README
How to self-host a mirror of Wikipedia.org:
with Nginx, Kiwix, or MediaWiki/XOWA + Docker
Originally published 2019-09-08 on docs.sweeting.me.The pretty HTML version is here and the source for this guide is on Github.
A summary of how to set up a full Wikipedia.org mirror using three different approaches.
DEMO: https://other-wiki.zervice.io
Intro
Did you know that Wikipedia.org just runs a mostly-traditional LAMP stack on ~350 servers? (as of 2019)
Unfortunately, Wikipedia attracts lots of hate from people and nation-states who object to certain articles or want to hide information from the public eye.
Wikipedia's infrastructure (2 racks the USA, 1 in Holland, and 1 in Singapore, + CDNs) cant always stand up to large DDoS attacks, but thankfully they provide regular database dumps and static HTML archives to the public, and have permissive licensing that allows for rehosting with modification (even for profit!).
Growing up in China behind the GFC I often experienced Wikipedia unavailability, and in light of the recent DDoS I decided to make a guide for people to help demystify the process of running a mirror. I'm also a big advocate for free access to information, and I'm the maintainer of a major internet archiving project called ArchiveBox (a self-hosted internet archiver powered by headless Chromium).
This aim of this guide is to encourage people to use these publicly available dumps to host Wikipedia mirrors, so that malicious actors don't succeed in limiting public access to one of the world's best sources of information.
Quickstart
A full English Wikipedia.org clone in 3 steps.