Installing Foswiki on a GoDaddy

This guide provides steps for installing Foswiki on GoDaddy's delux plan.
OBSOLETE INFORMATION This guide needs updating for Foswiki 2.0. See the official InstallationGuide

You will need ssh access, and it helps to turn on apache error logging.

Create your host / virtual host viat the GoDaddy control panel

1. Get and unpack the Foswiki code

The Foswiki code can be obtained from the Download section of the Foswiki home page.

ssh to the web server, so you can use wget to download the file to the server, using something like
Use the latest version, not Foswiki 1.0.9!

ssh youraccount@your.server.com
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/foswiki/files/foswiki/Foswiki-1.0.9.tgz

Unpack the code:

cd html
mkdir foswiki
cd foswiki
tar xvzf Foswiki-1.0.9.tgz
cd Foswiki-1.0.9

2. Edit the LocalLib.cfg file

This is frequently unnecessary. Foswiki figures out it's lib path automatically.

Copy the file bin/LocalLib.cfg.txt to bin/LocalLib.cfg and open the file for editing.

Set the absolute path to the Foswiki lib directory, by modifying the line

$foswikiLibPath = "/home/content/y/o/u/youraccount/html/foswiki/Foswiki-1.0.9/lib";

appropriately (note that the y, o, u are the first 3 letters of your account name.. (run pwd to find out the path).

3. Create, Copy and edit the appropriate .htaccess files

Each of the Foswiki directories (including the root directory) needs an .htaccess file; these allow indeed a per-directory configuration for the web server.

Templates for these .htaccess files are distributed with Foswiki and can be found in the root directory. It concerns
  • root-htaccess.txt: should be copied to .htaccess
  • pub-htaccess.txt: should be copied to pub/.htaccess
  • bin-htaccess.txt: should be copied to bin/.htaccess
  • subdir-htaccess.txt: should be copied to the remaining subdirectories ( data, lib, locale, templates, tools, and working), e.g. tools/.htaccess
For all these .htaccess files, chances are that the default content is fine to get started. For the the bin/.htaccess file, however, it is compulsory to edit
  • the path to the Foswiki scripts directory bin/
  • the path to the Foswiki data directory data/
The following changes are not required for Foswiki 2.0. To get to step 4, you will need to comment out ( # signifies a comment) the following lines in the bin/.htaccess file (GoDaddy's server appears not to give you access to the htpasswd file..)
<FilesMatch "configure.*">
        SetHandler cgi-script
        Order Deny,Allow
#       Deny from all
#       Allow from 127.0.0.1, 192.168.1.10
#        Require user {Administrators}
#       Satisfy Any
</FilesMatch>

STOP HERE: Proceed to bootstrap instructions in the InstallationGuide. Do not start directly with the configure script.

4. Run the Configuration Script

Point your browser to the Foswiki root directory. You will see a word of welcome and find some links to important files. One of these is the bin/configure script which you can run by clicking on the `Configure Script' link.

The Configure script will guess paths and asks you to adapt or confirm these. Click Save - You will also be prompted to create an admin password.

Continue back to continue Configure, so that you can finish the configuration

Remember to configure an {WebMasterEmail} in the Mail and Proxies section - otherwise registration will fail.

Once you clicked through the configure forms, you will be able to use and administrate your Foswiki site.

5. Register a user using the password you'd like to use to protect / access configure

Navigate to your new wiki - Configure will provide you with a link. Click Register and fill in the form for a user and password that you will use to access configure

6. Create a .htpasswd file for configure

(another GoDaddy wrinkle) GoDaddy's permissions setup prevents the web server from accessing the .htaccess file when using apache BasicAuth (it works fine for TemplateAuth) so we have to create a separate password file. (neither user nor group permissions seem to work)

copy the newly created .htpasswd file to your home directory
cp /home/content/y/o/u/youraccount/html/foswiki/Foswiki-1.0.9/data/.htpasswd /home/content/y/o/u/youraccount/.foswiki_configure_htpasswd
chmod 666 /home/content/y/o/u/youraccount/.foswiki_configure_htpasswd

then edit the .htaccess file in your Foswiki-1.0.9/bin directory, changing the following lines:

