-So you want to set up your own wiki using ikiwiki? This tutorial will walk
-you through setting up a wiki that is stored in [[Subversion]] or [[Git]],
-and that has optional support for commits from the web.
+This tutorial will walk you through setting up a wiki with ikiwiki.
-1. [[Install]] ikiwiki. See [[download]] for where to get it.
+[[!toc ]]
-2. Create the master rcs repository for your wiki.
+## [[Download]] and [[install]] ikiwiki
- # Subversion
- svnadmin create /svn/wikirepo
- svn mkdir file:///svn/wikirepo/trunk -m create
+If you're using Debian or Ubuntu, ikiwiki is an `apt-get install ikiwiki` away.
+If you're not, see the [[download]] and [[install]] pages.
- # Git
- mkdir /git/wikirepo
- cd /git/wikirepo
- git init-db
+## Create your wiki
-3. Check out the repository to make the working copy that ikiwiki will use.
+All it takes to create a fully functional wiki using ikiwiki is running
+one command.
+[[!template id=note text="""
+For more control, advanced users may prefer to set up a wiki
+[[by_hand|byhand]].
+"""]]
- # Subversion
- svn co file:///svn/wikirepo/trunk ~/wikiwc
+ % ikiwiki -setup /etc/ikiwiki/auto.setup
- # Git
- git clone /git/wikirepo ~/wikiwc
+Or, set up a blog with ikiwiki, run this command instead.
-4. Build your wiki for the first time.
+ % ikiwiki -setup /etc/ikiwiki/auto-blog.setup
- ikiwiki --verbose ~/wikiwc/ ~/public_html/wiki/ \
- --url=http://host/~you/wiki/
+Either way, it will ask you a couple of questions.
- Replace the url with the real url to your wiki. You should now
- be able to visit the url and see your wiki.
+ What will the wiki be named? foo
+ What revision control system to use? git
+ What wiki user (or openid) will be admin? joey
+ Choose a password:
-5. Customise your wiki. The files in `/usr/share/ikiwiki/basewiki/` are
- used if you don't have a custom version, so let's start by making a
- custom version of the wiki's index page:
+Then, wait for it to tell you an url for your new site..
- cd ~/wikiwc
- cp /usr/share/ikiwiki/basewiki/index.mdwn .
- $EDITOR index.mdwn
+ Successfully set up foo:
+ url: http://example.com/~joey/foo
+ srcdir: ~/foo
+ destdir: ~/public_html/foo
+ repository: ~/foo.git
+ To modify settings, edit ~/foo.setup and then run:
+ ikiwiki -setup ~/foo.setup
- # Subversion
- svn add index.mdwn
- svn commit -m customised index.mdwn
+Done!
- # Git
- git add index.mdwn
- git commit -m customised index.mdwn
- git push origin
+## Using the web interface
- You can also add any files you like from scratch of course.
+Now you can go to the url it told you, and edit pages in your new wiki
+using the web interface.
-6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 as desired, editing or adding pages and rebuilding
- the wiki. You can play around with other ikiwiki parameters such as
- `--wikiname` and `--rebuild` too. Get comfortable with its command line
- (see [[usage]]).
+You can log in using the wiki user and password (or the openid)
+that you told it to set up earlier. That user is an admin, so you can
+go to the Preferences page and click on "Wiki Setup" to further
+configure the wiki.
-7. By now you should be getting tired of typing in all the command line
- options each time you change something in your wiki's setup. And it's
- also getting old to have to manualy rebuild the wiki each time you
- change a file. Time to introduce setup files.
-
- A sample setup file is [[ikiwiki.setup]]. Download it (or copy it from
- `doc/ikiwiki.setup` in the ikiwiki sources), and edit it.
-
- Most of the options, like `wikiname` in the setup file are the same as
- ikiwiki's command line options (documented in [[usage]]. `srcdir` and
- `destdir` are the two directories you specify when running ikiwiki by
- hand. `rcsrepo` is the path to your master rcs repository. Make sure
- that all of these are pointing to the right directories, and read
- through and configure the rest of the file to your liking.
+(If the web interface doesn't seem to allow editing or login, you may
+need to configure [[apache|tips/apache_cgi]] or
+[[lighttpd|tips/lighttpd_cgi]].)
- Note that the default file has a block to configure an Rcs wrapper to
- update the wiki. You need to uncomment the related block for whatever
- rcs you use and comment out the other rcs blocks.
