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Swiki FAQ

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Beginners Questions (and Answers)

How do I upgrade the server?
How can I modify the CSS stylesheet used on the Swiki pages?
How can I create a new "colorScheme"?
How can I secure my Swiki Installation with SSL?
How do I change the colors of a swiki page?
How do I use the "security" section in the admin mode?
Can anyone use this Swiki?
Who is this Swiki aimed at?
What's the best way to start a page in this Swiki?
Can I preview a page before saving it? (as in Wikipedia)
If this Swiki is not for me, can you recommend other Wikis or Swikis where I could find a home?
Is there a shorthand for using a picture as a link?
How do I refer to another swiki on the same server without using an absolute path?
Is there a simple example how to use Squeak embedded in the page?

(above is incomplete. more updates as I get to them... tgiles )
Can I get my own copy of the Swiki code to run on my own server?
Is the Swiki code open source?
Can I develop the Swiki code for my own purposes?
How can I find out about the latest developments in Swiki?
Is there a suggestions page for improvements to Swiki?
Is there a list of Swikis, or Swiki farms?
How can I contact other Swiki users?

Problems

Developer Questions

Administration Questions

User Questions


Beginners Questions (and Answers)

(Please, post any beginner questions here (no matter how silly). Hopefully, many of these can be integrated into the help guide that appears when clicking the help button)

  • How do I change the colors of a swiki page?
Pick out a theme you would like to use, then edit the /default/files/schemes/(theme name)/colorScheme.sm, edit it and make the changes you would like and save. refresh the page and you should see your changes.

  • How do I use the "security" section in the admin mode ? - for example: how do I create separate administration rights for different swikis?

(Each of the security setting can be changed for each Section of a Swiki. Select the Swiki site you want to edit the security settings to and then clikck on "Security")

While in Admin Mode,
  1. Highlight the Swiki you wish to work with, then click on Security
  2. Click on "Create Security Profile" If there is no profile for that item.

  1. The Security setup is self explanatory, but here is a brief synopsis of the options available:
  • Default Privileges - This is the privileges available when someone just surfs into the site without signing in. The options range from:
  1. Deny All - Can't read anything on the site
  2. Read Only - Means just that. no editing.
  3. Append - May append to a page, but not able to edit it.
  4. Write - May edit the page.
  5. Allow All - All options are available to an anonymous user.
  • Account Privileges - All the options below are just like the options in Default Privileges, but allow for username:password pairs (or ip_number / ip_mask).
  1. Read Only - Username:Password (or ip_number / ip_mask) which may read the pages.
  2. Append - Username:Password (or ip_number / ip_mask) which may append to the pages.
  3. Write - Username:Password (or ip_number / ip_mask) which may write pages.
  4. Allow All - Username:Password (or ip_number / ip_mask) which may do all of the above.
Usernames and passwords come in pairs, one to a line. Let's say you wanted to allow write to bob in accounting with the password "foo". In the "Write" field you would have a line like the following:
bob:foo
If you wished to allow access via IP addresses instead, just enter the IP address at the level of access. For example, if bob's computer IP address was 192.168.1.50 and you wanted to give him "Allow All" access when he is at his computer, then you would enter the following in the "Allow All" section:
192.168.1.50
someone verify the above. I believe I'm correct here. Thanks!

tgiles@n0sp@m.myrealbox.com

  • Can anyone use this Swiki?

Yes. B.r http://sierra4x4.has.it_@Who is this Swiki aimed at
  • Who is this Swiki aimed at?

There are many reasons you may be interested in Swiki:
  1. Learning Squeak and curious about the internals of Squeak programming.
  2. New to Wikis in general and want an easy way to start learning the care and feeding of Wikis in an easy environment.
  3. Have an old box you want to repurpose for documents (hey, thats me!)
  4. Just like messing around with new software.

tgiles@n0sp@m.myrealbox.com

  • What's the best way to start a page in this Swiki?

Already answered in the Help section
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/swiki/help#createPageB.r.http://sierra4x4.has.it_@Can I preview a page before saving it
  • Can I preview a page before saving it? (as in Wikipedia)

No B.r. http://sierra4x4.has.it

  • If this Swiki is not '''for me''', can you recommend other Wikis or Swikis where I could find a home? (Questions posted by DavidMartland – see WardsWiki)

I'd look at Moinmoin (simple python cgi) and Twiki (perl cgi, very popular, lots of features). / Patrick Tufts zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
I also like UseModwhich is a single perl script and very easy to set up. Sean

  • Is there a shorthand for using a picture as a link?
No

  • How do I refer to another swiki on the same server without using an absolute path?
You can do a near absolute path like this: http:/squeak.

