| November 22, 2024, at 10:44 AM | Hala Skaf-Molli / PmWiki / FAQ |
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FAQThis page will attempt to summarize some of the more commonly asked questions. The answers are on the corresponding pages (see link). If you have a question which isn't answered here, you can leave your question on the Questions page or search for documentation using the search facility. More documentation can be found on the documentation index page. IntroductionWhat is PmWiki? PmWiki is a wiki-based system for collaborative creation and maintenance of websites. See PmWiki. What can I do with it? PmWiki pages look and act like normal web pages, except they have an "Edit" link that makes it easy to modify existing pages and add new pages into the website, using basic editing rules. You do not need to know or use any HTML or CSS. Page editing can be left open to the public or restricted to small groups of authors. Feel free to experiment with the Text Formatting Rules in the "Wiki sandbox". The website you're currently viewing is built and maintained with PmWiki. What are the requirements? See the PmWiki requirements page. Where can I find documentation? See the documentation index page. How can I download PmWiki? See the download page. How do I install PmWiki? Instructions for installation are on the installation page. How do I get help with PmWiki? See Mailing lists and How to get assistance. How do you pronounce "Michaud"? "Michaud" is french pronounced "mee show", the trailing D is silent. Creating New PagesHow do I create a new page? Typing [[my new page]] will create a link to the new page. There's a lot you can do with double bracket links. Why do some new pages have a title with spaces like "Creating New Pages" and others end up with a WikiWord-like title like "CreatingNewPages"? The default page title is simply the name of page, which is normally stored as "CreatingNewPages." However, you can override a page's title by using the LinksHow do I create a link that will open as a new window? Use the
How do I create a link that will open a new window, and configure that new window? This requires javascript. See Cookbook:PopupWindow. How do I place a mailing address in a page? Use the
The markup See also Cookbook:DeObMail for information on protecting email addresses from spammers. How can I enable links to other protocols, such as nntp:, ssh:, xmpp:, etc? How do I make a WikiWord link to an external page instead of a WikiPage? Use link markup. There are two formats: [[https://example.com/ | WikiWord]] [[WikiWord -> https://example.com/]] How do I find all of the pages that link to another page (i.e., backlinks)? In the wiki search form, use Use the (:pagelist link=SomePage list=all:) -- show all links to SomePage
(:pagelist link={$FullName} list=all:) -- show all links to the current page
Note that (with a few exceptions) includes, conditionals, pagelists, searchresults, wikitrails, and redirects are not evaluated for Wikilinks, and so any links they put on the page will not be found as backlinks. All other directives and markup, for example links brought to the page by (:pmform:), will be found. What link schemes does PmWiki support? How do I open external links in a new window or mark them with an icon? How can I use an image as a link? Use [[Page| Attach:image.jpg ]] or [[ https://site | https://site/image.jpg ]] See Images#links Why my browser does not follow local file:// links? For security reasons, most browsers will only enable file:// links if the page containing the link is itself on the local drive. In other words, most browsers do not allow links to file:// from pages that were fetched using https:// such as in a PmWiki site. See also Cookbook:DirList for a workaround. How links to the first existed page ? for example (:if exists Group1.Page:) [[Group1.Page|Page]] (:elseif exists Group2.Page:) [[Group2.Page|Page]] (:ifend:) How do I make Reference links also show up on the bottom of the page like Wikipedia? Or, how do I list all links on a page? See Cookbook:Footnotes. UploadsWhen I upload a file, how do I make the link look like "file.doc" instead of "Attach:file.doc Δ"? Use parentheses, as in Why can't I upload files of size more than 50kB to my newly installed PmWiki? Out of the box PmWiki limits the size of files to be uploaded to 50kB. Add to your config.php to increase limit to 1MB (for example). See UploadsAdmin for how to further customize limits. Note that both PHP and webservers also place their own limits on the size of uploaded files.
Why does my upload exit unexpectedly with "Incomplete file received"? You may be running out of space in a 'scratch' area, used either by PmWiki or by PHP. On *nix, check that you have sufficient free space in /tmp and /var/tmp. How do I make it so that the upload link still allows one to make another upload (if someone wants to replace the old version of a file with a newer version, for example). Currently you only get the upload link when there is no file in the upload directory. Use the Attach page action, and click on the delta symbol (Δ) shown against each of files listed. If you can't see the attach action either uploads are not enabled, you are not authorized to upload, or the attach action has been commented out or is missing. See also available actions. How do I hide the "Attach:" for all attachments See Cookbook:AttachLinks, note that this does not currently work for How can I link a file that have a 4-letter file extension such like 'abc.pptx'? How can I prevent others from using the url's of my images on their site See Cookbook:Prevent Hotlinking How can I display a file that lacks a correct extension? (e.g. you are using Cookbook:LinkIcons) A file can be displayed by addition of a "false" extension to the URL. For example, if the url is TablesHow do I create a basic table? Tables are created via use of the double pipe character:
How do I create cell headers? Header cells can be created by placing ! as the first character of a cell. Note that these are table headers, not headings, so it doesn't extend to !!, !!!, etc.
How do I obtain a table with thin lines and more distance to the content? "Thin lines" is tricky and browser dependent, but the following works for Firefox and IE (Nov. 2009):
How do I create an advanced table? See table directives My tables are by default centered. When I try to use '||align=left' they don't align left as expected. Use ||style="margin-left:0px;" instead. How can I specify the width of columns? You can define the widths via custom styles, see Cookbook:FormattingTables and And add in pub/css/local.css :
table.column td.col1 { width: 120px; }
table.column td.col3 { width: 40px; }
How can I display a double pipe "||" in cell text using basic table markup? Escape it with How do I apply styles to the elements of the table, like an ID to the table row, or a class/style to the TD? See $WikiStyleApply. Alternately, use table directives, which allow specifying styling either directly (style="...") or by a class="..." attribute for CSS. Table directivesCan I define table headers using the table directive markup? Yes, use Is it possible to do nested tables? Yes, if you nest simple tables inside advanced tables. See also Cookbook:AdvancedTableDirectives. Is it possible to add background images to tables and table cells? Yes, see Cookbook:BackgroundImages. Is it possible to apply styles to the elements of the table, like an ID to the table row, or a class/style to the TD? Yes, see $WikiStyleApply. Is it possible to automatically generate columns or rows in tables, i.e. without having to do a lot of counting? Yes, this is possible with the Cookbook:CreateColumns recipe - it allows you to specify a certain number of columns, and/or to specify a certain number of items per column. Plus, someone has provided some similar markup on the TableDirectives-Talk page. Is it possible to use table captions in table directives similar to simple tables? Tried Yes, this is possible with the Cookbook:AdvancedTableDirectives recipe - There you will find a AccessKeysHow can I change the keyboard shortcuts for editing and saving a page? PageDirectives Can I get Use Is there any way to prevent the "redirected from" message from showing at the top of the target page when I use From version 2.2.1 on, set in config.php Is there any method for redirecting to the equivalent page in a different group, i.e. from BadGroup?/thispage => GoodGroup?/thispage using similar markup to (:redirect Goodgroup.{Name}:)?
