This article shows how you can set up and use the Dokuwiki wiki system on an NCF organizational account web site.
Most people are familiar with the output of a wiki because of Wikipedia, though the understanding of how a wiki is useful is less common.
Essentially a wiki is a structured web-site that allows many users to view the content and (generally) fewer users to write or edit the content. The structure simplifies the process of adding and editing content. NCF uses the same software as Wikipedia, called Mediawiki, for the help database.
Wikis share the following features:
Dokuwiki is a wiki system that has some particular merits for NCF users:
Before you can begin, you need an organizational account for your organization, which we will call myorg. We will assume the username is yy999 with password yy999pw. The NCF administrator will give you:
It is recommended that the organization website have an index.html file and that the wiki be in a subdirectory. This allows for more flexibility in presenting information to site visitors. You may choose to have a completely closed wiki where the content is only visible to users who can log in using a username and password. These usernames and passwords are specific to the wiki. They are NOT related to the NCF usernames and passwords.
Here is a sample index.html file:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset=“utf-8” />
<title>CCC21</title>
</head>
<body>
<H1>Absolutely Marvelous Organization</H1>
<p>AMO is the most friendly Ottawa social society</p>
<p>This website is intended to serve its members and staff.</p>
<p>There is a repository of information on AMO at <a href=“http://myorg.ncf.ca/wiki/”>myorg.ncf.ca/wiki/</a></p>
<p>At this time, logins may be required for part of the content.</p>
</body>
</html>
Note that there are other sources for this or related information, for example this tutorial.
Dokuwiki is written in the php computer language. NCF organizational members have php available in their website locations. Thus you simply point a web-browser (from your local machine) to:
This will present a form that allows the wiki to be set up. Make sure you answer all the mandatory questions. You can then start the wiki.
Sometimes the wiki requires permissions to be set. This can be done using some of the ftp clients.
When you get into the wiki, you should log in, using the Dokuwiki administrator name and password. Then you can search for a page such as Mainpage which will not exist, but you can choose to create it, then use the editing functions to provide content.