  • Is there a simple example how to use Squeak embedded in the page? like < ? ....code ... ? >
Simple example: *?Date today printString?*
Simple answer: Won't work on all swikis. ActiveSwikiPages have to be enabled. Only one i know of is Torge's-How do I upload a file to the coweb?
Choose the "uploads" button (on the left for this Swiki). From there, use the "Browse" button to navigate to the file you would like to upload. Decide if you want to upload the file to just the current page or for the whole Swiki. This limits how easy it would be to reference the upload later. Then select the "Upload" button. Transfer time can be long for large files.
  • How can I delete a file I've uploaded?
There is no provision to delete files.
  • Why won't my .gif or .jpg file show up in my page?
  • Why won't my .bmp (or .psd, .pdf, etc.) file show up in my page?
  • How do I make my text colored?
You can use any Language which is interpreted by the Browser on Clientside (HTML, Javascript, ...).
  • How do I put a chart I've made in Excel into my page?
a) Attach it to the Page and link it in the text.
b) Make a picture of your chart, attach it and link it. It will be displayed.
  • How can I make things centered?
You can use any HTML you want: <div align=center>foo</div>
  • My images take forever to display. How can I make this faster?
  • I accidentally messed up a page. How can I fix it?
Search for the old page in the history, click edit, copy the text and insert it in the page you want to repair.
  • I delete the name of my page. Where did it go? Can I get it back?
  • What is an "Edit Conflict" and what should I do when I get that?
  • How can I make a simple table?
Try this one: | the text |
and it looks like:
the text
  • How can I put my images and text side by side?

(P.S. I think these questions should use the name coweb rather than swiki. I have answers to some of these written already somewhere. Colleen)
  • using an aliased link in the syntax &star alias > ling &star causes many links on the same page having the same name. This is a bug I guess.
  • how do I replace the icons by my own ?
  • I got a ComSwiki with a site's loggin. There is 20 peoples using it. How do I give access only to a particular page to a particular person without explicitly denied the others pages to this person (you know the problem if there is lot of pages).

Then it's outside the scope of a Wiki, that should be available for all. Use something like Lotus Quickplace instead.http://www.lotus.com/quickplaceB.r.http://sierra4x4.has.it

Can I "alias" attachments?


If I upload an attachment, I can reference it by name, but the standard *my name>+my-file.txt+* does not seem to work.

You have to do:
*+my namemy-file.txt+*my name

Hi Is there a version of Swiki running on Apache?

I know that u choose to run on Comache (lighter, faster..) but I like to be able to give an answer to my network admin.... not having to run Swiki on Comanche would help me to get a Swiki running. Or can I get a Comanche server running on the same machine that would be running an Apache server? (newbie... to this world..)
Thanks/i

Comanche and Swiki are very "intertwined" so you can not run Swiki without Comance. But you can definitely run a Comanche server on the same server that has Apache, but it would have to use another port than Apache (default fot http is 80 which probably your Apache uses).

And you could probably (though I have not done it myself) useApache as a "frontend" on top of Comanche using "reverse proxying" and "virtual hosting". The advantages of this would be that everything goes through Apache (logging, security etc) and you could proably use https (secure sockets) and hide the fact that Comanche uses another port (virtual hosts).

There might also be other Wiki implementations that can run "on" Apache.

regards, G?an Hultgrenmailto:goran.hultgren@bluefish.se@InsertSubmission

How do I configure my Swiki to put an input form with an "add to this page" button on every page? How can I change the text of the button?


Thanks for the help! Alex (email: awolff "at" uni-greifswald.de)

^_@

hola mi nombre es mariano soy de la plata y me estan llegando e mails con virus de una persona cuya dirección IP es 200.42.139.227, buscando me dice que salio de la pagina de Query IP Host: dup-200-42-139-227.prima.net.ar se hace llamar soledadbaigorria@hotmail.com, me interesaría saber quien es para hacer las denuncias que correspondan desde ya muchas gracias
^_@
Hi, I put "@InsertSubmission" onto this question, because I'm linking to the portion from http://wikifeatures.wiki.taoriver.net/moin.cgi/InsertSubmission . Take care!
^_@
the link to the question about where to find swiki farms (along with other faq's) is not working, I'd like to find find a secure server for my swikis. Please email me when anyone responds: poliat at qwest dot net, thanks. Frank Poliat



Here is the code for the add box. B.r. MW http://sierra4x4.has.it!!How can I delete a page in my Swiki ?

