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.
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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.
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/
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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 $REPOSITORY
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Check out the repository to make the working copy that ikiwiki will use
as its source directory.
# Subversion
svn co file://$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
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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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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.
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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]]).
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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. 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.
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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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Enjoy your new wiki! Add yourself to [[IkiWikiUsers]].
