This tutorial will walk you through setting up a wiki with ikiwiki.
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[[Install]] ikiwiki. See [[download]] for where to get it.
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Decide where your wiki's files will go.
As a wiki compiler, ikiwiki builds a wiki from files in a source
directory, and outputs the files to a destination directory.
For the purposes of this tutorial, we'll set shell variables
for these locations, and use those variables in the commands that follow.
SRCDIR=~/wikiwc
DESTDIR=~/public_html/wiki/
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Create the beginnings of your wiki.
This will create a simple main page for the wiki.
mkdir $SRCDIR
cd $SRCDIR
$EDITOR index.mdwn
In the editor, you could start by entering a simple page like this one:
Welcome to your new wiki.
All wikis are supposed to have a [[SandBox]], so this one does too.
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This wiki is powered by [ikiwiki](http://ikiwiki.kitenet.net).
See [[HelpOnFormatting]] for details about the markup language.
Note that several standard wiki pages will be added to your wiki, from
files in /usr/share/ikiwiki/basewiki/, so your wiki will automatically
get a [[SandBox]], and some other useful pages.
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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.
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Repeat steps 3 and 4 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]]).
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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. 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. Make sure that these are pointing to the right directories, and
read through and configure the rest of the file to your liking.
When you're satisfied, run ikiwiki --setup ikiwiki.setup, and it
will set everything up.
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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]]..
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Put your wiki in revision control.
At this point you might want to check your wiki in to a revision control
system you can get history of past changes and revert edits. Depending
on the revision control system you choose, the way this is done varies.
There's little that's ikiwiki specific about these instructions; this is
just how you put a directory under revision control using the various
systems ikiwiki supports:
# Subversion
REPOSITORY=~/wikirepo
svnadmin create $REPOSITORY
svn import $SRCDIR file://$REPOSITORY/trunk -m "initial import"
rm -rf $SRCDIR
svn co file://$REPOSITORY/trunk $SRCDIR
# Git
REPOSITORY=~/wikirepo
mkdir $REPOSITORY
cd $REPOSITORY
git init-db
cp -a $SRCDIR/* .
git add .
git commit -m "initial import" -a
rm -rf $SRCDIR
git clone -l -s $REPOSITORY $SRCDIR
# TLA
REPOSITORY=~/wikirepo
tla make-archive me@localhost--wiki $REPOSITORY
tla my-id "<me@localhost>"
cd $SRCDIR
tla archive-setup me@localhost--wiki/wiki--0
tla init-tree me@localhost--wiki/wiki--0
# Edit {arch}/=tagging-method and change the precious
# line to add the .ikiwiki directory to the regexp.
tla add *
tla import
# Mercurial
REPOSITORY=$SRCDIR
hg init $REPOSITORY
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Configure ikiwiki to use revision control.
Once your wiki is checked in to the revision control system,
you should configure ikiwiki to use revision control. Edit your
ikiwiki.setup, and uncomment the lines for the revision control system
you chose to use. Be sure to set svnrepo to $REPOSITORY, if using
subversion. Uncomment the block for the wrapper for your revision
control system, and configure the wrapper path in that block
appropriately.
Once it's all set up, run ikiwiki --setup ikiwiki.setup once more.
Now you should be able to edit files in $SRCDIR, and use your revision
control system to commit them, and the wiki will automatically update.
And in the web interface, RecentChanges should work, and files changed
by web users will also be committed using revision control.
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Enjoy your new wiki! Add yourself to [[IkiWikiUsers]].
