After you have downloaded and installed MoinMoin, you will want to "have a wiki". As explained at the bottom of ../BasicInstallation, you have to copy several directories and files. This way, you can have as many wikis as you want, and you can easily upgrade MoinMoin: only the original files will be overwritten, not your copies.

Every time you copy those files (and modify the configuration of your server accordingly), you create what is called a wiki instance. Each wiki instance is independent from the others, with a different configuration, different pages, different users, etc.

Some of the steps you need to take depend on which web server and which operating system you use. They are described on dedicated pages, which you should read (at least the beginning) before reading this one. Some other steps are common to every webserver and operating system (copying files around, setting permissions), and this is what is described here.

Linux users can download and use createinstance.sh (a bash script that creates the instance) instead of doing all steps manually:

1. If anything is unclear, just read the sections below for more hints.
2. Have a look into the script before running it, if all settings are correct for your setup:

   • If your system does not have /bin/bash. try /bin/sh (or whatever your shell is called) - see the first line in the script.

   • USER and GROUP should be the user and group used by your web-server for running moin.

   • SHARE is where the shared files were copied to, see install.log from the setup.py install step

3. Make the script executable (e.g. chmod +x createinstance.sh).

4. The script takes a single parameter: the location of your wiki instance (see "Choose a location" section below):

   # ./createinstance.sh /path/to/mywiki

5. Now continue in section "Tune configuration"

Read this first

Security warnings

Note to Windows users

All the commands below are Linux commands. The text descriptions that introduce them should be enough to help you understand what you need to do. Use the Windows Explorer, or the appropriate text-mode commands.

Choose a wiki name

Choose a unique name for the new wiki instance you want to create. It should be a short word, something that reflects what you intend to use the wiki for, like the name of your organization, of your team, of the project you are working on, etc.

The name "mywiki" is used as an example in the various commands below.

Choose a location

Choose a directory on your disk, it will contain all the files needed for your wiki instance. At the beginning, your wiki instance will use approximately 10 MB of disk space. Then of course, it will grow depending on the way your wiki is used. A personal wiki, even with many pages, might only use 30 MB or 40 MB of disk space. A popular wiki, or a wiki with many files attached to the pages, might use much more, of course.

If you are the administrator (or root) of the server, you can use anything you like or that makes sense to you, for example /usr/local/var/moin, /mnt/wikis, etc.

If you are a simple user, you will probably only be allowed to write in your personal, "home" directory. Choose a subdirectory that makes sense to you, for example the share/moin subdirectory.

Collect some important information

This is where the instructions differ according to the web server and operating system you use, and whether you are the administrator or a simple user. See the appropriate pages for your web server and operating system combination.

On Linux, the export command will be used to remember the collected information. Windows users should write it down carefully (maybe cutting-and-pasting in a Notepad window), or store it in environment variables if they use the command prompt.

• PREFIX is the prefix you used during the ../BasicInstallation

• SHARE is the name of the share directory, as discussed at the bottom of ../BasicInstallation

• WIKILOCATION is the name of the directory that will contain your wiki instance

• INSTANCE is the directory containing the wiki instance. It cannot be an existing directory readable through Apache, otherwise it will fail.

If you are an administrator, you also need to collect the following:

• USER is the user name of the web server

• GROUP is the name of the group to which the web server belongs

Now, Linux folks, let's store these settings in memory:

> export PREFIX=/usr                # this might be something else
> export SHARE=$PREFIX/share/moin   # this should be correct for most people
> export WIKILOCATION=$SHARE        # this is just an example
> export INSTANCE=mywiki            # this is just an example

Administrators also need the following two lines:

> export USER=www-data              # this is just an example
> export GROUP=www-data             # this is just an example

Copy the files

To create your new instance, you first need to create a directory named like your instance, inside the WIKILOCATION. Then you need to copy the data and underlay directories from your SHARE directory into your instance directory. Finally, you need to copy the wikiconfig.py file from the config directory into the instance directory.

Linux folks need to just type these commands:

> cd $WIKILOCATION
> mkdir $INSTANCE                   # make a directory for this instance
> cp -R $SHARE/data $INSTANCE       # copy template data directory
> cp -R $SHARE/underlay $INSTANCE   # copy underlay data directory
> cp $SHARE/config/wikiconfig.py $INSTANCE   # copy wiki configuration sample file

• Note that you just need to keep one underlay directory on your system if you are running multiple wikis (e.g. in a farm.)

