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]]