(:redirect Goodgroup.{$Name}:) works if you want to put it in one page.
If you want it to work for the entire group, put (:redirect Goodgroup.{*$Name}:) into Badgroup.GroupHeader? - however, that only works with pages that really exist in Goodgroup; if you visit a page in Badgroup without a corresponding page of the same name in Goodgroup, instead of being redirected to a nonexistant page, you get the redirect Directive at the top of the page.
With (:if exists Goodgroup.{*$Name}:)(:redirect Goodgroup.{*$Name}:)(:ifend:) in Badgroup.GroupHeader? you get redirected to Goodgroup.Name if it exists, otherwise you get Badgroup.Name without the bit of code displayed.
How can a wiki enable linebreaks by default, i.e. without having the directive Add to config.php such a line: IncludeOtherPagesWhat's the maximum number of includes that can exist in a page? My site seems to stop including after 48 includes. ( $MaxIncludes)
By default, PmWiki places a limit of 50 include directives for any given page, to prevent runaway infinite loops and other situations that might eat up server resources. (Two of these are GroupHeader and GroupFooter.) The limit can be modified by the wiki administrator via the Is there any way to include from a group of pages without specifying by exact name, e.g. between Anchor X and Y from all pages named IFClass?-* ? This can be achieved using page lists. There appears to be a viewing issue when the included page contains the (:title:) directive. In a default installation, the last title in the page overrides previous ones so you can place your (:title :) directive at the bottom of the page, after any includes. See also How to test to see if the page is part of another page?
Is there any way to include (chapters of) pages which are protected (authuser.php)? You can achieve this the other way around: have the public sections in a public page (passwdread=@nopass or @_site_read) and include those into both the protected page, and the public page. Note that it is strongly recommended to NOT hide sensitive content inside a conditional in an unprotected page. InterMapAre InterMap names case sensitive? Yes, thus How can I achieve a localmap.txt mapping with the effect of Use the following: Pics: /somepathto/pics/
How can I define an InterMap in PHP? Use the following:
$LinkFunctions['PmWikiHome:'] = 'LinkIMap';
$IMap['PmWikiHome:'] = 'https://pmwiki.org/wiki/$1';
Page specific variablesIs there a variable like $LastModified, but which shows me the creation time? No, but you can create one in config.php. For instance:
If you like the same format that you define in config.php with $TimeFmt use
How can I test if a variable is set and/or not empty? Use Categories: PmWiki Developer WikiGroupFAQHow can I get rid of the 'Main' group in urls for pages pointing to Main? How can I limit the creation of new groups? See Cookbook:Limit Wiki Groups. Why doesn't [[St. Giles and St. James]] work as a link? (It doesn't display anything.) Because it contains periods, and destroys PmWiki's file structure, which saves pages as Group.PageName. Adding those periods disrupts this format. Links may only contain words. If you need a link precisely as shown, the page must be named eg StGilesAndStJames? then you can use the (:title:) directive to have the page's title appear with periods (:title St. Giles and St. James:). (Although in US grammar the period is often omitted and in UK grammar the period must be omitted for contractions like St). How can I delete a wiki group? Normally you can't, as this requires an admin with server-side access to delete the file that makes up the group's RecentChanges page. But there is an option method of making it possible to delete RecentChanges pages from within the wiki if the admin enables the code found on Cookbook:RecentChanges Deletion. How can I delete a wiki group's Group.RecentChanges? page? Normally you can't, as this requires an admin with server-side access to delete a file. But there is an optional method of making it possible to delete RecentChanges pages from within the wiki if the admin enables the code found on Cookbook:RecentChanges Deletion. Can I delete a wiki group inside wiki.d folder on the server to eliminate the group? Yes, if you delete all files named YourGroup?.*, the pages from that group will be removed from the wiki. Note that the documentation (group PmWiki) and the site configuration (groups Site and SiteAdmin) that exist in the default installation, are located in wikilib.d and not in wiki.d, and some recipes provide files located in a wikilib.d subdirectory in the cookbook directory. (You shouldn't delete the groups Site and SiteAdmin, required for normal function.) How can I list all pages in a WikiGroup? In a wiki page use GroupHeaders and GroupFootersHow do I set the same header or footer for all pages/groups? The header and footer for each page are controlled by the variables
### If you use Site.SiteHeader and Group.GroupHeader
$GroupHeaderFmt = '(:include {$SiteGroup}.SiteHeader'
. ' basepage={*$FullName}:)(:nl:)' . $GroupHeaderFmt;
### If you use Site.SiteHeader instead of Group.GroupHeader
$GroupHeaderFmt = '(:include {$SiteGroup}.SiteHeader'
. ' basepage={*$FullName}:)(:nl:)';
### If you use Site.SiteFooter and Group.GroupFooter
$GroupFooterFmt .= '(:nl:)(:include {$SiteGroup}.SiteFooter'
. ' basepage={*$FullName}:)';
### If you use Site.SiteFooter instead of Group.GroupFooter
$GroupFooterFmt = '(:nl:)(:include {$SiteGroup}.SiteFooter'
. ' basepage={*$FullName}:)';
Note that single quotes must be used in the lines above. See also the Cookbook:AllGroupHeader recipe. Instead of using an additional page, you could set any wiki text in $GroupHeaderFmt .= "Global message here.";
WikiTrails