+## Checkout and edit wiki source
- When you're satisfied, run `ikiwiki --setup ikiwiki.setup`, and it
- will set everything up and update your wiki.
+Part of the fun of using ikiwiki is not being limited to using the
+web for editing pages, and instead using your favorite text editor and
+[[Revision_Control_System|rcs]].
-8. Set up [[CGI]] to allow editing the wiki from the web.
+To do this, you need to check out a copy of the source to your wiki.
+You should avoid making changes directly to the `srcdir`, as that
+checkout is reserved for use by ikiwiki itself.
- Just edit ikiwiki.setup, uncomment the block for the cgi wrapper, make
- sure the filename for the cgi wrapper is ok, run
- `ikiwiki --setup ikiwiki.setup`, and you're done!
+Depending on which [[Revision_Control_System|rcs]] you chose to use,
+you can run one of these commands to check out your own copy of your wiki's
+source. (Remember to replace "foo" with the real directory name.)
-9. Add [[PageHistory]] links to the top of pages. This requires you to have
- setup a repository browser. For Subversion, you may use [[ViewCVS]] or
- something similar to access your [[Subversion]] repository. For Git,
- [[Gitweb]] can be used.
-
- The `historyurl` setting makes ikiwiki add the links, and in that url,
- "\[[file]]" is replaced with the name of the file to view. So edit
- ikiwiki.setup and set `historyurl` to something like this for
- Subversion:
+ git clone foo.git foo.src
+ svn checkout file://`pwd`/foo.svn/trunk foo.src
+ bzr clone foo foo.src
+ hg clone foo foo.src
+ # TODO monotone, tla
- `http://svn.host/trunk/\[[file]]?root=wiki`
+Now to edit pages by hand, go into the directory you checked out (ie,
+"foo.src"), and fire up your text editor to edit `index.mdwn` or whatever
+other page you want to edit. If you chose to set up a blog, there is even a
+sample first post in `posts/first_post.mdwn` that you can edit.
- Or this for Git:
+Once you've edited a page, use your revision control system to commit
+the changes. For distributed revision control systems, don't forget to push
+your commit.
- `http://git.host/gitweb.cgi?p=wiki.git;a=history;f=[[file]]`
-
- Then run `ikiwiki --setup ikiwiki.setup` again.
+Once the commit reaches the repository, ikiwiki will notice it, and
+automatically update the wiki with your changes.
-10. Enjoy your new wiki! Add yourself to [[IkiWikiUsers]]
+## Customizing the wiki
+
+There are lots of things you can configure to customize your wiki.
+These range from changing the wiki's name, to enabling [[plugins]],
+to banning users and locking pages.
+
+If you log in as the admin user you configured earlier, and go to
+your Preferences page, you can click on "Wiki Setup" to customize many
+wiki settings and plugins.
+
+Some settings cannot be configured on the web, for security reasons or
+because misconfiguring them could break the wiki. To change these settings,
+you can manually edit the setup file, which is named something like
+"foo.setup". The file lists all available configuration settings
+and gives a brief description of each.
+
+After making changes to this file, you need to tell ikiwiki to use it:
+
+ % ikiwiki -setup foo.setup
+
+## Customizing file locations
+
+As a wiki compiler, ikiwiki builds a wiki from files in a source directory,
+and outputs the files to a destination directory. The source directory is
+a working copy checked out from the version control system repository.
+
+When you used `auto.setup`, ikiwiki put the source directory, destination
+directory, and repository in your home directory, and told you the location
+of each. Those locations were chosen to work without customization, but you
+might want to move them to different directories. There are three steps to
+this process.
+
+1. Move the destination directory and repository around.
+
+ % mv public_html/foo /srv/web/foo.com
+ % mv foo.git /srv/git/foo.git
+
+2. Create a new source directory checkout. If you moved the repository
+ to a new location, checkouts pointing at the old location won't work,
+ and the easiest way to deal with this is to delete them and re-checkout
+ from the new repository location.
+
+ % rm -rf foo
+ % git clone /src/git/foo.git
+
+3. Edit the setup file. Modify the settings for `srcdir`, `destdir`,
+ `url`, `cgiurl`, `cgi_wrapper`, `git_wrapper`, etc to reflect where
+ you moved things. Remember to run `ikiwiki -setup` after editing the
+ setup file.
+
+## Enjoy your new wiki!
+
+Add yourself to [[IkiWikiUsers]]. And check out
+the [[tips]] to find out how to get more out of ikiwiki.