Set permissions

Administrators

Administrators need to restrict the permissions of the files, so that only the web server (and the administrator of course) can read and write them. For maximum security, no other user on the machine should be able to read or write anything in the wiki instance directory. Don't forget that this directory contains sensitive information, notably the (encrypted) passwords of the wiki users.

On Linux, the following commands should be enough:

> chown -R $USER.$GROUP $INSTANCE   # check that USER and GROUP are correct
> chmod -R ug+rwX $INSTANCE         # USER.GROUP may read and write
> chmod -R o-rwx $INSTANCE          # everybody else is rejected

Normal users

Normal users, on the contrary, need to broaden the permissions of the files, so that the web server can read and write them. On recent Windows versions, and on some versions of Linux and other systems, access control lists can be used to that effect. They are, however, powerful and complicated, much beyond the scope of this document. Ask a knowledgeable person about them.

Without them, normal users have to allow everybody to access the instance directory. This is the only way the web server can enter it and do its work. This is, of course, VERY INSECURE, since any other user and program on the server can read the directory. You should not use such a setup for a wiki open to the public.

On Linux, the following commands will open the instance directory to the whole world:

> chmod -R a+rwX $INSTANCE

Note:

• it is also possible to put the web server and the normal user in the same group, and then only open the instance directory to the members of that group. This is a bit more secure (depending on who else is in the group), but you need the cooperation of the server administrator; he is the one setting up groups.

• the best other possibility is that the server administrator sets up suexec to execute CGI scripts in user directories under the user id of that user. You don't need to give world permissions that way, so it is a quite secure setup, but you also need cooperation of the administrator.

Tune configuration

Now, you need to tune the configuration of your web server and of your wiki instance. Look at the appropriate help page for your web server, then come back here to tune the settings of your wiki instance.

Edit wikiconfig.py. The default settings should work fine in most cases, but there are some things that you will probably want to change, like the name and logo of your wiki! Read the comments inside wikiconfig.py, they will guide you through this process.

HelpOnConfiguration contains all the details about all the options, in case the comments in wikiconfig.py are not enough.

Using MoinMoin with Twisted

Twisted is an event-driven networking framework for many kinds of applications. For MoinMoin Twisted is used as a web server that just imports MoinMoin persistently. This has the advantage that the Python interpreter and all Python scripts (including Twisted itself and also MoinMoin) is only loaded and initialized one time, and that data can be cached in memory from request to request, enhancing the performance of MoinMoin.

• First do ../BasicInstallation and ../WikiInstanceCreation.

Besides the general installation you need 3 files:

1. the script /path/to/cgi-dir/mointwisted (see "Starting the server" below)

2. the webserver script file like mointwisted.py (which needs to be in the same directory where your working directory is).

3. the configuration file like /path/to/wikiconfig-dir/wikiconfig.py

Install Twisted

First, install Twisted (see URL above). Many Linux distributions have Twisted packages. Please refer to the documentation of Twisted for installation information.

Configuring the Twisted server

Copy the file wiki/server/mointwisted.py to your wiki directory. Edit and adapt the settings to your needs.

System path configuration

If you did a standard install, and you are not a developer, you probably want to skip this section. Otherwise, you might want to add the path to moin and config file, like that:

sys.path.insert(0, '/path/to/moin')
sys.path.insert(0, '/path/to/wikiconfig')

Config class options

If you did a standard install, the default options might be just what you need. Check and change what you like:

Configuring wikiconfig.py

The sample config file should be just fine.

Don't change url_prefix_static as the default value is hardcoded in the Twisted server.

Starting the server

on Unix

On GNU/Linux, Mac OS X or another POSIX-like OS, copy wiki/server/mointwisted to your wiki directory. You might want to adapt PYTHONPATH and the path to twistd.

Start the server with ./mointwisted start and test your wiki at http://localhost:8080/. Stop the server with ./mointwisted stop.

For more options run ./mointwisted without arguments.

If you want to start the server via initscript make sure mointwisted finds montwisted.py on startup!

on Windows

Copy wiki/server/mointwisted.cmd to your wiki directory. You might have to change the path pointing to the python-scripts directory.

Double click mointwisted.cmd to start the server. It will create a new terminal window. To stop the server, close the terminal window.

A windows service runner written in Python

I have written a service runner to help configuring a windows service to run, because I prefer to run moin using Twisted.

