ikiwiki/ setup

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 or Git, and that has optional support for commits from the web.

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

  2. Create the master rcs repository for your wiki.

    # Subversion
    svnadmin create /svn/wikirepo
    svn mkdir file:///svn/wikirepo/trunk -m create
    
    
    # Git
    mkdir /git/wikirepo
    cd /git/wikirepo
    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
    
  3. Check out the repository to make the working copy that ikiwiki will use.

    # Subversion
    svn co file:///svn/wikirepo/trunk ~/wikiwc
    
    
    # Git
    git clone /git/wikirepo ~/wikiwc
    
  4. Build your wiki for the first time.

    ikiwiki --verbose ~/wikiwc/ ~/public_html/wiki/ \
        --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. 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 ~/wikiwc
    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
    

    You can also add any files you like from scratch of course.

  6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 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).

  7. 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 git, comment out the subversion stuff, uncomment and edit the git stuff.

    Note that the default file has a block to configure an 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.

  8. 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!

  9. Add PageHistory links to the top of pages. This requires you to have setup a repository browser. For Subversion, you may use ?ViewCVS or something similar to access your Subversion repository. For Git, ?Gitweb can be used.

    The historyurl setting makes ikiwiki add the links, and in that url, "[[file]]" is replaced with the name of the file to view. So edit ikiwiki.setup and ucomment the appropriate historyurl setting and edit it for your setup.

    Then run ikiwiki --setup ikiwiki.setup again.

  10. Enjoy your new wiki! Add yourself to IkiWikiUsers