You can't. B.r. MWhttp://sierra4x4.has.ithow do the History page work?
  • I see +/- buttons, what do they do?
  • are the differences listed between versions (delta), or is just one version shown?

Does the Windows version work under Windows 2000 professional?

It sure does. B.r. MWhttp://sierra4x4.has.itI'm setting up a new Swiki. How do I establish password access to various parts of the site? The only crucial part is password write protection, but my ideal would be having multiple users, each of whom can read and edit anything on the site. Outsiders would be able to read and edit some of the site, simply read other parts, and have no access to some parts at all. From my reading this seems possible with Swiki (using enhancements?) but I couldn't figure out how.

Thanks,
David Goldhaber-Gordon
goldhaber-gordon@stanford.edu

I would sugest quickplace from Lotus for this. http://www.lotus.com/quickplaceB.r. MWhttp://sierra4x4.has.itOn the WikiWiki site it was mentioned that HTML would not work–
but it will work on Swiki?
Is the swiki code public domain, or is there a license? If there's a license, is it BPL, GPL, ... ?

How does this "add to the page" text box work, I wonder? -hb.

It simply add the text to the page, when you submit it. I posted it above. B.r. MWhttp://sierra4x4.has.itHow do I get started?

Download it and start it and then follow the instructions, B.r. MWhttp://sierra4x4.has.itWhat port does Swiki run on?

You can choose for yourself. B.r. MWhttp://sierra4x4.has.itThis will be added...


Cascading Style sheets
They work in Swiki?
How do they work?
Do I have to put something like this in every page?
How do I link them?
Where do I put my css file?
Swiki understands?

Sorry I put this in the developer section.

Once again thank you.


Is there a way to protect documents I have uploaded to my wiki? If I upload a Word doc, even if I don't make changes (but browse the document) the Wiki says changes were made and do I want to save...wish to avoid seeing that dialog box at all.



Developer Questions (and Answers)

(These could be really hard)

Plug-ins

Q. How do I create a new plug-in?
A. You just have to add a corresponding action for the swiki which you want to create the plug-in for. Using the swiki browser, check out the plug-ins found in refs :: actions (page) :: plug-ins/tt. For example, take a look at ttsince-plugin/tt. In tells you how much time has past since a certain day. To create a new plug-in, simply create a new page action which ends with tt-plugin/tt. Then, when tt<?newone?>/tt is called in the text of the page, it will call the code in that page action. The request will contain a setting called options with a dictionary of all fields added to the plug-in. From there, you can do with it what you want.

Page Counters

Q. How do I set up a page counter for any specific page of a swiki. Or, failing that.
A. Just copy and paste the counter code into your page using the html brackets. See the first page on my site.http://sierra4x4.has.itQ. Is it possible to set up a counter for the swiki itself?
A. The swiki can write a log to your disk so if you use a program like webtrends to read this code it might be possible but i have not tested it. Good Luck MWhttp://sierra4x4.has.itThanks, Mike Karesmike.kares@net-linx.com




How do I create a swiki template using frames?


How do I create a template with an editable "contents list" frame AND a main frame?


How can I make a swiki server reboot automatically whenever it crashes?

(I assume you not really mean to reboot the machine but to restart the server)

First write a script that repeatedly starts the swiki:
#! /bin/sh
while true ; do squeakcomanche swiki.image ; done
This assumes you rename your VM to squeakcomanche/tt which is usefull because it stands out in the process list. Then write another script that checks if it is still responding and kills it eventually:
#! /bin/sh
wget -q -O /dev/null -T 20 http://localhost:8080/ || killall squeakcomanche
This sets the timeout to 20 seconds. Then you put this script into a cron job or make it loop with a ttsleep 300/tt delay so it checks every 5 minutes if everything is okay. OTOH, my server runs fine for weeks - you should try another VM if it keeps crashing. – Bert Freudenberg

Modifying the above to work on Windows with Cygwin

The latest version of Cygwin (http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin) provides all of the utilities necessary to implement the reboot scripts listed above, except/i the killall executable. The following is a Perl script that takes the name of a process and kills all occurences of it. Used in conjunction with Cygwin and the scripts above (modified to call this Perl script), you can have 99% Swiki uptime on your Windows machine :) – Mike T.