Usage:

1. install pywin32
2. download servicerunner.py
3. modify the "mointwisted" and "mointwisted_dir" according to your system
4. run "servicerunner.py install" on the command line

servicerunner.py

These instructions will walk you through, step by step, setting up Moin on Mac OS X

• Apple's latest operating system, 10.5 Leopard, packs enough under-hood changes that, rather than a bunch of if/then instructions, going forward this page will be updated only for Leopard. If you have an older system (Tiger or Panther) you can click 'info' and view revision 45 for hints for those operating systems.

System Requirements & Preparation

MacOS 10.5 Leopard includes the latest version of Python, version 2.5.1. (Older versions 10.4-Tiger and 10.3-Panther include the minimum required versions of Python to run Moin without updating, 2.3.5 and 2.3 respectively).

!MoinMoin installation requires the use of the Terminal and assumes you have a basic familiarity with commands and syntax. When you read commandline mentioned below, assume that you will enter these commands using the Terminal.app (located in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app).

Make sure Apache is started ('Apple' menu > 'System Preferences...' > 'Sharing' panel > and check "Personal Web Sharing")

Installation

Installing MoinMoin

1. Download !MoinMoin

   • The most current version is here: MoinMoinDownload

2. Expand the archive

   • Double-click to expand the moin-X.X.tar.gz archive.

   • You should then have a folder such as moin-x.x where "x.x" is the current release number. This folder will contain a setup.py file in addition to several other files and subfolders. Optionally, you may want to move the expanded moin-X.X folder to a location more convenient to work from, like into a temp folder the root of your hard drive.

3. Run Setup.py from the commandline

   • Open Terminal.app and enter the commands:

     sudo -s
     password:

   • Now you have root privileges in this shell (note: the prompt will change from a $ to a #). To install, type:

     cd /temp/moin-1.6

   • Important: Now you have to decide where you want to install your Moin wiki installation; this will be your wiki root folder. Unix traditionalists will install this into /usr/local because of long standing unix conventions. However, on Mac, this and other unix folders are typically hidden from the Finder. So, you may want to install outside this folder where you can more easily manage the files (such as drag-copy backups, editing config files using !TextEdit.app, etc). In the examples below, Moin is installed in a folder on the root of your hard drive named /moinwiki. If you want to follow unix conventions, simply substitute /usr/local for /moinwiki in all the examples below.

     python setup.py install --install-data='/moinwiki'

   • The --install-data='/moinwiki' argument tells the setup script where to put the data. In this case, it will create a folder on the root of your hard drive called 'moinwiki'.

   • Note: 'moinwiki' may seem like an odd name, but there are a number 'moin' folders created, so I use 'moinwiki' to distinguish this folder from the others. You can of course name it anything you like.

   • Security warning: Your wiki should not be in the "Sites" folder of your home folder, or in the /Library/!WebServer/Documents (Apache root) folder. Do not put your wiki folder where the web server can access it!

4. Add yourself access privileges for moinwiki

5. Apple tightened security in 10.5 Leopard. We want to add our username to the moinwiki folder so that it's easier to work with.

   1. right-click (control-click) on the moinwiki folder, and select "Get Info...".
   2. click the lock icon in the lower-right corner, enter your password to unlock.
   3. click the + icon to add a new user, from the dialog select your username.

   4. change your privileges to "Read & Write"

   5. click the gear icon and select "Apply to enclosed items".

The installation portion is now finished.

Configuration

You are now ready to create a wiki instance! The following instructions will create a wiki called "mywiki". You may replace the name mywiki with almost any name you wish, but do not use wiki because that is used by !MoinMoin for loading standard images and style sheets. Although this can be changed later, the name you choose for mywiki will become part of the url used to access your site, e.g. http://server.myorganization.org/mywiki/FrontPage.

Creating a Wiki Instance

We now want to create our own wiki instance and copy in a default set of templates and files. Do these commands:

cd /moinwiki/share/moin
mkdir mywiki
cp -r data mywiki
cp -r underlay mywiki
cp server/moin.cgi mywiki
cp config/wikiconfig.py mywiki

You can repeat these steps for creating multiple instances, run these same commands again, substituting mywiki2 for mywiki.

Configuring Apache httpd.conf

Apple upgraded Apache to 2.2 in Leopard, which (among other things) brings tighter security controls than previous versions.

