Here I will try to set up a DokuWiki server in order to serve as Corporate Knowledge Base System. These systems are important in forming, keeping and updating knowledge pool of companies. Over time, they turn into an important asset and become a significant element of overall Information System of company. It is clear that such a system can become usable only if produced and maintained colloboratively by its users, and then Wiki becomes a natural solution platform, since Wiki is defined to be a web application whose content is managed by people collaboratively. There are many wiki alternatives, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software, and DokuWiki, https://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki is the one I choosed.
After preparing a Debian system, I installed Apache (although not necessary since dokuwiki will install it if not already installed),
and then test its operation.
DokuWiki can also be installed by packet manager;
and lets check its operation with browsing http://127.0.1.1/dokuwiki
By default package manager apt-get
installs dokuwiki so that it is configured to work with apache (or lighttpd if you wish). Corresponding directories will be;
Here, /var/lib/dokuwiki/data
will be main content directory
/usr/share/dokuwiki
will be main dokuwiki directory that webserver points and it will contain php engine.
/etc/dokuwiki will hold all the necessary configuration files.
Here, we may check if our wiki is accessable from LAN. When we try to browse, we see that apache seems to be working but there is something wrong with doku,
There should be something restricting our connection yielding error message You don't have permission to access /dokuwiki
. In order to find the reason we may look at log files of apache placed in /var/log/apache2/error.log
Here, we see that there is something wrong about directory permissions. This should be handled by editing /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
with adding the following permission segment
<Directory /usr/share/dokuwiki/>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
After restarting apache, we should establish our connection,
Power of wikis come from collaboration, therefore our system should have users, let’s create one.
So, we should get a password e-mail. If we have not, then there should be problem in e-mail mechanism of doku. DokuWiki uses PHP mail() command to send e-mails. So problem should be somewhere over there. PHP configuration of our debian should have working mail() command. In my case problem turned out to be uninstalled sendmail package. Let’s install it;
And restart apache,
Now, we should have e-mails. Just remember to look at spam folder also, since we do not have FQDN as can be seen from apache warning above
Now, we have users, however since a sole wiki is useless but only a placeholder, next step will be putting some content in it. Start with just using Create this page
buuton. Just add an header and two internal links with using double brackets.
Now, we have an operational DokuWiki server. Next step should be hardening its access policy and security with enhancing its content.