I have been wanting to setup my own personal Wiki for a long time now. This weekend, I finally did it. I have had my own server leased from ServerPronto.com. I got the server just so I'd have a playground on which I could experiment with different software and programming projects. For only $30/month, I get a dedicated machine, my choice of operating system (they have just about every major Linux distro), and root access. I chose Gentoo Linux.
I have been reading about open source Wikis, trying to find one that is full-featured, easy to setup, and preferably written in Java. I decided to try out XWiki. I love the Enterprise Wiki Confluence, but it isn't open source, so I decided not to use it even though they have a Personal Edition which lets you run it for free with a maximum of 2 users. I want to be able to find and fix bugs, and even contribute patches and new features, so an open source Wiki was important to me.
Anyway, last week I installed my favorite database, PostgreSQL. This weekend, I installed Tomcat, got the XWiki sample database loaded into PostgreSQL, and got the XWiki webapp up and running. I am excited to start learning how to use it. I expect to use it to keep track of things like gifts I want from people, gifts I want to give to people, notes on how I have installed things around the house, notes on software, etc. I don't plan to let the public view it. It is just for me and my wife.
A few things left to do: Setup a connector from Apache to Tomcat so I don't have to run XWiki on port 8080. Customize the XWiki skin so I have my own look and feel. Learn how to export the data so I can make backups. Learn how to setup the XWiki project from Subversion so I can study the code, keep track of changes, and eventually contribute something.
No comments:
Post a Comment