Moving Dokuwiki To A New Server

A big advantage of a no-SQL wiki like Dokuwiki is that you can easily move it. All the non-media content is stored as text files, as a branch called data/pages within the same directory tree as the code. That makes it feasible to carry a clone of it on your laptop, or even a USB stick. Here’s a quick guide on how to move or copy an entire wiki from one Apache server to another.

Back up the wiki

Change to the directory on the old server where you installed dokuwiki, and archive everything in that folder:

cd /usr/local/webapps/dokuwiki
tar cvzf ~/dokuwiki-backup.tgz .

Restore it

Create the new wiki directory, unpack your backup into it, and set permissions so that it’s accessible by the web server:

cd  /var/www/myapps
sudo mkdir mywiki
cd mywiki
sudo tar xvzf ~/dokuwiki-backup.tgz .
cd ..
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data mywiki

If the relative path to your new wiki will be the same as the old one (default: /dokuwiki/), you’re done. Proceed to the Apache configuration, below. If not, edit conf/local.php and add a line with the new path:

$conf['baseurl'] = '/mywiki/';

Apache configuration

Assuming that Apache is already working to serve other web pages, the cleanest way is to create a new configuration file in /etc/apache2/conf.d/ directory, e.g. dokuwiki.conf. This configuration allows unrestricted access from any computer:

Alias /mywiki /var/www/myapps/mywiki
<Directory /var/www/myapps/mywiki>
        Options FollowSymLinks
        DirectoryIndex index.php
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
</Directory>

If you changed the relative path in conf/local.php above, and you’re using Apache’s rewrite engine with Dokuwiki, then edit the .htaccess file in the top directory of your Dokuwiki to match it:

RewriteBase /mywiki

Now restart Apache and you’re ready to browse your new site:

sudo service apache2 restart

For other tips on installing and customizing your wiki, search this blog for the word dokuwiki.