Installing MicroWiki with WordPress

These instructions focus on a WordPress-integrated install of MicroWiki 2.0. You might need stand-alone installation instructions.

Installation Prerequisites

Previous users of MicroWiki should note that version 2.0 does not use EzStatic.

You must have a copy of WordPress 2.0 or later already installed and configured on your web server.

You will need to add a custom capability to the WordPress Role that you want to allow to edit wiki pages. To do this easily, you can use the Role Manager plugin.

At the bottom of the Role Manager plugin admin page, add the new capability, "wiki_edit". Grant this new capability to any Role or User that should have permission to edit wiki pages.

Installing MicroWiki

Download the MicroWiki archive and unzip its contents. You will see severeal files and an "images" subdirectory in a root directory called "wiki".

Copy the "wiki" directory to your server. For the purposes of this installation, we'll call this directory "wiki", but you can rename it to whatever you want.

You may need to allow write permissions to the "wiki" directory so that configuration options can be saved. It might be convenient to do this now.

Configuring MicroWiki

Navigate to the wiki.php file on your web server.
Renaming the wiki files

Note that there is no index.php file in the archive. Depending on your server configuration, your server may list the files in the wiki directory or may respond with an error when attempting to access the wiki directory without specifying a filename directly.

You can rename the wiki.php file, but these instructions and the help that is available in the wiki itself assumes that the filename is wiki.php, which might cause you issues later.

The Config Page

When you've navigated to the MicroWiki wiki.php page, you should see an installation page. Follow the instructions when filling in the form. Microwiki will attempt to fill in the field values for you automatically, but you should verify that they are correct.

Be sure to select "WordPress" as the value for the "User Registration" option. Selecting this option will reveal the settings necessary for using WordPress logins as the authentication method for the wiki. Note that the form specifies "wiki_edit" as the required capability name by default. If you did not use this capability during the initial setup, you should change this value in the MicroWiki configuration.

Submit the configuration form and you should see notices about a table and some pages being created.

You may need to submit the configuration more than once! When switching authentication methods, MicroWiki must first be aware of the method before it can create the tables in the appropriate database. The installation is complete when messges appear saying that the database tables have been created without any errors appearing.

Assuming there are no errors, you should be able to access the home page of your wiki by clicking the "Home" link at the bottom of the wiki content.

If you see a text area with a lot of code inside, that means that MicroWiki was unable to write your configuration to your server. Copy all of the text from the box and paste it into a new file. Save this pasted code over your index.php file.
Friendly URLs

To enable Friendly URLs with MicroWiki, you must have mod_rewrite installed and the ability to use .htaccess files to set configuration options in Apache.

The configuration page provides a sample .htaccess file. If you have installed MicroWiki in its own directory and not renamed the files, these rules should work.

If you installed MicroWiki in the same directory as WordPress, you will need to modify these rules slightly and insert them before the WordPress rules in the .htacces file. You may need to change the RewriteBase used by the MicroWiki rules so that MicroWiki seems to be in its own subdirectory.

If you are not confident in altering these .htaccess directives, you should probably install MicroWiki in a subdirectory or have someone else install it for you.
Using MicroWiki

After it is installed, MicroWiki can be used according to the generic instructions, with the following addendums:
Logging In

If you've configured MicroWiki to use WordPress authentication, then you should use a WordPress login to access the wiki.

When attempting to edit any wiki page while not logged in, you will be prompted with a login page. Use your WordPress login to continue to the editing page.

You should remain logged in while you are editing and viewing the wiki. After a reasonable period of inactivity, you will be logged out.

Being logged in to WordPress does not automatically provide access to the wiki. They share logins, but do not share cookies.

WordPress-Specific Macros

There are a handful of WordPress-specific macros that you can use to call WordPress functions from within MicroWiki.

Mostly these macros are useful for modifying the default Format so that the wiki shares the current WordPress theme.

wp:header

{{wp:header}}

This inserts the current theme's header at the macro location.

wp:footer

{{wp:footer}}

This inserts the current theme's footer at the macro location.

wp:sidebar

{{wp:sidebar}}

This inserts the current theme's sidebar at the macro location.

wp:template

{{wp:template|template_name}}

This inserts the specified template at the macro location.

wp:bloginfo

{{wp:bloginfo|bloginfo}}

This inserts the value of the requested bloginfo string at the macro location.

A Sample Format:Default

Here is a sample Format:default that should yield good results in many themes. Using this as your Format:default will cause all pages of your wiki to output using the current WordPress theme.

{{wp:header}}
{{Special:basepage}}
{{wp:footer}}