TWiki Installation Notes

These installation steps use the Apache web server on Linux as an example. TWiki should run on other web servers and Unix systems as well. (TWiki on Windows is possible, but has not been documented well. More on that at http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiOnWindows )

• Request the TWiki distribution (in Unix ZIP format) from http://TWiki.org/download.html .
• Create directory /home/httpd/twiki and unzip the TWiki distribution into this directory.

• Enable email notification of topic changes, Notification of Changes has more. Using your browser, edit also the WebNotify topic in all webs and set the users you want to notify.
• Add the TWiki:Main.PoweredByTWikiLogo to your Main topic.

• Optional: You can add new rendering rules or new %VARIABLES%. To insure an easy upgrade of TWiki it is recommended to do this customization in twiki/bin/wikicfg.pm , not twiki/bin/wiki.pm .

• Optional: If you are on a non authenticated server (i.e. not using SSL) and you would like to authenticate users:
  • Rename file .htaccess.txt in the twiki/bin directory to .htaccess and change it to your needs. For details consult the HTTP server documentation (for Apache server: [1], [2]). In particular, the following red part needs to be configured correctly:
    Redirect /urlpath/to/TWiki/index.html http://your.domain.com/urlpath/to/TWiki/bin/view
    

• • • Note: You can customize the registration form if needed, like deleting or adding input tags. The name="" parameter of the input tags must start with: "Twk0..." (if this is an optional entry), or "Twk1..." (if this is a required entry). This will ensure that the fields are processed correctly.
  • A new line containing user name and encrypted password gets added to the data/.htpasswd file when a users registers. The file that comes with the TWiki installation contains a few user accounts of TWiki core team members (needed for testing). You can edit the file and delete those lines.

• Optional: You can automatically generate usage statistics for all webs. To enable this:
  • Make sure variable $doLogTopicView, $doLogTopicSave and $doLogTopicUpload in wikicfg.pm are set. This will generate log entries in file twiki/data/log<date>.txt .
  • Topic WebStatistics must be present in all webs where you want to have statistics. You can use the topic in the Main web as a template.

• • • Update current month for Main web only:
      http://mydomain.com/twiki/bin/statistics/Main
    • Update January 2000 for Main web:
      http://mydomain.com/twiki/bin/statistics/Main?logdate=200001

• To create a new web:
  • Use a name for the web consisting of characters A..Z , a..z but not in WikiNotation.
  • Create a new template directory under twiki/templates .

TWiki Installation Notes

These installation steps use the Apache web server on Linux as an example. TWiki should run on other web servers and Unix systems as well. (TWiki on Windows is possible, but has not been documented well. More on that at http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiOnWindows )

• • • Customize the WEBTOPICLIST variable to contain the web specific links you prefer.
    • Optional: Set the WEBCOPYRIGHT variable to have a web-specific copyright text (at the bottom of each topic).
  • If needed, create customized templates in the new templates directory. (Non existing templates are inherited from twiki/templates )

• • In case you want usage statistics for this web: Copy file WebStatistics.txt from the twiki/data/Main directory to the new data directory. Edit topic WebStatistics in the new web and delete old usage entries.
  • Note that user home topics are only located in the TWiki.Main web, so don't try to move them or create them in other webs. From any web you can refer to users located in the TWiki.Main web like Main.UserName or %MAINWEB%.UserName.

TWiki Installation Notes

These installation steps use the Apache web server on Linux as an example. TWiki should run on other web servers and Unix systems as well. (TWiki on Windows is possible, but has not been documented well. More on that at http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiOnWindows )

• • Rename file .htaccess.txt in the twiki/bin directory to .htaccess and change it to your needs. For details consult the HTTP server documentation (for Apache server: [1], [2]). In particular, the following red part needs to be configured correctly:
    Redirect /urlpath/to/TWiki/index.html http://your.domain.com/urlpath/to/TWiki/bin/view
AuthUserFile /filepath/to/TWiki/data/.htpasswd
    

• • • Note: The browser should ask for login name and password when you click on the Edit link. In case .htaccess does not have the desired effect you need to enable it: Add "AllowOverride All" to the Directory section of access.conf for your twiki/bin directory.
  • Copy the TWikiRegistrationPub? topic to TWikiRegistration. Do that by either editing the topics in theTWiki web, or by renaming the .txt and .txt,v files in the twiki/data/TWiki directory.
    • Note: You can customize the registration form if needed, like deleting or adding input tags. The name="" parameter of the input tags must start with: "Twk0..." (if this is an optional entry), or "Twk1..." (if this is a required entry). This will ensure that the fields are processed correctly.

• Optional: You can automatically generate usage statistics for all webs. To enable this:
  • Make sure variable $doLogTopicView, $doLogTopicSave and $doLogTopicUpload in wikicfg.pm are set. This will generate log entries in file twiki/data/log<date>.txt .

TWiki Installation Notes

These installation steps use the Apache web server on Linux as an example. TWiki should run on other web servers and Unix systems as well. (TWiki on Windows is possible, but has not been documented well. More on that at http://TWiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiOnWindows )

• Optional: You can add new rendering rules or new %VARIABLES%. To insure an easy upgrade of TWiki it is recommended to do this customization in twiki/bin/wikicfg.pm , not twiki/bin/wiki.pm .

• Optional: If you are on a non authenticated server (i.e. not using SSL) and you would like to authenticate users:

• Optional: You can automatically generate usage statistics for all webs. To enable this:
  • Make sure variable $doLogTopicView, $doLogTopicSave and $doLogTopicUpload in wikicfg.pm are set. This will generate log entries in file twiki/data/log<date>.txt .

Note: Below installation steps assume user nobody for all files manupulated by the cgi scripts (executed by the web server), and user twiki for all other files. You need to replace user nobody with an other user in case the web server executes the script with a different user ( default for Debian is www-data ). Also, you can substitute user twiki with your own user name.

• Request the TWiki distribution (in Unix ZIP format) from http://TWiki.org/download.html .
• Create directory /home/httpd/twiki and unzip the TWiki distribution into this directory.

• • If you use .htaccess, edit the file and add the file extension to edit, view, preview, etc.
• Note in case the cgi scripts are not running as user nobody: The *,v RCS repository files delivered with the installation package are locked by user nobody . In case the user is different (e.g. www-data ), it is not possible to check in files, this has the effect that the topic version number does not increase when saving a topic. In this case you need to unlock all repository files and lock them as user www-data (check the rcs man pages), or simply delete all the repository files. A simple way to switch the locker of the RCS files is to use sed:
  for f in *,v; do sed 's/nobody\:/www-data\:/' $f > x; mv x $f; done
• Security issue: Directories twiki/data , twiki/templates and all its subdirectories should be set so that they are not visible as a URL. (Alternatively, move the directries to a place where they are not visible, and change the variables in twiki/bin/wikicfg.pm accordingly)

• Optional: You can add new rendering rules or new %VARIABLES%. To insure an easy upgrade of TWiki it is recommended to do this customization in twiki/bin/wikicfg.pm , not twiki/bin/wiki.pm .

• • In case you want usage statistics for this web: Copy file WebStatistics.txt from the twiki/data/Main directory to the new data directory. Edit topic WebStatistics in the new web and delete old usage entries.
  • Note that user home topics are only located in the TWiki.Main web, so don't try to move them or create them in other webs. From any web you can refer to users located in the TWiki.Main web like Main.UserName or %MAINWEB%.UserName.

Directory twiki/bin :