git pull

stop Wikidot:

./wikidotctl stop

remove the old database:

sudo -u postgres dropdb wikidot sudo -u postgres dropuser wikidot

build Wikidot again:

make

and start it again:

./wikidotctl start

If you do get it to work, please add a How-To to my site!

Thanks,
Ed

There is some bug in the Duplicator, I'll check that!

Thanks for that!

You can use the ISO image from Ed in VMWare as well.

I was able to get Wikidot working with the wiki_farm=true (starting with the single wiki installed from GIT) and it now opens the default wiki site.

1. You said that now I need to create a wiki to serve as template (something like) templatename.
How can I create a new site starting from the main wiki? I created a new page and added the 'NewSite' module to that page, but I'm not able to create the new wiki as the 'Initial Template' dropdown is not filled with any template. I tried also to add the ManageSite module to my main wiki and tried to clone that site but it gives an error in the lighttpd error.log file:

PHP Fatal error: Call to a member function getUserId() on a non-object in /usr/share/wikidot/php/utils/Duplicator.php on line 88

2. Add NewWiki module to the main wiki
How can I activate the NewWiki module?
I tried to create a new page and as page content I defined '[[Module NewWiki]]' but it gives me the following error:

Module NewWiki does not exist or can not be used within this site.

How can I proceed?

Thanks,
Rui

Is this image for VirtualBox? Does it run with VMWare Player?
It would be easier for me to have a VMWare image, because that way I would be able to import it directly into VMWare Infrastructure Server.

Thanks,
Rui

http://174.129.131.216/mywikidot_backup_rev_393_20090123.iso

this is a copy of a file mentioned in HOWTO by Ed and created by him.

This process seems a bit complex, considering that I don't have PHP knowledge and experience.
Right now, I would like to get the vmware image and test it locally and then when everything is ok, deploy into our company internal vmware infrastructure.
However, the links http://files2.wikidot.org/vm/wikidot-dev2-vm-20080220.tar.gz and http://files2.wikidot.org/vm/ are giving timeout. Is there any other place where I can get the vmware image of a full-functional Wikidot farm?

Thanks,
Rui

I will make an effort to determine which SVN version is stable. I'm currently running rev. 393 at my work. That is very stable, but is lacking in some of the features that have been implemented since then. I would recommend that you set up a virtual machine and load my ISO that I created for rev 393. You can read the guide I wrote here: Installable ISO and a Virtual Machine. There is also a link to download the ISO file. This would be an easy way to to get a base, fully configured system running that you could then update from the SVN repository. This is the method I will use to see which rev seems to work well.

Right, 393 sounds familiar to me, so it may be one of the most stable out there.

I will also try to make time to run another test with the GIT repository and see if I can get the wiki farm capabilities working.

That's great. Together, we'll make it even more stable than the 393 rev :).

As Gabrys said, I wouldn't try to get a production server running with the GIT repository just yet. Did you find any issues that were not expected in the current installation-guide? If so, please let me know - I will probably give this a try sometime this weekend.

Well, it depends, if you have (almost) no time to spent on this, probably you should stick with SVN version. However choosing git version you have open path to get all the upgrades. And if you have some time to spent on this, you'll contribute to make it even better and benefit from having the most up-to-date version (some of the features in git are not even available yet on the Wikidot.com service).

I will make an effort to determine which SVN version is stable. I'm currently running rev. 393 at my work. That is very stable, but is lacking in some of the features that have been implemented since then. I would recommend that you set up a virtual machine and load my ISO that I created for rev 393. You can read the guide I wrote here: Installable ISO and a Virtual Machine. There is also a link to download the ISO file. This would be an easy way to to get a base, fully configured system running that you could then update from the SVN repository. This is the method I will use to see which rev seems to work well.

I will also try to make time to run another test with the GIT repository and see if I can get the wiki farm capabilities working.

As Gabrys said, I wouldn't try to get a production server running with the GIT repository just yet. Did you find any issues that were not expected in the current installation-guide? If so, please let me know - I will probably give this a try sometime this weekend.

