Step-by-step instructions for setting up Ushahidi for your own community
I am setting up Ushahidi for a community and recording what I do step-by-step in the hope that other non-geeks like myself will find it easier to follow.
Ushahidi
USHAHIDI is a crowdsourcing crisis information website that is available on an white label. You can download it and customize it for your own community.
Set up a local host on your PC as a development environment
If you have never done this before, the first step you must get done, before you do anything else is to set up a “local host” on your PC.
What do you need?
You need nothing more than your ordinary household pc with an internet connection.
Broadbrush steps and jargon
To set up a local host on your PC, you are going to download a WAMP server that runs with Apache, MySQL and PHP. This is a commonplace procedure used by anyone who develops a website on on their own PC before they move it to a public host in what is called a production environment -that is, a publicly accessible website. Your local host will be your development environment.
Follow LifeHacker‘s instructions to make a WAMP servier
To make your WAMP server, I am going to refer you to an old post on LifeHacker. That is what I used and it works just fine. It will show you how to develop a wiki on your own computer. That’s fine. You will learn the whole process and a wiki on your own PC is useful for notes you need when you don’t have an internet connection.
So step one: Make a “local host” so you can develop a website off line. I am sending you to Lifehacker for instructions. Follow them carefully and in one hour or less you should have a working wikipedia on your PC.
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