Installing Foswiki on a Shared Host - Generic Guide

This guide provides generic steps for installing Foswiki on a typical shared host.

1. Get and unpack the Foswiki code

The Foswiki code can be obtained from the Download section of the Foswiki home page.

If you have ssh-access to the web server, you can use wget to download the file to the server, using something like

wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/foswiki/files/foswiki/Foswiki-1.0.9.tgz

Unpack the code:

tar xvzf Foswiki-1.0.9.tgz

2. Edit the LocalLib.cfg file

Copy the file bin/LocalLib.cfg.txt to bin/LocalLib.cfg and open the file for editing.

Set the absolute path to the Foswiki lib directory, by modifying the line

$foswikiLibPath = "/absolute/path/to/your/lib";

appropriately.

3. Create a .htpasswd file for configure

In a future step, a configure script will be run to adapt the Foswiki settings to match your system.

Accessing this configure script can only be done when a user is granted access. In this step we create this user.

Use htpasswd to create a .htpasswd file in the data directory. Navigate to the Foswiki data directory and issue the following at the command line

$ htpasswd -c .htpasswd admin_user_name

You will be prompted to enter (and confirm) a password for the user. Obvious choices for admin_user_name might be admin or configure, but you can call it whatever you want (just remember that this is not a standard wiki user account name).

4. Copy and edit the appropriate .htaccess files

Each of the Foswiki directories (including the root directory) needs an .htaccess file; these allow indeed a per-directory configuration for the web server.

Templates for these .htaccess files are distributed with Foswiki and can be found in the root directory. It concerns

• root-htaccess.txt: should be copied to .htaccess
• pub-htaccess.txt: should be copied to pub/.htaccess
• bin/.htaccess.txt: should be copied to bin/.htaccess
• subdir-htaccess.txt: should be copied to the remaining subdirectories (data, lib, locale, templates, tools, and working), e.g. tools/.htaccess

For all these .htaccess files, chances are that the default content is fine to get started. For the the bin/.htaccess file, however, it is compulsory to edit

• the path to the Foswiki scripts directory bin/
• the path to the Foswiki data directory data/
• the name of the user defined in the .htpasswd file

5. Run the Configuration Script

Point your browser to the Foswiki root directory. You will see a word of welcome and find some links to important files. One of these is the bin/configure script which you can run by clicking on the `Configure Script' link.

The Configure script will guess paths and asks you to adapt or confirm these. You will also be prompted to create an admin password.

Once you clicked through the configure forms, you will be able to use and administrate your Foswiki site.

Congratulations!

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This topic: Support > SupplementalDocuments > InstallingOnSharedHosts > InstallingOnSharedHostGeneric
Topic revision: 01 Feb 2010, WillNorris

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