# Authentication type (htpasswd file) (comment out this if you configure htpasswd / LDAP support)
AuthUserFile /home/content/y/o/u/youraccount/html/foswiki/Foswiki-1.0.9/data/.htpasswd
AuthName 'Enter your WikiName: (First name and last name, no space, no dots, capitalized, e.g. JohnSmith). Cancel to register if you do not have one.'
AuthType Basic
To
# Authentication type (htpasswd file) (comment out this if you configure htpasswd / LDAP support)
AuthUserFile /home/content/y/o/u/youraccount/.foswiki_configure_htpasswd
AuthName 'Enter your WikiName: (First name and last name, no space, no dots, capitalized, e.g. JohnSmith). Cancel to register if you do not have one.'
AuthType Basic

and
<FilesMatch "configure.*">
        SetHandler cgi-script
        Order Deny,Allow
#       Deny from all
#       Allow from 127.0.0.1, 192.168.1.10
#        Require user {Administrators}
#       Satisfy Any
</FilesMatch>
To
<FilesMatch "configure.*">
        SetHandler cgi-script
        Order Deny,Allow
       Deny from all
#       Allow from 127.0.0.1, 192.168.1.10
        Require user TheUserNameYouRegistered
#       Satisfy Any
</FilesMatch>

You should now be required to enter a username and password to access configure.

If you access your configuration from a fixed static IP, you can change the Allow from line to match that IP address for further security.

7. update TinyMCEPlugin (if necessary)

If you are installing Foswiki 1.0.9, you may find that Wysiwyg editing doesn't work - there is a new version that resolves this issue:

goto your configure , Click on the _Find More Extensions button in the Extensions section, and once its's loaded the list of available Extensions.

navigate to TinyMCEPlugin and click upgrade.

8. ShorterUrls (optional)

If you want to use short URLs, you should tailor the foswiki/.htaccess Before proceeding with Bootstrap!

To simplify your URL's from http://your.server.com/Foswiki-1.0.9/bin/view/System/WebChanges to http://your.server.com/System/WebChanges, you add a /home/content/y/o/u/youraccount/html/foswiki/.htaccess containing

#http://foswiki.org/Support/ShorterUrlCookbook#Option_2a_Complete_example_with
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([a-z]*)/([A-Z].*)       /Foswiki-1.0.9/bin/$1/$2     [L,PT]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}             !Foswiki-1.0.9.*
RewriteRule ^([A-Z].*)                /Foswiki-1.0.9/bin/view/$1   [L,PT]
RewriteRule ^$                        /Foswiki-1.0.9/bin/view/Myco      [L,PT]
#http://foswiki.org/Support/ShorterUrlCookbook#Option_2a_Complete_example_withRewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([a-z]*)/([A-Z].*)       /Foswiki-1.0.9/bin/$1/$2     [L,PT]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}             !Foswiki-1.0.9.*RewriteRule ^([A-Z].*)                /Foswiki-1.0.9/bin/view/$1   [L,PT]RewriteRule ^$                        /Foswiki-1.0.9/bin/view/Myco      [L,PT]

Bootstrap will figure out the rest:

and modify your /home/content/y/o/u/youraccount/html/foswiki/lib/LocalSite.cfg to set (you will need to add it manually)
$Foswiki::cfg{ScriptUrlPath} = '';
$Foswiki::cfg{ScriptUrlPaths}{view} = '';
-- SvenDowideit - 27 Jul 2010

Please note that these instructions nearly worked for me. Various workarounds and amendments can be found here: http://foswiki.org/Support/Question704

-- SimonHardyFrancis - 03 Mar 2011
Topic revision: r3 - 30 Sep 2015, GeorgeClark
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