A wiki allows for collaborative editing of web pages - it can be used e.g. for documentation as well as for the creation of a whole webpage.

We will use dokuwiki http://www.dokuwiki.org/.

aptitude install dokuwiki

During installation, you will be asked which web server should be configured for dokuwiki. Select lighttpd, deselect apache2, then continue. You will also be asked whether to remove contents on removal of dokuwiki. You may not want to select this, so as to avoid data loss (unless you back up your stuff before removing dokuwiki). You will also be asked for an Administrator password.

As per debian default, configuration files reside in /etc/dokuwiki/, contents are in /var/lib/dokuwiki/.

You may want to modify the file local.php and update some values:

$conf['title'] = '<yourdomain> Wiki'; // what to show in the title

To create users for the wiki, log into dokuwiki as admin. Once in, go to “admin”, and there go into the user manager to configure more accesses.

You may want to check out the plugins available for dokuwiki, there are a lot available with different functionality. You'll find the list at http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugins. They can be installed when logged in as admin, in the plugin manager. Installation instructions are given with the respective plugins, usually it's a simple copy/paste of an URL in the plugin manager.

There is an issue - by default, the plugin directory is owned by root, and is not otherwise writable. Thus, to enable access from the plugin manager, you need to change ownership to the lighttpd user:

chown -R www-data /var/lib/dokuwiki/lib/plugins

Now, installing plugins should work.

<box round red left> NOTE: By default, dokuwiki is open for anyone to register as user and put contents on there - which is an invitation for spammers. You'll either want to protect that functionality by a plugin such as captcha, or more probably, you'll want to disable that action. To disable the action, go into the configuration settings, find the appropriate checkbox, and save the modified setting. </box>