-The easiest way to install ikiwiki is using the Debian package.
+This page documents how to install ikiwiki if a prepackaged version is not
+available for your distribution, and you are faced with [[downloading|download]]
+the source and installing by hand. Ikiwiki should work on most unix-like
+systems.
-If you want to install from the tarball, you should make sure that the required perl modules are installed, then run:
+## Dependencies
- perl Makefile.PL
- make
- make install
+Ikiwiki is a perl program, and needs a recent version of perl such as
+5.10. (5.8.0 has been reported not to work).
-See [[download]] for where to get it.
\ No newline at end of file
+It's recommended you have a C compiler, as ikiwiki uses one to build
+wrappers.
+
+Ikiwiki requires the [[!cpan Text::Markdown]], [[!cpan URI]],
+[[!cpan HTML::Parser]], [[!cpan HTML::Template]], and [[!cpan HTML::Scrubber]]
+perl modules be installed. It can also use a lot of other perl modules, if
+they are available.
+
+Various [[plugins]] use other perl modules and utilities; see their individual
+documentation for details.
+
+### Installing dependencies by hand
+
+If you want to install by hand from the tarball, you should make sure that
+all the perl modules are installed. This is one way to install them, using
+CPAN:
+
+ PERL5LIB=`pwd` PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT=1 perl -MCPAN -e 'CPAN::Shell->install("Bundle::IkiWiki")'
+ PERL5LIB=`pwd` PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT=1 perl -MCPAN -e 'CPAN::Shell->install("Bundle::IkiWiki::Extras")'
+
+## Installing ikiwiki by hand
+
+Then to build and install ikiwiki:
+
+ perl Makefile.PL # PREFIX=/dir to install elsewhere
+ make
+ make test # optional
+ make install
+
+If you're using a shared hosting provider, of the sort where you don't have
+root, you can still install ikiwiki. There are tutorials covering this for
+a few providers:
+
+* [[tips/NearlyFreeSpeech]]
+* [[tips/DreamHost]]