What's the difference between a PageList and a WikiTrail?? The pagelist directive dynamically generates a list of pages. There are many ways to generate the list, including using a WikiTrail? as the source. The pagelist directive then displays the pages that match the criteria using an optional template - for example displaying each page name on a separate line as a link or including the entire content. The pagelist directive currently does not have built-in navigation markup that you can put on the pages in the list. By contrast, WikiTrails are simply specified via links on an "index" page and you can put previous-next navigation markup on each page. The two serve very different purposes. WikiTrails are useful for specifying the pages in web feeds, for creating a "tour" through a predefined set of pages, and many other things. PageHistoryIs there a way to remove page history from page files? 1. Administrators can clean page histories using the Cookbook:ExpireDiff recipe. 2. Administrators with FTP file access can download individual pages from the wiki.d directory, open them in a text editor, manually remove history, and re-upload the files to wiki.d/ directory. Care must be exercised, when manually editing a page file, to preserve the minimum required elements of the page and avoid corrupting its contents. See PageFileFormat#creating. 3. Edit the page. Select all the contents of the edit text area and cut them to the clipboard. Enter How can I restrict viewing the page history In the local/config.php file, set $HandleAuth['diff'] = 'edit';
In case of this restriction is set up on a farm, and you want to allow it on a particular wiki, set in your local/config.php : $HandleAuth['diff'] = 'read';
PasswordsHow can I password protect all the pages and groups on my site? Do I really have to set passwords page by page, or group by group? Administrators can set passwords for the entire site by editing the config.php file; they don't have to set passwords for each page or group. For example, to set the entire site to be editable only by those who know an "edit" password, an administrator can add a line like the following to local/config.php:
For more information about the password options that are available only to administrators, see PasswordsAdmin. I get http error 500 "Internal Server Error" when I try to log in. What's wrong? This can happen if the encrypted passwords are not created on the web server that hosts the PmWiki. Solution: Create the passwords on the system with the oldest PHP version and use them on all other systems. How can I create private groups for users, so that each user can edit pages in their group, but no one else (other than the admin) can? Modify the edit attribute for each group to id:username, e.g. set the edit attribute in JaneDoe.GroupAttributes? to id:JaneDoe?. There is a more automatic solution, but it's probably not a good idea for most wikis. Administrators can use the AuthUser recipe and add the following few lines to their local/config.php file to set this up: $group = FmtPageName('$Group', $pagename);
$DefaultPasswords['edit'] = 'id:'.$group;
include_once("$FarmD/scripts/authuser.php");
This automatically gives edit rights to a group to every user who has the same user name as the group name. Unfortunately it also gives edit rights to such a user who is visiting a same-named group not just for pages in that group, but for any page on the wiki that relies on the site's default edit password. This can create security holes. How come when I switch to another wiki within a farm, I keep my same authorization? PmWiki uses PHP sessions to keep track of authentication/authorization information, and by default PHP sets things up such that all interactions with the same server are considered part of the same session. session_name('XYZSESSID');
You can pick any alphanumeric name for XYZSESSID; for example, for the cs559-1 wiki you might choose session_name('CS559SESSID');
This will keep the two wikis' session cookies independent of each other. Is it possible to test the password level for display and/or if condition? Example: * (:if WriterPassword:) (display Edit link) (:ifend:) You can use Can I use You can, but usually that's not secure. The recommended strategy is to put secrets in a separate page and restrict all read-related¹ access permissions to those users who are allowed to read the secrets. To display the secrets in another page, you can include (parts of) the secrets page: Users with read access to the secrets will readily see them, whereas other users see nothing or (at your choosing) some other text, e.g. a login link. ¹ Currently (version 2.2.99), these are: read (would allow include), edit (would show the source), attr (would allow to obtain read/edit), diff (would allow viewing any change), source (allows raw source display)
The reason why Conditional Markup isn't suitable for access control is that it only applies for rendering wikitext as a web page, and that's just one of many ways to access a page's text. In order to rely on Conditional Markup for protection of secrets, you'd have to restrict all access methods that can circumvent it. To do so, you'd need to keep track of all methods available. In a default installation of PmWiki, some of the easy methods include: Editing a page, viewing its edit history, its source, or including fragments of it into the edit preview of another page. (Preview: To avoid traces in RecentChanges.) However, this list is far from exhaustive, and could easily grow with Recipes? or future versions of PmWiki. DeletingPagesHow is a Wiki Group deleted? An admin can remove the group pages from Fully deleting a group via the wiki isn't possible, since a delete counts as an "update" which causes the Recent Changes page to be re-created. It is possible to modify the site's configuration to allow deletion of the group's RecentChanges page -- see Cookbook:RecentChangesDeletion. How is a Category deleted? To delete a category, delete all the PmWiki InstallationShould I rename pmwiki.php to index.php? Renaming pmwiki.php is not recommended. Instead, create an index.php file that contains this single line <?php include_once('pmwiki.php');
