PmWiki is a wiki-based system for collaborative creation and maintenance of websites.

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.

Key PmWiki Features

Custom look-and-feel: A site administrator can quickly change the appearance and functions of a PmWiki site by using different skins and HTML templates. If you can't find an appropriate skin already made, you can easily modify one or create your own.
Access control: PmWiki password protection can be applied to an entire site, to groups of pages, or to individual pages. Password protection controls who can read pages, edit pages, and upload attachments. PmWiki's access control system is completely self-contained, but it can also work in conjunction with existing password databases, such as .htaccess, LDAP servers, and MySQL databases.
Customization and plugin architecture: One principle of the PmWikiPhilosophy is to only include essential features in the core engine, but make it easy for administrators to customize and add new markup. Hundreds of features are already available by using extensions (called "recipes") that are available from the PmWiki Cookbook.

PmWiki is written in PHP and distributed under the General Public License. It is designed to be simple to install, customize, and maintain for a variety of applications. This site is running pmwiki-2.2.11.

PmWiki is a registered trademark of Patrick R. Michaud.

PmWiki's home on the web is at pmwiki.org.

This page has some background information on making backups and explains some basic *nix backup and restore procedures.

Introduction

Your wiki installation contains some unique data in the following directories: 

    local/         Local configuration scripts
    cookbook/      Recipes obtained from the Cookbook
    pub/           Publicly accessible files
    wiki.d/        Wiki pages
    uploads/       Uploaded files (attachments)

A good backup plan will include periodically archiving these directories — or at bare minimum local/ and wiki.d/. Good practice dictates keeping your backup archives on a separate machine.

Simple Backup and Restore (*nix)

When it comes to backup, simpler is better. Since the pmwiki distribution is very small (about 1/4 megabyte), it's simplest to just archive the distribution files along with the data.

Making a Backup Archive

The following *nix command, executed from the parent directory of your wiki's directory, will put a complete backup archive of your site in your home directory. 

tar -zcvf  ~/wiki-backup-`date +%Y%m`.tar.gz  wiki/

Restoring the Backup Archive

Simple Method

Your site can be restored and running in under 30 seconds with 

tar -zxvf ~/wiki-backup-200512.tar.gz
find wiki/uploads/ -type d |xargs chmod 777
find wiki/wiki.d/ -type d |xargs chmod 777

A Slightly-More-Secure Method

The simple restore commands above will give you world-writable files and directories. You can avoid world-writable permissions by letting PmWiki create directories with the proper attributes (ownership and permissions) for you.

Start with 

tar -zxvf ~/wiki-backup-200512.tar.gz
rm -rf wiki/wiki.d
rm -rf uploads
chmod 2777 wiki/

Now upload a file in each group that had uploads. If your site doesn't have uploads, just visit your site once so the wiki.d/ directory will be created.

Finish your installation with 

chmod 755 wiki/
tar -zxvf ~/wiki-backup-200512.tar.gz

Details

The commands on this page assume your site is in a directory called "wiki/". The test backup was made in December, 2005 so it's named accordingly.

Your site will only have an uploads/ directory if uploads are enabled.

The backup command uses a date stamp (YYYYMM) in the filename. If you automate the command via cron you'll wind up with monthly snapshots of your site. You can get a daily snapshot by appending %d to the date command (`date +%Y%m%d` will get you YYYYMMDD). Be wary of space limitations if you have a large uploads/ directory.

See Also

Miscellaneous

Backup via FTP

Download and install a ftp client like Filezilla

  1. Using the ftp client connect to the server where you host pmWiki using
    1. the IP address (ex: 123.234.56.67) or the ftp name (ex: ftp.myhost.com)
    2. supply your account name (ex: mylogin) and password (ex: myp4ssw0rd)
  2. Move to your pmWiki directory (ex: /usr/mylogin/web/wiki/ or /tahi/public_html/pmwiki )
  3. Select the folder you want to backup as explained before (probably either only the data or the whole wiki directory)
    • for data you will want to backup both the directories
      • wiki.d for user page data
      • pmwikiuploads (or uploads) for your attachments (uploads)
    • for system you will want, at a minimum, to backup both the directories
      • local for configuration data
      • pub for local CSS and skins customisations
  4. Download them to a local folder
  5. Use 7zip or a similar software to build an archive of this backup

You can also very easily sync your FTP directories with your hard disc via this command line:

wget -nv -np -m ftp://user:password@ftp.yourhost.net/

Download Wget for Windows (other systems normally have it installed). PmWiki is a wiki-based system for collaborative creation and maintenance of websites.

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.

Key PmWiki Features

Custom look-and-feel: A site administrator can quickly change the appearance and functions of a PmWiki site by using different skins and HTML templates. If you can't find an appropriate skin already made, you can easily modify one or create your own.
Access control: PmWiki password protection can be applied to an entire site, to groups of pages, or to individual pages. Password protection controls who can read pages, edit pages, and upload attachments. PmWiki's access control system is completely self-contained, but it can also work in conjunction with existing password databases, such as .htaccess, LDAP servers, and MySQL databases.
Customization and plugin architecture: One principle of the PmWikiPhilosophy is to only include essential features in the core engine, but make it easy for administrators to customize and add new markup. Hundreds of features are already available by using extensions (called "recipes") that are available from the PmWiki Cookbook.

PmWiki is written in PHP and distributed under the General Public License. It is designed to be simple to install, customize, and maintain for a variety of applications. This site is running pmwiki-2.2.11.

PmWiki is a registered trademark of Patrick R. Michaud.

PmWiki's home on the web is at pmwiki.org.