1 This tutorial will walk you through setting up a wiki with ikiwiki.
7 If you're using Debian or Ubuntu, ikiwiki is an `apt-get install ikiwiki` away.
8 If you're not, see the [[download]] and [[install]] pages.
12 All it takes to create a fully functional wiki using ikiwiki is running
14 [[!template id=note text="""
15 For more control, advanced users may prefer to set up a wiki
19 % ikiwiki -setup /etc/ikiwiki/auto.setup
21 Or, set up a blog with ikiwiki, run this command instead.
23 % ikiwiki -setup /etc/ikiwiki/auto-blog.setup
25 Either way, it will ask you a couple of questions.
27 What will the wiki be named? foo
28 What revision control system to use? git
29 What wiki user (or openid) will be admin? joey
32 Then, wait for it to tell you an url for your new site..
34 Successfully set up foo:
35 url: http://example.com/~joey/foo
37 destdir: ~/public_html/foo
39 To modify settings, edit ~/foo.setup and then run:
40 ikiwiki -setup ~/foo.setup
44 ## Using the web interface
46 Now you can go to the url it told you, and edit pages in your new wiki
47 using the web interface.
49 (If the web interface doesn't seem to allow editing or login, you may
50 need to configure [[apache|tips/apache_cgi]] or
51 [[lighttpd|tips/lighttpd_cgi]].)
53 ## Checkout and edit wiki source
55 Part of the fun of using ikiwiki is not being limited to using the
56 web for editing pages, and instead using your favorite text editor and
57 [[Revision_Control_System|rcs]].
59 To do this, you need to check out a copy of the source to your wiki.
60 (You should avoid making changes directly to the `srcdir`, as that
61 checkout is reserved for use by ikiwiki itself.)
63 Depending on which [[Revision_Control_System|rcs]] you chose to use,
64 you can run one of these commands to check out your own copy of your wiki's
65 source. (Remember to replace "foo" with the real directory name.)
67 git clone foo.git foo.src
68 svn checkout file://`pwd`/foo.svn/trunk foo.src
73 Now to edit pages by hand, go into the directory you checked out (ie,
74 "foo.src"), and fire up your text editor to edit `index.mdwn` or whatever
75 other page you want to edit. If you chose to set up a blog, there is even a
76 sample first post in `posts/first_post.mdwn` that you can edit.
78 Once you've edited a page, use your revision control system to commit
79 the changes. For distributed revision control systems, don't forget to push
82 Once the commit reaches the repository, ikiwiki will notice it, and
83 automatically update the wiki with your changes.
85 ## Customizing the wiki
87 There are lots of things you can configure to customize your wiki.
88 These range from changing the wiki's name, to enabling [[plugins]],
89 to banning users and locking pages.
91 If you log in as the admin user you configured earlier, and go to
92 your Preferences page, you can click on "Wiki Setup" to customize many
93 wiki settings and plugins.
95 Some settings cannot be configured on the web, for security reasons or
96 because misconfiguring them could break the wiki. To change these settings,
97 you can manually edit the setup file, which is named something like
98 "foo.setup". The file lists all available configuration settings
99 and gives a brief description of each.
101 After making changes to this file, you need to tell ikiwiki to use it:
103 % ikiwiki -setup foo.setup
105 ## Customizing file locations
107 As a wiki compiler, ikiwiki builds a wiki from files in a source directory,
108 and outputs the files to a destination directory. The source directory is
109 a working copy checked out from the version control system repository.
111 When you used `auto.setup`, ikiwiki put the source directory, destination
112 directory, and repository in your home directory, and told you the location
113 of each. Those locations were chosen to work without customization, but you
114 might want to move them to different directories. There are three steps to
117 1. Move the destination directory and repository around.
119 % mv public_html/foo /srv/web/foo.com
120 % mv foo.git /srv/git/foo.git
122 2. Create a new source directory checkout. If you moved the repository
123 to a new location, checkouts pointing at the old location won't work,
124 and the easiest way to deal with this is to delete them and re-checkout
125 from the new repository location.
128 % git clone /src/git/foo.git
130 3. Edit the setup file. Modify the settings for `srcdir`, `destdir`,
131 `url`, `cgiurl`, `cgi_wrapper`, `git_wrapper`, etc to reflect where
132 you moved things. Remember to run `ikiwiki -setup` after editing the
135 ## Enjoy your new wiki!
137 Add yourself to [[IkiWikiUsers]]. And check out
138 the [[tips]] to find out how to get more out of ikiwiki.