How do I make pmwiki.php the default page for a website? Create an index.php file that runs PmWiki from a subdirectory (pmwiki/ for example) and place it in the site's web document root (the main directory for the website). <?php chdir('pmwiki'); include_once('pmwiki.php');
Note: You will also need to explicitly set the How do I enable "Clean URLs?" that are shorter and look like paths to my wiki pages? Why does pmwiki.org appear to have a directory structure rather than "?n=pagename" in URLs?? See Cookbook:CleanUrls. How can I run PmWiki on a standalone (offline, portable) machine ? UpgradesHow can I determine what version of PmWiki I'm running now? See version - Determining and displaying the current version of PmWiki (pmwiki-2.3.2). How can I test a new version of PmWiki on my wiki without changing the prior version used by visitors? The easy way to do this is to install the new version in a separate directory, and for the new version set (in local/config.php):
$WikiLibDirs = array(&$WikiDir,
new PageStore('/path/to/existing/wiki.d/{$FullName}'),
new PageStore('wikilib.d/{$FullName}'));
This lets you test the new version using existing page content without impacting the existing site or risking modification of the pages. (Of course, any recipes or local customizations have to be installed in the new version as well.) Then, once you're comfortable that the new version seems to work as well as the old, it's safe to upgrade the old version (and one knows of any configuration or page changes that need to be made). Uploads AdministrationHow do I disable uploading of a certain type of file? Here's an example of what to add to your local/config.php file to disable uploading of .zip files, or of files with no extension: $UploadExtSize['zip'] = 0; # Disallow uploading .zip files $UploadExtSize[''] = 0; # Disallow files with no extension How do I attach uploads to individual pages or the entire site, instead of organizing them by wiki group? Use the $UploadPrefixFmt = '/$FullName'; # per-page, in Group.Name directories $UploadPrefixFmt = '/$Group/$Name'; # per-page, in Group directories with Name subdirectories $UploadPrefixFmt = ''; # site-wide For Units are in bytes. $UploadDirQuota = 100*1024; # limit uploads to 100KiB $UploadDirQuota = 1000*1024; # limit uploads to 1000KiB $UploadDirQuota = 1024*1024; # limit uploads to 1MiB $UploadDirQuota = 25*1024*1024; # limit uploads to 25MiB $UploadDirQuota = 2*1024*1024*1024; # limit uploads to 2GiB Is there a way to allow file names with Unicode or additional characters? Yes, see Where is the list of attachments stored? CustomMarkupHow can I embed JavaScript? into a page's output? There are several ways to do this. The Cookbook:JavaScript recipe describes a simple means for embedding static JavaScript? into web pages using custom markup. For editing JavaScript? directly in wiki pages (which can pose various security risks), see the JavaScript-Editable recipe. For JavaScript? that is to appear in headers or footers of pages, the skin template can be modified directly, or <script> statements can be inserted using the How would I create a markup ((:nodiscussion:)) that will set a page variable ({$HideDiscussion}) which can be used by (:if enabled HideDiscussion:) in .PageActions? Add the following section of code to your config.php
SDV($HideDiscussion, 0); #define var name
Markup('hideDiscussion', '<{$var}',
'/\\(:nodiscussion:\\)/', 'setHideDiscussion');
function setHideDiscussion() {
global $HideDiscussion;
$HideDiscussion = true;
}
This will enable the It appears that (.*?) does not match newlines in these functions, making the above example inoperable if the text to be wrappen in <em> contains new lines. If you include the "s" modifier on the regular expression then the dot (.) will match newlines. Thus your regular expression will be "/STUFF(.*?)/s". That s at the very end is what you are looking for. If you start getting into multi-line regexes you may be forced to look at the m option as well - let's anchors (^ and $) match not begin/end of strings but also begin/end of lines (i.e., right before/after a newline). Also make sure your markup is executed during the fulltext phase. How can the text returned by my markup function be re-processed by the markup engine? If the result of your markup contains more markup that should be processed, you have two options. First is to select a "when" argument that is processed earlier than the markup in your result. For example, if your markup may return [[links]], your "when" argument could be How do I get started writing recipes and creating my own custom markup? (alternate) Introduction to custom markup for Beginners How do I make a rule that runs once at the end of all other rule processing? Use this statement instead of the usual
InternationalizationsIf my wiki is internationalized by config.php, how do I revert a specific group to English? Use If my wiki is in English and I want just one page, or group, in Spanish do I say Yes, that is usually the best method. If you were doing this with many scattered pages, or with several languages, you might find it easier to maintain if you load the translations all in config.php like this: XLPage?('es','PmWikiEs.XLPage?');
XLPage?('fr','PmWikiFr.XLPage?');
XLPage?('ru','PmWikiRu.XLPage?');
Then in each group or page configuration file, you'd just use What does the first parameter of this function stand for? How can it be used? The XLPage? mechanism allows multiple sets of translations to be loaded, and the first parameter is used to distinguish them. For example, suppose I want to have translations for both normal French and "Canadian" French. Rather than maintain two entirely separate sets of pages, I could do: XLPage?('fr-ca', 'PmWikiFrCa.XLPage?'); XLPage?('fr', 'PmWikiFr.XLPage?'); PmWikiFr.XLPage? would contain all of the standard French translations, while PmWikiFrCA.XLPage? would only need to contain "Canada-specific" translations -- i.e., those that are different from the ones in the French page. The first parameter distinguishes the two sets of translations.