1. Add yourself access privileges for apache2 (alternatively, if you're comfortable with commandline (Terminal.app), you can bypass these steps and use sudo and pico instead)

   1. From the Finder, under the 'Go' menu, select "Go to folder..." and type /etc.

   2. right-click (control-click) on the apache2 folder, and select "Get Info...".
   3. click the lock icon in the lower-right corner, enter your password to unlock.
   4. click the + icon to add a new user, from the dialog select your username.

   5. change your privileges to "Read & Write"

   6. click the gear icon and select "Apply to enclosed items".

2. Edit Apache's configuration file, httpd.conf

   1. From the Finder, under the 'Go' menu, select "Go to folder..." and type /etc/Apache2. Drag the httpd.conf file onto !TextEdit.app.

   2. Go to the end of the Aliases section and edit like the example below:

          Alias /moin_static160/   "/moinwiki/share/moin/htdocs/"
          ScriptAlias /mywiki      "/moinwiki/share/moin/mywiki/moin.cgi"

      Add the following to allow Apache to access your moinwiki directory (see http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#options for more help):

      <Directory "/moinwiki">
          Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
          AllowOverride None
          Order allow,deny
          Allow from all
      </Directory>

   3. Save changes
   4. Restart Apache -
      • open System Preferences, go to the Sharing page, select "Personal Web Sharing" and click "Stop" then "Start".

      • Alternatively, from Terminal.app, type apachectl graceful.

Configuring moin.cgi

The moin.cgi file essentially tells Apache to run all the moin wiki pages through the python interpreter.

1. Edit the moin.cgi file at the following path /moinwiki/share/moin/mywiki/moin.cgi (click-drag the file onto !TextEdit.app). Change the line that points to your wikiconfig.py file, like in the example below.

   sys.path.insert(0, '/moinwiki/share/moin/mywiki/wikiconfig.py')

What to do if you get an "Internal Server Error"
This most likely means that the pathname above is not correct.

You can test your pathname by opening Terminal.app and pasting in the above line without the shebang #! statement (using the above example, /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/bin/Python. If the path is correct, you should see output indicating your Python version as well as sample commands such as "help", "copyright", "credits", etc. If you get the error "Bad executable (or shared library)" or "No such file or directory" then the path is likely wrong, and you will need to correct. I've also noticed that it helps to point directly at the "python" executable, rather than the alias or symlinks found in the upper directories.

Configuring wikiconfig.py

Open wikiconfig.py (click-drag the file onto !TextEdit.app) and read the comments. The wiki you created is a new "Untitled Wiki", using the default configuration. You want to give a better name and setup some configuration values.

• Note that the file belongs to user and group www:www. You can edit the file as root, or change the group of the file to yourself with chown www:username wikiconfig.py.

Edit /moinwiki/share/moin/mywiki/wikiconfig.py and change the sitename to the name of your wiki:

    sitename = 'My Mac Wiki'

Additionally, set data_dir and data_underlay_dir to the absolute paths of the particular directories. You can use relative paths for the directories, but note that they are relative to the CGI script, not the configuration file! Better to use absolute paths, and save yourself some headaches:

    data_dir = r'/moinwiki/share/moin/mywiki/data'
    data_underlay_dir = r'/moinwiki/share/moin/mywiki/underlay'

Uncomment the url_prefix_static line:

    url_prefix_static = '/moin_static160'

For a public installation, you'll normally want to forbid some of the more dangerous actions. Add a line like this to wikiconfig.py:

    actions_excluded = ['AttachFile', 'DeletePage', 'RenamePage', ]

Additional configuration details can be found in HelpOnConfiguration.

Setting Permissions

You have to make the web server the owner of the files in your wiki. Navigate to /moinwiki/share/moin/ and run the following commands:

chown -R www:www mywiki
chmod -R 744 mywiki

Testing Your New Wiki

In a web-browser surf to the site: http://localhost/mywiki You should see the !FrontPage of your new wiki.

Now run the unit tests, to make sure everything is fine. Go to this address: http://localhost/mywiki?action=test

Index

Requirements & Preparation

Before you install MoinMoin, make sure you have the necessary infrastructure in place, namely the Internet Information Services webserver (any version should be OK), and a Python installation (at least version 2.3 is required, the latest python release is recommended).

