This tutorial will walk you through setting up a wiki with ikiwiki.
- Download and install ikiwiki.
- Decide where your wiki's files will go.
- Create the beginnings of your wiki.
- Build your wiki for the first time.
- Add content to your wiki.
- Add a setup file.
- Turn on additional features.
- Put your wiki in revision control.
- Configure ikiwiki to use revision control.
- Enjoy your new wiki!
Download and install ikiwiki.
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. If you keep your wiki in a version control system, the source directory will contain a working copy checked out from the version control system.
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/
Note that ikiwiki owns the working copy directory; do not perform your own edits in ikiwiki's working copy.
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.info).
See formatting 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.
Build your wiki for the first time.
ikiwiki --verbose $SRCDIR $DESTDIR --url=http://example.org/~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.
Add content to your wiki.
Continue editing or adding pages and rebuilding the wiki.
To quickly get started on a common task like blogging with ikiwiki, you
can copy in files from the examples. The examples are located in
doc/examples/
in the ikiwiki source package.
You can experiment with other ikiwiki parameters such as --wikiname
and --rebuild
too. Get comfortable with its command line (see
usage).
Add a setup file.
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. Note that this
file should not be put in your wiki's directory with the rest of the
files. A good place to put it is in a ~/.ikiwiki/ subdirectory.
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.
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..
Put your wiki in revision control.
At this point you might want to check your wiki in to a revision control system so you can keep track of changes and revert edits. Depending on the revision control system you choose, the way this is done varies.
Note that the .ikiwiki subdirectory is where ikiwiki keeps its state, and should be preserved, but not checked into revision control.
The new ikiwiki-makerepo command automates setting up a wiki in revision control.
REPOSITORY=~/wikirepo
ikiwiki-makerepo svn $SRCDIR $REPOSITORY
REPOSITORY=~/wiki.git
ikiwiki-makerepo git $SRCDIR $REPOSITORY
Please see git for detailed documentation about how ikiwiki uses git repositories, and some important caveats about using the git repositories.
REPOSITORY=$SRCDIR
ikiwiki-makerepo mercurial $SRCDIR
REPOSITORY=$SRCDIR
ikiwiki-makerepo bzr $SRCDIR
REPOSITORY=~/wikirepo
tla make-archive me@localhost--wiki $REPOSITORY
tla my-id "<me@localhost>"
cd $SRCDIR
tla archive-setup me@localhost--wiki/wiki--0
tla init-tree me@localhost--wiki/wiki--0
# Edit {arch}/=tagging-method and change the precious
# line to add the .ikiwiki directory to the regexp.
tla add *
tla import
# These instructions are standard instructions to import a directory into monotone
# and set it up so that you don't need any passwords to use it
REPOSITORY=~/.ikiwiki/mtn.db
BRANCH=com.company.wikiname
# remember the password you use in the next step and
# substitute it for 'wikiKeyPass' in the get_passphrase() hook below
# note the you should never generate two monotone keys with the same name
mtn genkey web@machine.company.com
mtn db init --db=$REPOSITORY
mv $SRCDIR $SRCDIR-old
cd $SRCDIR-old
echo ".ikiwiki" > $SRCDIR-old/.mtn-ignore
mtn --db=$REPOSITORY --branch=$BRANCH import . -m "initial import"
cd ..
mtn --db=$REPOSITORY --branch=$BRANCH checkout $SRCDIR
mv $SRCDIR-old/.ikiwiki $SRCDIR
cat << EOF > $SRCDIR/_MTN/monotonerc
function get_passphrase (branchname)
return "wikiKeyPass"
end
EOF
rm -r $SRCDIR-old
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. Uncomment the block for the wrapper for your revision
control system, and configure the wrapper path in that block
appropriately (for Git, it should be $REPOSITORY/hooks/post-update
).
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.
Enjoy your new wiki!
Add yourself to IkiWikiUsers. And check out the tips to find out how to get more out of ikiwiki.