In addition, a config.php script can use the and PmWiki will use only the 'fr' and 'en' translations (in that order), no matter how many translations have been loaded with XLPage?(). How can I add a translation for an individual string in a PHP file? Use the XLSDV() function to provide a translation for a specific (English) string. For instance, with this in config.php XLSDV('nl', array('my English expression'=>'mijn Nederlandse uitdrukking'));
any instance of the variable expression If you need to get a translation in a PHP file, use the $local_string = XL("my English expression");
But beware: XLPage?() uses XLSDV() internally for its translation pairs, too, and only the first definition is accepted! Thus, if the Dutch XLPage? already contains a translation and you want to override that, you need to use your XLSDV('nl',...) before calling the correspondent XLPage?('nl',...). Otherwise, by using XLSDV() after XLPage?() - e.g. within a recipe that is included later in config.php - your translation will only work as long nobody defines 'my English expression' in that XLPage?. LocalCustomizationsThere's no "config.php"; it's not even clear what a "local customisation file" is! The "sample-config.php" file in the "docs" folder, is given as an example. Copy it to the "local" folder and rename it to "config.php". You can then remove the "#" symbols or add other commands shown in the documentation. See also Group Customizations. Can I change the default page something other than Main.HomePage ( Yes, just set the $DefaultPage = 'ABC.StartPage';
Note the recommendations in How do I get the group / page name in a local configuration file (e.g. local/config.php)? Use the following markup in pmwiki-2.1.beta21 or newer: ## Get the group and page name $pagename = ResolvePageName($pagename); $page = PageVar($pagename, '$FullName'); $group = PageVar($pagename, '$Group'); $name = PageVar($pagename, '$Name'); Note the importance of the order of customizations in config.php above to avoid caching problems. If you need the verbatim group and page name (from the request) early in config.php,
according to this posting Can I remove items from the wikilib.d folder on my site? The files named Site.* and SiteAdmin.* contain parts of the interface and the configuration and they should not be removed. The other files named PmWiki* contain the documentation and could be removed. How do I customize my own 404 error page for non-existent pages? To change the text of the message, try editing the Site.PageNotFound page. Is the order of customizations in config.php important? Are there certain things that should come before or after others in that file? Yes, see Order of the commands in config.php. GroupCustomizationsHow can I apply CSS styles to a particular group or page? Simply create a pub/css/Group.css or pub/css/Group.Page.css file containing the custom CSS styles for that group or page. See also Cookbook:LocalCSS. Why shouldn't passwords be set in group (or page) customization files? Why shouldn't group or page passwords be set in config.php? The reason for this advice is that per-group customization files are only loaded for the current page. So, if
and because the GroupA?.php file wasn't loaded (we're looking at Main.WikiSandbox --> local/Main.php), there's no read password set. The same is true for page customization files. Isn't that processing order strange? Why not load per page configuration last (that is after global configuration an per group configuration)? Many times what we want to do is to enable a certain capability for a group of pages, but disable it on a specific page, as if it was never enabled. If the per-group config file is processed first, then it becomes very difficult/tedious for the per-page one to "undo" the effects of the per-group page. So, we load the per-page file before the per-group. If a per-page customization wants the per-group customizations to be performed first, it can use the techniques given above (using include_once() or setting SkinsHow do I change the Wiki's default name in the upper left corner of the Main Page? Put the following config.php $WikiTitle = 'My Wiki Site';
The docs/sample-config.php file has an example of changing the title. How can I embed PmWiki pages inside a web page? Source them through a PHP page, or place them in a frame. How do I change the font or background color of the hints block on the Edit Page? Add a CSS style to pub/css/local.css: SkinTemplatesHow do I customize the CSS styling of my PmWiki layout? See Skins for how to change the default PmWiki skin. See also Skins, where you will find pre-made templates you can use to customize the appearance of your site. You can also create a file called local.css in the pub/css/ directory and add CSS selectors there (this file gets automatically loaded if it exists). Or, styles can be added directly into a local customization file by using something like: $HTMLStylesFmt[] = '.foo { color:blue; }';
Where can the mentioned "translation table" be found for adding translated phrases? Is it possible to have the edit form in full page width, with no sidebar? If the sidebar is marked with Can I easily hide the Home Page title from the homepage? Yes, you can use in the wiki page either Is it possible to hide the Search-Bar in the default PmWiki Skin? Yes, please see Cookbook:HideSearchBar. WebFeedsHow do I include text from the page (whole page, or first X characters) in the feed body? (note: markup NOT digested) function MarkupExcerpt?( Does this mean if I want to include the time in the rss title and "summary" to rss body I call $FeedFmt['rss']['item']['description'] = '$LastSummary';
$FeedFmt['rss']['item']['title'] = '{$Group} / {$Title} @ $ItemISOTime';
How can I use the RSS <enclosure> tag for podcasting? For podcasting of mp3 files, simply attach an mp3 file to the page with the same name as the page (i.e., for a page named Podcast.Episode4, one would attach to that page a file named "Episode4.mp3"). The file is automatically picked up by ?action=rss and used as an enclosure. The set of potential enclosures is given by the $RSSEnclosureFmt array, thus $RSSEnclosureFmt = array('{$Name}.mp3', '{$Name}.wma', '{$Name}.ogg');
allows podcasting in mp3, wma, and ogg formats. How to add "summary" to the title in a rss feed (ie. with Add this line in you $FeedFmt['rss']['item']['title'] = '{$Group} / {$Title} : $LastModifiedSummary';
How to add "description" to the title in an rss feed, and summary to the body? Add these lines to your $FeedFmt['rss']['item']['title'] = '{$Group} / {$Title} : {$Description}';
$FeedFmt['rss']['item']['description'] = '$LastModifiedSummary';
NOTES:
Some of my password-protected pages aren't appearing in the feed... how do I work around this? From a similar question on the newsgroup, Pm's reply: The last time I checked, RSS and other syndication protocols didn't really have a well-established interface or mechanism for performing access control (i.e., authentication). As far as I know this is still the case. PmWiki's WebFeeds capability is built on top of pagelists, so it
could simply be that the The "downside" to setting You could also set if ($action == 'rss') This limits the ability to see the protected pages to RSS feeds; normal pagelists and searches wouldn't see them. Lastly, it's also possible to configure the webfeeds to obtain the authentication information from the url directly, as in: .../AllRecentChanges?action=rss&authpw=secret
The big downside to this is that the cleartext password will end up traveling across the net with every RSS request, and may end up being recorded in Apache's access logs. How to add feed image? Add the following to local/config.php (this example is for $FeedFmt['rss']['feed']['image'] = " <title>Logo title</title> <link>https://example.com/</link> <url>https://example.com/images/logo.gif</url> <width>120</width> <height>60</height>"; Do not forget NOT to start with a '<' as there would be no <image> tag around this... See here.
How do I insert RSS news feeds into PmWiki pages? How can I specify default feed options in a configuration file instead of always placing them in the url? For example, if you want
if ($action == 'rss')
SDVA($_REQUEST, array(
'group' => 'News',
'order' => '-time',
'count' => 10));
Are there ways to let people easily subscribe to a feed? On some browsers (Mozilla Firefox), the visitor can see an orange RSS icon in the address bar, and subscribe to the feed by clicking on it. To enable the RSS icon, add this to config.php : $HTMLHeaderFmt['feedlinks'] = '<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="$WikiTitle" href="$ScriptUrl?n=Site.AllRecentChanges&action=rss" /> <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="$WikiTitle" href="$ScriptUrl?n=Site.AllRecentChanges&action=atom" />'; You can also add such a link, for example in your SideBar?, Can I create an RSS feed for individual page histories? See Cookbook:PageFeed. How do I create a custom FeedPage? similar to RecentChanges or AllRecentChanges?, but with only certain groups or pages recorded? See Cookbook:CustomRecentChanges. In a nutshell, you'll declare a
if (PageVar($pagename, '$Group')!='ForbiddenGroup') {
$RecentChangesFmt['Site.MyFeedPage'] =
'* [[{$FullName}]] . . . $CurrentTime $[by] $AuthorLink: [=$ChangeSummary=]';
}
How can I update my RSS feed to show every edit for pages on that feed, not just new pages added to the feed? Add unique guid links for each edit to your to config.php file (see PITS entry):
$FeedFmt['rss']['item']['guid'] = '{$PageUrl}?guid=$ItemISOTime';
Alternatively, you can create the option for edit monitoring by adding a qualifier for RSS links. This allows the user to choose between default new pages RSS feeds and new edits RSS feeds (pmwiki.org has this option enabled).