Modified script for Cygwin, which doesn't have a cron feature:
while true; do { wget -q -O /dev/null -T 20 http://localhost || kill_process.pl squeak; sleep 20s; } ; done

killall.pl script for killing a process by name
#!/bin/perl

@process_list = `ps | grep $ARGV[0]`;
foreach $thisProcess (@process_list)
{
  if ($thisProcess =~ /([0-9]+)/)
  {
    `kill $1`;
    print "killing $1\n";
  }
}

How do I serve a regular static files web site out of the root of my host, but keep the Swikis available "behind"?

(ie: http://myhost to serve index.html and other static files, but http://myhost/aSwikiName to serve the Swiki. With the default setup, the first URL offers a list of Swikis on the host and the search option...) - and a /robots.txt file too.

Can I use SSP (Smalltalk Server Pages) with a swiki? How?

(Please provide a simple date/time printing example.)

Currently, this is not supported in the Comanche Swiki release. It is supported by swiki.net, but their code is not yet open. It is highly unlikely that this will get supported any time soon by SwikiCentral. I estimate that combining Comanche Swiki with SSP should be fairly easy if anyone is willing to spend some time on it. -Je77!How is the mapping between a URL and modules done?
(When a client requests a URL from Comanche+swiki, how does the server get it and how does it decide the modules to process it?)

A client sends a URL like /myswiki/19.edit, thereby trying to edit page 19 on the myswiki swiki. The request will be processed by the edit.page address of the myswiki swiki. If myswiki inherits from refs, then it will use the address found in the file swiki/refs/addresses/edit.page. The request is given to a page address since 19 indicates that it is a page. For more on this, check outhttp://seaweed.cc.gatech.edu/docs/4. -Je77!How sensitive are the mac-centric template files?

If I run a swiki on a Unix machine, and I want to change the files,
will something really terrible happen if I change the Mac-generated
files to unix text files.

How can I edit templates on a Unix machine?

I'm not sure what this question means. Templates can use any line-breaks. Macs use CR. UNIX uses LF. DOS uses CRLF. -Je77Smalltalk Server Pages!can't upload from Windows CE
I've surfed several swikis using Pocket Internet Explorer on a Windows CE 2.11 box, and the "Browse" button on the attachments page never renders. The "upload" button is there and seems to do something, but no matter what path I specify in the text box, I can't upload the files I need to. any clues how to fix?

This seems like a Pocket Internet Explorer problem. -Je77_

How do I increase the width of the edit page's text boxes?

For example, the swiki athttp://manatee.cc.gatech.edu:8080/beta/1 provides a much wider view, and a different font.
You can edit templatefile 15 in refs\templates directory. This way it should also be possible to edit the default page content when creating a new page. Take a look at template 56 - Da Vince/i

qq

Is there a way in which a Java program can query to get a list of the pages in a particular Swiki, and the pages they're connected to? I know I can simply write a crawler, but was wondering whether there's a more elegant way (an API?) to do it directly. Or do I just break down and have the admin install the Swiki RPC API?


Cascading Style sheets
They work in Swiki?
How do they work?
Do I have to put something like this link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="somecss.css" in every page?
How do I link them?
Where do I put my css file?
Swiki understands div?

Thank You for your help.

Is there a way to add an item to the swiki standard menu?

Yes, check hereHow do I add a logo to every page?Good Luckhttp://sierra4x4.has.it


Isn't there a traditional 'view all' page to list all the page titles? Traditional wikis have this because it is infinitely more user-friendly than forcing search; not having it defeats much of the browsability. Is there a way for you or a naive administrator (me) to implement this?

SWIKI Rendering: Is there a mechanism to preserve the "Links from" other pages?

I have the problem in the swiki, that once it is rendered, I am missing the bottom section that shows from what other pages the current page is linked. How should I tamper around with the squeak code to preserve this?


Default Charset ?/B
How can I change the default HTTP header, e.g. to change "charset=ISO-8859-1" to "charset=ISO-8859-2" ?

Thanks, Jan.
piji

I lock a page and I've tried to unlock it with the Admin pw...
to no avail.... Is there a limitation on the numbers of attempts?
thanksClaude>Diphda_the_frog@netscape.net

How to install Swiki on the computer?

On the page entitle Swiki Swiki and clicked on the Downloading Swiki Server; chose the Macintosh Server Download since that’s what I have on my computer. Then, I have licked on both:
_ OS9: ComSwiki-OS9.sea.hqx


After doing that, I can see two icons on my desktop but still I am unable to open them.
Any suggestions?

Fatima.



only hope+

Can anyone lock a page? It seems odd that you can lock a page that you have not created?!


  • How can I fix the delay of the system clock during the summer time? Thanks.

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