These instructions make the basic assumption that you will have these components installed in their default locations. In reality, you'll probably have them installed elsewhere (on the D: drive, for example). Be careful to substitute your drive and paths based on the following assumed default locations:

• IIS to its default location

• C:\Python - the Python interpreter

• C:\Moin - !MoinMoin itself

Installation

Installing IIS

From Microsoft: (http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/server/iis/)

1. To install IIS, add components, or remove components:

   1. Click Start => Settings => Control Panel => Add/Remove Programs.

   2. Click 'Add/Remove Windows Components', Check 'Internet Information Services' and follow the on-screen instructions to install. ( it is also recommended to click the 'details' button and un-selecting components you will not need. This will depend on your server role; but for example, you probably will not need FTP, or "Frontpage 2000 Server Extensions").

Make sure that your webserver runs without problems before you start to install !MoinMoin; problems with your webserver installation are not in the scope of this document.

Installing Python

There are currently two different distributions of Python available for Windows. Either version will work fine.

1. http://www.python.org - The standard open-source Python distribution.

   • The installer is a windows executable (.exe) file.

2. http://www.activestate.com - An alternative, commercially-supported, distribution (distributed for free (email address required)).

   • The installer is a Windows .MSI file.

   • If you are or plan to develop in the Python language, !ActivePython has some tools specific to the Windows operating system and includes a popular Windows IDE called Pythonwin.

!MoinMoin works with either distribution, but requires Python release 2.3 or later. Download and install the distribution of your choice. Be sure your Python installation is correct before proceeding. Installation is straightforward; however, any questions or issues regarding the Python installation process should be resolved through the use of resources provided by Python.org or !ActiveState.

Installing MoinMoin

1. Download !MoinMoin

   • The most current version is here: MoinMoinDownload

2. Expand the archive

   • Note: users of older versions of WinZip report problem expanding .tar.gz files. Either upgrade or use the free 7-Zip utility.

   • Expand the archive into C:\TEMP or an alternative location.

   • You should then have a folder such as C:\TEMP\moin-x.x where "x.x" is the current release number. This folder will contain a setup.py file in addition to several other files and subfolders.

3. Run Setup.py from the commandline

   • Open an DOS window (start > Run... > type cmd) and enter the commands:
     

     C:
     cd \temp
     unzip moin-1.6.zip
     cd moin-1.6
     python setup.py install --prefix=C:\Moin --record=install.log

This will install all necessary files to the "C:\Moin" directory, and create a "install.log" file listing all the files that are created there.

You are now ready to create a wiki instance.

Configuration

Creating a Wiki Instance

Enter these commands in a console window from C:\Moin>:

cd c:\Moin
md mywiki
md mywiki\data
md mywiki\underlay
xcopy share\moin\data mywiki\data /E
xcopy share\moin\underlay mywiki\underlay /E
copy share\moin\server\moin.cgi mywiki\
copy share\moin\config\wikiconfig.py mywiki\
copy share\moin\htdocs\index.html mywiki\default.htm

"mywiki" is the name of your wiki instance, you might want to chose a different name best fitting the intended use of this instance; just don't name it simply "wiki", because that would result in confusion and problems later on.

We have to make sure that moin.cgi can find the !MoinMoin directory, so that "import MoinMoin" will work. The easiest way to make sure MoinMoin can be imported is to append to sys.path within moin.cgi.

You can change the first two lines of code in moin.cgi to something like this:

   1 #!python
   2 import sys
   3 sys.path.append('C:/Moin/Lib/site-packages')

Notice that we're pointing to the directory which contains the !MoinMoin directory, not the directory itself.

Configuring IIS

Next, you'll need to create two virtual directories in IIS. One for the shared data, and one for this specific wiki instance.

Configuring IIS 5.0 and above

1. Open Internet Services Manager (Start > Settings > Control Panels > Administrative Tools > ...). Open up the tree to Default Web Site.

2. Right click on Default Web Site and choose New > Virtual directory.

   1. This will bring up a wizard with the mandatory useless first screen, hit next.

   2. Enter "wiki" for the alias name, hit next.

   3. Browse to "C:\Moin\share\moin\htdocs", hit next.

   4. Leave the Access permissions at their defaults, hit next.

   5. And now you're done, hit finish!

3. Now follow the same steps, but set the alias to "mywiki" and the path to "C:\Moin\mywiki".

4. Use IIS Admin to remove permissions to read the data directory:

   1. expand the "mywiki" node

   2. right click on data

   3. select Properties

   4. and uncheck Read.

   5. Repeat these steps with the underlay directory.

5. Now you need to setup the 'mywiki' alias so that it will run Python to interpret .cgi files.

   1. On Windows Server 2003, click the Create button under Application Settings to create an application space.

   2. Right-click on your new 'mywiki' alias and choose Properties. On the first tab (Virtual Directory), click the Configuration button.