## For new pages updates: https://example.com/wiki/HomePage?action=rss
## For edits updates: https://example.com/wiki/HomePage?action=rss&edits=1
if(@$_REQUEST['edits'] && $action == 'rss')
$FeedFmt['rss']['item']['guid'] = '{$PageUrl}?guid=$ItemISOTime';
TroubleshootingHow to track errors and know if they come from the PmWiki core or from a local configuration or addon/recipe? The PHP programming language has recently deprecated or removed a number of functions that were heavily used in the past by PmWiki and many addons/recipes/skins. The PmWiki core no longer relies on these functions but some addons still do -- here is how to track these. The PmWiki architecture allows addons (recipes, skins) and local configuration to register actions to be performed by PmWiki at a later point of the process. That's why the PHP warning may indicate a line in pmwiki.php, even if this was caused by a recipe. It is recommended to get the latest versions of PmWiki and all your addons -- known bugs would have been fixed. This assumes the errors appear with the latest versions. (1) First disable or comment out all addons and local configuration (config.php, farmconfig.php, Group.php) and test your wiki. If the warning persists, please notify us ASAP with some information on how to reproduce the bug and on your installation (PHP version). If the error doesn't appear, go to (2). (2) Enable one local configuration or one addon and test your wiki to see if the error appears. (3) If the error doesn't appear, the problem is likely elsewhere. If you have more addons to enable, go back to (2). (4) If the error appears, it was likely caused by the last configuration or addon that you enabled. Search the documentation and the cookbook for more recent versions, or contact the addon maintainer, or leave a message on the talk page. If that doesn't work, contact us at our issue tracking system. Developers can find documentation on how to update old addons at CustomMarkup and Functions. (5) Disable again the faulty addon and if you have more addons to enable, go back to (2). PmWiki has a friendly and reactive community and we may be able to quickly provide fixes. My wiki displays warnings "Deprecated: Function create_function() is deprecated". PHP version 7.2 deprecated a function which PmWiki used for markup definitions and pattern replacements. It is recommended to upgrade to the latest PmWiki version and update all addons and skins from the Cookbook?. Addons in the PHP 7.2 category are reported to be compatible with PHP 7.2. If you need a specific addon that has not yet been updated please contact us. To update your own addons, you probably need to update your calls to Markup(), see the pages Custom markup, Functions and PmWiki:CustomPagelistSortOrder. The recipe Cookbook:PccfToPcfOverride may provide a temporary solution until you can update all your add-ons. Note that PmWiki itself doesn't use that function, but (older) addons can register instructions to be processed at a later point. That's why the warning reports a line in pmwiki.php, even if it was requested by a local configuration or an addon. How to track down the addons that cause the warnings, see the first section. My wiki displays warnings "Deprecated: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is deprecated, use preg_replace_callback instead". This is caused by a change in PHP version 5.5 for the preg_replace() function. PmWiki no longer relies on the deprecated feature since version 2.2.56 (it is recommended to upgrade to the latest version) but many recipes do. Note that PmWiki itself doesn't use that function, but (older) addons can register instructions to be processed at a later point. That's why the warning reports a line in pmwiki.php, even if it was requested by a local configuration or an addon. Recipes and Skins are currently being updated for PHP 5.5. Check if there are more recent versions published by their maintainers on the Cookbook. If you update your PmWiki and recipes, and still see the warnings, here is how to find out which recipes cause them: For PmWiki version 2.2.71 or newer, in config.php, enable diagnostic tools: If the ?action=ruleset page shows no flagged rules, it is possible that either your recipes call the preg_replace() function directly, or they define various search-replace patterns in incompatible ways. In these cases, your warning should display the file name and line number causing problems. Otherwise, to track down the addons that cause the warnings, see the first section. Note that many hosting providers allow you to run different versions of PHP. See the documentation of your hosting plan to learn how to enable a PHP version earlier than 5.5. Finally, it is possible to suppress these warnings in PHP 5.5, by setting this line at the beginning of config.php: See categories PHP 5.5, PHP 7.2, PHP 7.4. My wiki displays warnings "PHP Deprecated: crypt(): Supplied salt is not valid for DES. Possible bug in provided salt format". You probably have configuration settings that worked on older PHP versions. Here is how to hunt and try to fix this. In your (farm)config.php or other local or cookbook files, any call to Additionally, if there are locked passwords with a star The Some of your page files may still have the old star Edit the file and replace the star After a PHP upgrade, some of the pages on my wiki are completely blank, empty, some have blank or missing sections, but the sidebar and the action links are visible. Sometimes this may be caused by insufficient file permissions on the server. The PHP process needs "read/write (rw)" access to all files in the directories "wiki.d" and "uploads"; "read (r)" access to those in the "wikilib.d" directory; "list/search (x)" for the directories themselves. Search the documentation of your hosting provider for more information. Alternatively, this may be caused by a change in PHP 5.4 which affects the function The easiest temporary fix would be in your default_charset = "Windows-1252" Or, this may sometimes work in ini_set("default_charset", "Windows-1252");
