To install Tiki, you basically point your browser to tiki-install.php and follow the instructions. For the vast majority of setups, this works nicely. But what if it doesn't work out for you? (special server setup, etc). Don't worry, there is an alternate way to install Tiki. This assumes you use mysql and have access to phpMyAdmin and know how to use it. Essentially, tiki-install.php does two essential things. It creates your database connection file (db/local.php) and populates the database with tables & data needed by Tiki.
<?php $db_tiki='mysql'; $dbversion_tiki='5.0'; $host_tiki='localhost'; $user_tiki='my_database_username'; $pass_tiki='my_database_secret_password'; $dbs_tiki='my_database_name'; ?>
Make sure there are no spaces or special characters before or after the code.
Of course, replace the values with your own.
Import the content of db/tiki.sql into your database
use the encoding as described on Understanding encoding
This will populate the database and give you the default profile.
Import the content of db/tiki-secdb_5.0_mysql.sql into your database
For more information: Security Admin
You can rename _htaccess to .htaccess
See Apache Clean URLs
The instructions above assume you are installing one Tiki. If you are using MultiTiki, please see MultiTiki Manual Installation