My page loads, but the page looks all wrong

If your page looks strange - page parts moved across the page, ugly fonts, images not loading - this is probably because your webserver cannot read images and stylesheets from the pub directory. This is most often because file permissions are set incorrectly:

A fresh install of Foswiki does not have the file ownership of directories set correctly. After unzipping you need to explicitly make the files readable by the webserver.

Use the command chown -R user:group /path/to/foswiki

The webserver username varies from distributions. Examples for some major distributions:

• RedHat, Fedora, CentOS, Gentoo, Mandriva: chown -R apache:apache /path/to/foswiki
• debian/Ubuntu/Kubunto: chown -R www-data:www-data /path/to/foswiki
• Suse: chown -R wwwrun:www /path/to/foswiki
• MacOSX: chown -R www:www /path/to/foswiki

Another possible reason is that your webserver configuration is wrong, and you are not pointing at the pub directory. Refer to ApacheConfigGenerator for help setting up Apache.

If you are running a SubversionBasedInstall, then you probably need to add +FollowSymLinks to the Options for the /var/www/foswiki/core/pub directory in your apache configuration.

Finally check that your {PubUrlPath} and {PubDir} settings in configure are actually pointing to the right places.