A more permanent fix would be to upgrade your installation to a more recent PmWiki version, your recipes, and in your own recipes or modules replace all calls to The "blank" pages come from the fact that in PHP 5.4 the default encoding switched from an 8-bit encoding to variable-bit validated UTF-8, and that an incorrect UTF-8 string will be rejected. If your wiki uses an 8-bit encoding, it is virtually certain that it is not valid UTF-8. Worse, even if you do use UTF-8 some browsers may submit invalid bits. So the PHSC() function always pretends that it converts an 8-bit encoding where all bits are allowed. Very long pages with thousands of lines may appear blank after adding a few additional lines. This may be preformatted text, table, or text inside conditional markup, or text in a custom markup directive. This may be caused by the PHP limits on how far to look forward, and loop back, when searching for matches of regular expressions. You may want to split the very long page into several pages, or the very long markup into separate sections/blocks, or you can increase the PHP limits by adding this to local/config.php: Why am I seeing strange errors after upgrading? Make sure all of the files were updated, in particular This question sometimes arises when an administrator hasn't followed the advice, which used to be less prominent, on the installation and initial setup tasks pages and has renamed pmwiki.php instead of creating an index.php wrapper script. If you have renamed pmwiki.php to index.php, then the upgrade procedure won't have updated your index.php file. Delete the old version and create a wrapper script so it won't happen again. Sometimes an FTP or other copy program will fail to transfer all of the files properly. One way to check for this is by comparing file sizes. Be sure all of the files in the wikilib.d/ directory were also upgraded. Sometimes it's a good idea to simply delete the wikilib.d/ directory before upgrading. (Local copies of pages are stored in wiki.d/ and not wikilib.d/.) Make sure that the file permissions are correct. The official files have a restricted set of permissions that might not match your site's needs. If you use a custom pattern for I'm suddenly getting messages like " Something (or someone) has changed the permissions on the wiki.d/.flock file or the wiki.d/ directory such that the webserver is no longer able to write the lockfile. The normal solution is to simply delete the .flock file from the wiki.d/ directory -- PmWiki will then create a new one. Also be sure to check the permissions on the wiki.d/ directory itself. (One can easily check and modify permissions of the wiki.d/ directory in FileZilla (open-source FTP app) by right-clicking on the file > File attributes) My links in the sidebar seem to be pointing to non-existent pages, even though I know I created the pages. Where are the pages? Links in the sidebar normally need to be qualified by a WikiGroup in order to work properly (use [[Group/Page]] instead of [[Page]]). Why am I seeing " If this is the first or only error message you're seeing, it's usually an indication that there are blank lines, spaces, or other characters before the When you save the file, the encoding/charset should be either cp1252/Windows1252 or UTF-8 without Byte Order Mark. NotePad++ is an editor that can do this. When you transfer the files, tell your FTP manager to use text mode transfer, or, if that doesn't help, binary mode transfer. If the warning is appearing after some other warning or error message, then resolve the other error and this warning may go away. How do I make a PHP Warning about If you are seeing an error similar to this Warning: session_write_close() [function.session-write-close]: open(/some/filesystem/path/to/a/directory/sess_[...]) failed: No such file or directory (2) in /your/filesystem/path/to/pmwiki.php on line NNN PmWiki sometimes does session-tracking using PHP's session-handling functions. For session-tracking to work, some information needs to be written in a directory on the server. That directory needs to exist and be writable by the webserver software. For this example, the webserver software is configured to write sessions in this directory /some/filesystem/path/to/a/directory/
but the directory doesn't exist. The solution is to do at least one of these:
session_save_path('/home/someuser/tmp/sessions'); # unix-type OS
session_save_path('C:/server/tmp/sessions'); # Windows
Why is PmWiki prompting me multiple times for a password I've already entered? This could happen like out of nowhere if your hosting provider upgrades to PHP version 5.3, and you run an older PmWiki release. Recent PmWiki releases fix this problem. Alternatively, this may be an indication that the browser isn't accepting cookies, or that PHP's session handling functions on the server aren't properly configured. If the browser is accepting cookies, then try setting See also the question I have to log in twice below. I edited config.php, but when I look at my wiki pages, all I see is " You've made a mistake in writing the PHP that goes into the config.php file. The most common mistake that causes the T_VARIABLE error is forgetting the semi-colon (;) at the end of a line that you added. The line number and file named are where you should look for the mistake. Searches and pagelists stopped working after I upgraded -- no errors are reported, but links to other pages do not appear (or do not appear as they should) -- what gives? Be sure all of the files in the wikilib.d/ directory were also upgraded. In particular, it sounds as if the Site.PageListTemplates page is either missing (if no links are displayed) or is an old version (if the links do not appear as they should). Also make sure that read-permissions (attr) are set for the pages Site.PageListTemplates and Site.Search. Some of my posts are coming back with "403 Forbidden" or "406 Not Acceptable" errors, or "Internal Server Error". This happens with some posts but not others. Your webserver probably has mod_security enabled. The mod_security "feature" scans all incoming posts for forbidden words or phrases that might indicate someone is trying to hack the system, and if any of them are present then Apache returns the 403 Forbidden or 406 Not Acceptable error. Common phrases that tend to trigger mod_security include "curl ", "wget", "file(", and "system(", although there are many others (depending on the configuration, percent signs, html tags, international characters). Since mod_security intercepts the requests and sends the "forbidden"
message before PmWiki ever gets a chance to run, it's not a bug in PmWiki, and
there's little that PmWiki can do about it. Instead, one has to alter the
webserver configuration to disable mod_security or reconfigure it to allow
whatever word it is forbidding. Some sites may be able to disable mod_security
by placing I get the following message when attempting to upload an image, what do I do?
