my setup, because it's using the /wiki, and /w filepaths, and those don't even exist, but I'm not sure what I should put.
4. Change LocalSettings.php
This step also has me confused for the same reason. It says to set $wgScriptPath = "/w";, which is a directory I don't have, and set $wgArticlePath = "/wiki/$1";, which is not only a directory I don't have, but that variable doesn't even exist in the LocalSettings.php file.
I think if I understood the first step, of changing my directory to /w, then I could get the rest, but obviously, I can't change /var/www/html, to /w, without breaking everything. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

For all who are not running MediaWiki in the default subdirectoy on your HOST (means not like /w/ or /wiki/) configure your .htaccess like:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_URI} !-f
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_URI} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [L]
And add the article path to your LocalSettings.php:
$wgArticlePath = "/$1";