Welcome to miniWiki!

miniWiki is an ultra-light wiki engine implemented using the HomePortals framework. The focus of miniWiki is to provide basic wiki functionality on a small footprint package, while at the same time being easy to customize and extend. miniWiki supports the Bliki syntax (Wikimedia) and is easily configurable.

Using miniWiki

Installing miniwiki is as easy as donwloading the zip file and unzipping under your webroot. Then use your favorite browser to go to http://your_server/miniwiki. You can rename the folder to whatever you like, or even copy all its contents directly to the webroot.

The only requirement that miniWiki has is that it uses the HomePortals framework. You can download HomePortals for free from http://www.homeportals.net . Just expand the zip file under your webroot.

By default creating and editing pages on the wiki is protected by a password; however if you want you can allow visitors to modify pages directly without a password by setting the wiki.password setting to empty. See the section on configuring the wiki for more information on all the settings.

Also, miniwiki also publishes an RSS feed containing the links to your wiki pages in reverse chronological order. You can find the rss feed by going to http://your_server/miniwiki/rss.cfm

Configuring You Wiki

miniwiki configuration is done by setting several variables on the Application.cfc file of your wiki. Besides the typical Application.cfc settings miniwiki provides the following:

• wiki.name : The main wiki title to display on the header bar
• wiki.defaultPage : The name of the initial wikiPage to display
• wiki.defaultTitle : The title to display whenever the base wiki page is displayed
• wiki.password : Password to protect the access to the editing features. If left empty then anyone can add and edit pages.
• wiki.contentPath : A path pointing to a directory in which to store the wiki content. If the path starts with a backslash (/) then it is interpreted as relative to the webroot. Otherwise it is relative to the location where miniwiki is installed. By default points to the data directory within the miniwiki install.

Additionally, you can also customize the behavior of miniwiki by changing the HomePortals configuration file at /miniwiki/config/homePortals-config.xml.cfm. Refer to the HomePortals Documentation for more information on available settings.

NOTE: After modifying any settings, make sure to append the flag 'resetApp=1' to the URL to force a reload of the configuration.

Modifying the Template and Layout

Not all wikis are created alike, nor should they. So, with miniwiki you can easily change how you wiki looks to suit your preferences or maybe to integrate better with an existing website.

There are two different ways in which you can customize your wiki. First you can modify the layout and content, and second you can modify the HTML structure, add CSS, javascript files, etc.

Layout and content is driven by a file named wiki.xml located in the miniwiki folder. miniwiki provides a default (and very simple) layout file which contains just the wiki text, and a sample RSS feed. However you can create your own layouts, add content widgets, move content around. For example you can add more RSS feeds, add some static content, maybe some cfincludes to add some dynamic (i.e. CFML) features. You can even create your own custom widgets. Checkout http://www.homeportals.net for more info.

Besides customizing content and placement you can go further and modify the HTML structure alltogher or add your own CSS stylesheets. In fact, miniWiki is easily "themeable" by adapting the myriad of available skins and themes on the Internet (both free and commercial).

By default miniWiki uses an adaptation of the "Bamboo" theme from http://www.freecsstemplates.org/. To use your own themes or designs just change the 'templates' used by editing config/homePortals-config.xml.cfm file. Look for the <pageTemplates /> section:

	<renderTemplates>
		<renderTemplate name="page" type="page" 
				default="true" href="themes/bamboo/page.html" />
		<renderTemplate name="module" type="module" 
				default="true" href="themes/bamboo/module.html" />
	</renderTemplates>

The "page" template points to an HTML file that provides the overall html structure, and the "module" template is the one that provides the HTML markup for each individual content block. From there you can invoke your own stylesheets, images, or anything else that you want.

To find more about templates, checkout the HomePortals Templates documentation.

Using a Database for Wiki storage

By default miniwiki uses the filesytem to store all the wiki content, however you can easily use a database to store this (either mysql or mssql) by modifying the this.wikiContentPath setting.

To use a database with dsn "mydsn", set the value of config.wikiContentPath in Application.cfc to db://mydsn, additionally you will need to replace the value of <resourceLibraryPath> in homePortals-config.xml.cfm to the new content location.

miniwiki will create the necessary tables for storing the content.

Enjoy!