Your server is configured with PHP Safe Mode enabled (removed as of PHP 5.4.0). Configure your wiki to use a site-wide uploads prefix, then create the uploads/ directory manually and set 777 permissions on it (rather than letting PmWiki create the directory). I'm starting to see "Division by zero error in pmwiki.php..." on my site. What's wrong? It's a bug in PmWiki that occurs only with the tables markup and only for versions of PHP >= 4.4.6 or >= 5.2.0. Often it seems to occur "out of nowhere" because the server administrator has upgraded PHP. Try upgrading to a later version of PmWiki to remove the error, or try setting the following in local/config.php: I have to log in twice (two times) (2 times). -or- My password is not being required even though it should. -or- I changed the password but the old password is still active. -or- My config.php password is not over-riding my farmconfig.php password. It could happen if (farm)config.php, or an included recipe, directly calls the functions CondAuth?(), or RetrieveAuthPage?(), PageTextVar?(), PageVar?() and possibly others, before defining all passwords and before including AuthUser (if required). The order of config.php is very significant. When editing an existing page, The "Save" causes a no-response of your server (not a blank page, no response at all, an endless connexion try). To get back the hand, it is necessary to request for another page (by clicking on its link in the menu for instance). And horror!, the ...?action=edit is then inhibited, it becomes impossible to edit any page. When the editing of a page is initiated a file names I get the error "Data Mismatch - Locking FAILED!" This is probably not a PmWiki error. PmWiki cannot create a lock file due to an underlying file system problem. For example the disk quota has been exceeded (e.g. by an error log file or file uploads), or there are problems with file system permissions. AuthUserCan I specify authorization group memberships from with local/config.php? Yes -- put the group definition into the $AuthUser array (in config.php): $AuthUser['@editors'] = array('alice', 'carol', 'bob');
Can I have multiple admin groups? Yes, define the groups with I'm running multiple wikis under the same domain name, and logins from one wiki are appearing on other wikis. Shouldn't they be independent? This is caused by the way that PHP treats sessions. See PmWiki.AuthUser#sessions for more details. Is there any way to record the time of the last login for each user when using AuthUser? I need a way to look for stale accounts. Though every setting seems correct, authentication against LDAP is not working. There is nothing in ldap log, what's wrong? Be sure ldap php module is installed ( on debian apt-get install php(4|5)-ldap ; apache(2)ctl graceful ) The login form asks for username and password, but only password matters. Username can be left blank and it still signs in under the account. Is this intentional and if so, can I change it so that the username and password must both be entered? - X 1/18/07 Never mind I think this has something to do with using the admin password. I created a test account and it's working ok.
Make sure you are not entering the admin password when testing the account because, if the password is equal to the admin password, it will authenticate directly through the config.php file and skip any other system. Do note that even with AuthUser activated you can still log in with a blank username and only entering the password. In that case any password you enter will be "accepted" but only passwords which authenticate in the given context will actually give you any authorization rights. Using this capability AuthUser comfortably coexists with the default password-based system. If you want to require both username and password, then you need to set an admin id before including authuser.php:
## Define usernames and passwords.
$AuthUser['carol'] = '$1$CknC8zAs$dC8z2vu3UvnIXMfOcGDON0';
## Enable authentication based on username.
include_once('scripts/authuser.php');
# $DefaultPasswords['admin'] = pmcrypt('secret');
$DefaultPasswords['admin'] = 'id:carol';
A username and password will then be required before login is successful. Is there any way to hide IP addresses once someone has logged in so that registered users can keep their IP addresses invisible to everyone except administrators? - X 1/18/07 Yes, see solution provided at PITS:00400. Is there a way that people could self-register through AuthUser? You can see HtpasswdForm or UserAdmin for recipes providing this feature. I would like it that after I have AuthUser turned and a user is authenticated to get on my site, that if I have a password put on a particular page or group that they don't get the AuthUser form to show up (username and password), but only the typical field for password? PasswordsAdminThere seems to be a default password. What is it? There isn't any valid password until you set one. Passwords admin describes how to set one. PmWiki comes "out of the box" with How do I use passwd-formatted files (like .htpasswd) for authentication? See AuthUser, Cookbook:HtpasswdForm or Cookbook:UserAuth2. Is there anything I can enter in a GroupAttributes? field to say 'same as the admin password'? If not, is there anything I can put into the config.php file to have the same effect? Enter '@lock' in GroupAttributes??action=attr to require an admin password for that group. How do I edit protect, say, all RecentChanges pages? How can I read password protect all pages in a group except the HomePage? using configuration files? As described in PmWiki.GroupCustomizations per-group or per-page configuration files should not be used for defining passwords. The reason is that per-group (or per-page) customization files are only loaded for the current page. So, if
and because the GroupA?.php file wasn't loaded (we're looking at Main.WikiSandbox --> local/Main.php), there's no read password set. How can I password protect the creation of new pages? See Cookbook:LimitWikiGroups, Cookbook:NewGroupWarning, Cookbook:LimitNewPagesInWikiGroups. How do I change the password prompt screen? If your question is about how to make changes to that page... edit Site.AuthForm. If your question is about how to change which page you are sent to when prompted for a password, you might check out the Cookbook:CustomAuthForm for help. How do I change the prompt on the attributes ( Simply create a new page at Site.AttrForm?, and add the following line of code to
Note that this only changes the text above the password inputs on the attributes page, but doesn't change the inputs themselves - the inputs have to be dealt with separately. See Cookbook:CustomAttrForm for more info. I get http error 500 "Internal Server Error" when I try to log in. What's wrong? This can happen if the encrypted passwords are not created on the web server that hosts the PmWiki. Solution: Create the passwords on the system with the oldest PHP version and use them on all other systems. I only want users to have to create an 'edit' password, which is automatically used for their 'upload' & 'attr' passwords (without them having to set those independently). How do I do this? By setting
DesignNotesWhy doesn't PmWiki use hierarchical / nested groups? It essentially comes down to figuring out how to handle page links between nested groups; if someone can figure out an obvious, intuitive way for authors to do that, then nested groups become plausible. See Design Notes and PmWiki:Hierarchical Groups. Why don't PmWiki's scripts have a closing ?> tag? All of PmWiki's scripts now omit the closing ?> tag. The tag is not required, and it avoids problems with unnoticed spaces or blank lines at the end of the file. Also, some file transfer protocols may change the newline character(s) in the file, which can also cause problems. See also the Instruction separation page in the PHP manual. Does PmWiki support WYSIWYG editing (or something like the FCKEditor?)? Short answer: PmWiki provides GUI buttons in a toolbar for common markups, but otherwise does not have WYSIWYG editing. For the reasons why, see PmWiki:WYSIWYG. Categories: PmWiki Developer
This page may have a more recent version on pmwiki.org: PmWiki:FAQ, and a talk page: PmWiki:FAQ-Talk. |
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