NearlyFreeSpeech.net is a shared hosting
provider with very cheap pay as you go pricing. Here's how to install ikiwiki
there if you don't have a dedicated server.
Register for an account and set up a site
After you get an account,
create a site using their web interface.
Mine is named ikiwiki-test and I used their DNS instead of getting my
own, resulting in http://ikiwiki-test.nfshost.com/
They gave me 2 cents free funding for signing up, which is enough to pay
for 10 megabytes of bandwidth, or about a thousand typical page views, at
their current rates. Plenty to decide if this is right for you. If it is,
$5 might be a good starting amount of money to put in your account.
ssh in and configure the environment
ssh into their server using the ssh hostname and username displayed on
the site's information page. For me this was:
ssh joeyh_ikiwiki-test@ssh.phx.nearlyfreespeech.net
Now set up .profile to run programs from ~/bin.
cd $HOME
echo "PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin" > .profile
. .profile
Download an unpack ikiwiki
Use wget to [[download]] the ikiwiki tarball. Then unpack it:
tar zxvf ikiwiki*.tar.gz
Install perl modules
Use CPAN to install the perl modules it uses into your home directory:
PERL5LIB=`pwd`/ikiwiki:`pwd`/ikiwiki/cpan:`pwd`/lib/perl5 PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT=1 perl -MCPAN -e 'CPAN::Shell->install("Bundle::IkiWiki")'
PERL5LIB=`pwd`/ikiwiki:`pwd`/ikiwiki/cpan:`pwd`/lib/perl5 PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT=1 perl -MCPAN -e 'CPAN::Shell->force(install => "Bundle::IkiWiki::Extras")'
This will take a while. As long as the first command succeeds, ikiwiki will be
usable. The second command adds extra modules that some plugins use, so it's
ok if installation of some of them fail.
Build and install ikiwiki
cd ikiwiki
export MAKE=gmake
perl Makefile.PL INSTALL_BASE=$HOME PREFIX=
$MAKE
$MAKE install
Set up a wiki in the usual way
With ikiwiki installed, you can follow the regular [[setup]] tutorial for
settng up your wiki. Make sure to set destdir to /home/htdocs/ so that
the wiki is published on the web site. I recommend using git for revision
control; you can then clone your wiki's git repository as an offsite backup.
Here is an example of how I set up a wiki:
mkdir ~/wiki
cd ~/wiki
cp ~/ikiwiki/doc/ikiwiki.setup .
cp -r ~/ikiwiki/doc/examples/blog/* .
nano ikiwiki.setup
# Set destdir to /home/htdocs
# Set srcdir to /home/private/wiki
# Set url to http://yoursite.nfshost.com/ , set cgiurl likewise
# Uncomment the `rcs => "git"` line, and the cgi and git
# post-update wrapper blocks.
# Set the cgi wrapper path to /home/htdocs/ikiwiki.cgi
# Set the git wrapper path to /home/private/wiki.git/hooks/post-update
# Configure the rest to your liking and save the file.
ikiwiki-makerepo git . ../wiki.git
ikiwiki -setup ikiwiki.setup
Clean up
Finally, you can save a lot of disk space by cleaning up the ikiwiki
tarball and .cpan directory and a few other peices of cruft. Since you'll be
charged one cent per month per megabyte, this is a quick way to save several
dollars.
rm -rf ~/ikiwiki*.tar.gz ~/.cpan ~/ikiwiki ~/man ~/lib/perl5/5.8.8
That should cut things down to less than 4 megabytes. If you want to save
even more space, delete unused perl modules from ~/lib/perl5
Enjoy!
Have fun and do good things. --[[Joey]]
