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This tutorial will walk you through setting up a wiki with ikiwiki.

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

  2. 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/
    
  3. 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.
     ----
     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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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]]).

  6. 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.

  7. 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]]..

  8. 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
    
  9. 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.

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