-Ed

What I want is to have a internal wiki farm very similar to wikidot.com where:
- Users can register themselves
- Authenticated users can create new wikis (no administration process required)

Yes, you can do that (that's how we do that ;) ). Ed does that with SVN rev 436 (or similar).

By configuration my local instance of wikidot (currently as a single wiki) to be as a farm, do I have all the pages (the complete site structure) to support that (like on http://www.wikidot.com) or I need to go into the administration console (as admin) and create new wikis from there?

You need to have a template wiki (which is just a normal wiki named templatesomething) and insert NewWiki module (or one with similar name, I don't remember exactly) on the "main"¹ wiki. User registration is even enabled by default, but you need to have properly configured mail settings to let it work. (Side note, we need to disable it for installations with no mail settings).

Coming back to git (updated) vs SVN (stable) version problem. I would really love you to make try with git, as this would also mean someone testing it, and this will make bigger pressure on me on finalizing this task. This way we all benefit, you'll finally get better product than when sticking to SVN version (because we don't update the SVN anymore).

Hope that helps.

Sorry for me not being available on chat right now, but I have a strange internet connection (I'm not at work nor home right now).

Thanks for your quick answer.
As the farm configuration steps seem a bit complicated, before I move one I just want to ask you some questions to check if Wikidot farm capabilities fit into my requirements.

What I want is to have a internal wiki farm very similar to wikidot.com where:
- Users can register themselves
- Authenticated users can create new wikis (no administration process required)

By configuration my local instance of wikidot (currently as a single wiki) to be as a farm, do I have all the pages (the complete site structure) to support that (like on http://www.wikidot.com) or I need to go into the administration console (as admin) and create new wikis from there?

Regards,
Rui

• safe but quite deprecated (no upgrades)

Install 463 revision from SVN (this is reported to be a stable revision).

• bleeding edge (may not work yet perfectly stable)

Install from git (as you did) and set wiki_farm = true in config file in the [main] section. This also means, you need to configure other options as well: (see full-example-of-wikidot.ini to get a general overview, you need something like this to start working: http://svn.wikidot.org/svn/showfile.svn?path=%2Fwikidot1%2Ftrunk%2Fconf%2Fwikidot.ini&revision=463&name=wikidotorg).

Notice in this way, you need to run the service on port 80 (so start as a root, but edit user and group settings in lighttpd.conf to let it drop permissions after opening the port). Also you need to access the wiki by domain name, like http://www.YOURDOMAIN/. Anything else would give you "No such site" error.

You'll probably need template.YOURDOMAIN wiki. I think it's not included in the dump. We're going to finally make it working right even for wiki_farm (as TODO states), but this can take some time.

This is all quite complicated, this is why we decided to support single wikis as well, because it removes many of mentioned problems.

I'm available on IRC very often, I think talking via IRC would be nice, because you could do your work and ask about subsequent problems just as they appear :).

I have followed all the steps to have a single wiki instance running on my local machine, following the guide in installation-guide
Now, I want to configure it as a wiki farm in a way that a registered user can go to the main page and create a new wiki on-demand (as in http://www.wikidot.com).

You mention that "start from getting single-wiki Wikidot running and then use older docs to figure out how to get it running as a wiki-farm" but I haven't found any old documents explaining how to configure wikidot to run as a wiki farm.

I tried to connect to IRC channel but it seems that no one is connected at this time.

Can you please help me and point me to the right documentation?

Thanks,
Rui

• syntax error(?) in git submodule update --init
• problems with postgresql db until I straightened out a user permissions problem (my fault - not the docs!)
• captcha/turing code would not display initially (I think a package was missing, but I'm not sure which one. I installed other packages listed in my install guide and after a reboot it worked.)
• missing pages: admin:manage and account:you - created them manually (see Bug 3)
• had to set up [mail] section in wikidot.ini in order to get e-mail working so I could set up a new account
• account verification "failed", but I was still able to login.

I want to run another test install and clearly document my steps as i go. Looking at the TODO list, it seems you are aware of a few things that could cause problems.

Overall, this wasn't too bad, but it's not ready to be called a "simple" install yet.

Nice work!

-Ed