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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]], [[Git]], [[TLA]] or [[Mercurial]], and that has optional support for commits from the web.

  1. [[Install]] ikiwiki. See [[download]] for where to get it.

  2. Decide where your wiki's files will go.

    Pick three directories for respectively the repository (contains the "master copy" and history); working copy (checked-out files from the repository); and web pages (served by the web server).

    For the purposes of this tutorial, we'll set shell variables for these locations, and use those variables in the commands that follow.

     REPOSITORY=~/wikirepo
     SRCDIR=~/wikiwc
     DESTDIR=~/public_html/wiki/
    
  3. Create the master rcs repository for your wiki.

     # Subversion
     svnadmin create $REPOSITORY
     svn mkdir file://$REPOSITORY/trunk -m create
      
     # Git
     mkdir $REPOSITORY
     cd $REPOSITORY
     git init-db
     # Git requires something be in the repo to start with.
     cp /usr/share/ikiwiki/basewiki/index.mdwn .
     git add .
     git commit -m create -a
     # No need to keep files in the master repository; so at this
     # stage, you may want to remove all files (except .git) to
     # save disk space.
    
     # TLA
     mkdir $REPOSITORY
     tla make-archive me@localhost--wiki $REPOSITORY
     tla my-id "<me@localhost>"
    
     # Mercurial
     hg init $REPOSITORY
    
  4. Check out the repository to make the working copy that ikiwiki will use as its source directory.

     # Subversion
     svn co file://$REPOSITORY/trunk ~/wikiwc
      
     # Git
     # Create a local clone to save disk space and also to
     # optimize performance. See git-clone(1).
     git clone -l -s $REPOSITORY $SRCDIR
    
     # TLA
     mkdir $SRCDIR
     cd $SRCDIR
     tla archive-setup me@localhost--wiki/wiki--0
     tla init-tree me@localhost--wiki/wiki--0
         # Edit {arch}/=tagging-method and change the precious
     # line to add the .ikiwiki directory to the regexp.
     tla import
    
     # Mercurial
     # Mercurial uses a single repo approach, so no need to
     # clone anything. Because the following examples
     # refer to $SRCDIR, we symlink it:
     ln -s $REPOSITORY $SRCDIR
    
  5. Build your wiki for the first time.

     ikiwiki --verbose $SRCDIR $DESTDIR --url=http://host/~you/wiki/
    

    Replace the url with the real url to your wiki. You should now be able to visit the url and see your wiki.

  6. 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:

     cd $SRCDIR
     cp /usr/share/ikiwiki/basewiki/index.mdwn .
     $EDITOR index.mdwn
      
     # Subversion
     svn add index.mdwn
     svn commit -m customised index.mdwn
      
     # Git
     git add index.mdwn
     git commit -m customised index.mdwn
     git push origin
    
     # TLA
     tla add index.mdwn
     tla commit
    
     # Mercurial
     hg add index.mdwn
     hg commit -m customised index.mdwn
    

    You can also add any files you like from scratch of course. Use the same command as in step 5 to rebuild the wiki.

  7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 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]]).

  8. 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. svnrepo is the path to your subversion 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 you want to use something other than subversion, comment out the subversion configuration, and uncomment and edit the configuration for your chosen RCS. Note that the default file has a block to configure a [[post-commit]] wrapper to update the wiki. You need to uncomment the related block for whatever RCS you use and comment out the other rcs blocks.

    When you're satisfied, run ikiwiki --setup ikiwiki.setup, and it will set everything up and update your wiki.

  9. Turn on additional features.

    Now you have a basic wiki with a configuration file. Time to experiment with ikiwiki's many features.

    Let's first enable a key wiki feature and set up [[CGI]] to allow editing the wiki from the web. 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!

    There are lots of other configuration options in ikiwiki.setup that you can uncomment, configure, and enable by re-running ikiwiki --setup ikiwiki.setup. Be sure to browse through all the [[plugins]]..

  10. Enjoy your new wiki! Add yourself to [[IkiWikiUsers]].