[Techtalk] one server, two wiki sites (pmwiki)

[Kathryn Andersen]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 12:04:08PM -0700, Maria McKinley wrote:
> Does anyone have any experience with setting up a computer to host a 
> couple of wiki sites? I'd love to hear how you did it.

Sure!  I note that you mention PmWiki in your subject line; have you
considered checking out the PmWiki users mailing list?  They're really
helpful (if sometimes busy).

I actually did it in more than one way, changing my setup to suit my
needs (and to take advantage of new features).

My current setup is this:

I run my own server; Apache 2.0.58 on GenToo Linux.
I have two virtual hosts; one is www.katspace.org, my external website.
The other is an internal website, kat.localhost, which contains random
documentation, personal information management, calender, an archive of
my favourite fiction, and so on.

The www.katspace.org site is a hybrid site; part of it is run using
Embperl, and part of it uses PmWiki as a content management system.

The kat.localhost system is a similar hybrid; some parts use Embperl,
some parts are straight directory listings, and it has two wikis.

All three of the wikis are separate installations, because
(a) The www.katspace.org is a "production" site, so I'm a bit more
conservative in which version of PmWiki (and which plugins) I use for
it; I put the latest version on kat.localhost, then when I'm happy with
it, I upgrade the www.katspace.org site.
(b) I've written a few plugins (recipes) for PmWiki, so I like to have a
"vanilla" wiki to test them on, to make sure they work.  So my test wiki
is a completely separate installation on kat.localhost, just to make
absolutely sure that my "fun" installation doesn't interfere with the
"test" wiki.
(c) I'm the only user, so there isn't that much more administrative
overhead.

I'm using "Clean URLs" for all my wikis:
http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/CleanUrls

My Apache configuration for www.katspace.org is like this:

#================================================================
# PM-Wiki

Alias /stuff/pub /var/www/katspace/pmwiki/pub
Alias /stuff/uploads /var/www/katspace/pmwiki/uploads
Alias /stuff /var/www/katspace/pmwiki/index.php

<Directory "/var/www/katspace/pmwiki">
        SetHandler      None
        AcceptPathInfo On
</Directory>

----------------------------

Then I have a whole bunch of rewrite rules (a number of which are simply
because I want prevent broken links from my previous setup, so I'll skip
those).

The following set of rules aims to enable the hybrid-ness of the site,
while hiding the fact that part of it is a wiki.  It says, that
if the URL is not for an existing directory, file, or link, and
if it starts with something other than lowercase letters, then
treat it as a PmWiki request.  This works because PmWiki always starts
its names with capital letters, while I've used the convention for
normal pages that the directories, at least, are all in lower-case.
----------------------------

RewriteEngine On

# Don't rewrite requests for any files, directories, or symbolic
# links (shortcuts) that exist on the filesystem.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
# Send requests to pmwiki.php, appending the query string part.
RewriteRule ^/([^/a-z].*) /var/www/katspace/pmwiki/index.php?n=$1 [QSA,L]

----------------------------

With the above, for example, if I have the link
http://www.katspace.org/Computers/LinuxTips

then that will turn into
/var/www/katspace/pmwiki/index.php?n=Computers/LinuxTips
which will give me the Computers.LinuxTips page from the wiki.

In order to complete the illusion, in my PmWiki local/config.php file,
I set
$EnablePathInfo = 1;
$ScriptUrl = '';

This will give links on the PmWiki pages like this:

<a class='wikilink' href='/Computers/LinuxBurnDVD'>Burning Video DVDs on Linux</a>

And these links work because of the rewrite rule above.

In an earlier configuration of www.katspace.org, I was using PmWiki's
nifty concept of "Wiki Farms"
(http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/WikiFarms) because I wanted to be
able to have sets of related wiki groups that were configured with a
common configuration, and I found at that time, that Wiki Farms were the
easiest way to do that.  However, now I'm using the "Cluster" recipe
(http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/Cookbook/Cluster), which enables one to
"cluster" similarly-named wiki groups together with common
configurations, so I've changed over to one wiki with clustered groups.

Any questions?

Kathryn Andersen
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