   3. The first tab is the App Mappings tab, which defines which programs to use for each file extension.

   4. Click Add. Browse to your python.exe (probably something like c:\pythonXX\python.exe).

   5. Then add -u "%s" "%s" after the Python executable path. The Executable line will look something like this: "C:\Python22\python.exe" -u "%s" "%s". In the Extension box enter .cgi with the beginning period.

   6. Make sure that the Check that file exists option is not checked (if it is, !MoinMoin won't be able to display sub pages).

   7. Ok, you're done with the alias configuration, click OK several times to get back out of all the dialog boxes.

6. If you add another wiki instance, you'll only need to setup the reference to its folder, they can safely share the "wiki" alias which points to static files only.

IIS 6.0 (Windows Server 2003)

The instructions below also apply to IIS 6.0 but the more aggressive security settings in newer version of IIS disallow the usage of unknown CGI extensions. That means you will always get a 404 error unless you do this:

1. Open IIS Manager (Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > IIS Manager).

2. Go to the Web Service Extensions folder.

3. Under the Action menu, select Add a new Web service extension....

4. For Extension name, give it a name such as .cgi or Python cgi or similar.

5. Under Required files click the Add... button and type in the exact command-line string you used above. Eg: c:\python24\python.exe -u "%s" "%s", then click the Ok button.

6. Make sure the Set extension status to Allowed checkbox is checked and click the Ok button.

Another change that may be necessary if you are receiving HTTP Error 403 19 1314 while using IIS 6.0 is to adjust the Identity settings for the Application Pool that is being used by your site. The following steps assume you are adjusting the Default Web Site.

1. Open IIS Manager (Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > IIS Manager).

2. Go to the Application Pool folder.

3. Select the Application Pool you wish to adjust. (likely !DefaultAppPool ) When you do this on the right you will see the Application pools for each site on the server. This will include a Description (likely Default Application ) and a Path (<Default Web Site>). In this way you can be certain you are adjusting the appropriate Application Pool.

4. With !DefaultAppPool still selected right click and select Properties.

5. Select the Identity tab and with Predefined clicked use the drop down box to change the Identity to Local System instead of Network Service. Please be aware that this is a workaround since you SHOULD set your group settings to allow Network Service to access the cgi scripts.

Under Windows Server 2003, you will also need to give your IUSR_MACHINENAME account Modify access to the mywiki\data and mywiki\underlay sub-directories, as file system permissions are more restricted by default than previous Windows versions.

That is all, try to access your new-born wiki with the URL http://127.0.0.1/mywiki/. You should see the !FrontPage, try to edit and save it, and if that works, see if your edit is reflected on the !RecentChanges page.

Configuring wikiconfig.py

Finally, edit "wikiconfig.py" and at least change "sitename" and "logo_string" to some personal values:

sitename = u'My Wiki'
logo_string = u'<img src="/mywiki/images/mywiki-logo.gif" alt="MyWiki Logo">My Wiki'

Where "images" is a directory under your "mywiki" instance.

NOTE: The configuration variable "url_prefix_static" in "wikiconfig.py" should match the alias for "C:\Moin\share\moin\htdocs" or themes will not work ("/wiki" for the instructions above). This way, any reference in "wikiconfig.py" to "/wiki/something" will look in the shared data directory and a reference to "/mywiki/something" will look in the wiki instance directory. These are considered absolute paths because relative paths will not work correctly.

It seems you need to change the Custom Errors setting for 404 before you can create new pages. You can accomplish this by performing the following steps:

1. Go into the IIS Manager, right-click on 'mywiki' (or whatever your wiki instance directory is called), and select properties.

2. Next, go to the Custom Errors tab and find the 404 entry, and click the Set to Default button.

Troubleshooting

• If you see an error like "ImportError: No module named MoinMoin", it means that python cannot find MoinMoin. See above for how to add to sys.path.

• If you see an error like Error 13: Permission Denied, it means that your web user permissions for the files do not have write/modify enabled.

• If the page never loads after hitting Save Changes, you should check the permissions of the data directory. Make sure the IUSR_COMPUTERNAME user has modify permissions.

• If some images like !InterWiki and !WorldWideWeb don't show up, it could have been because of incorrect permissions or a bad "url_prefix" in "wikiconfig.py" or the cached pages need to be updated by an Edit or deleting them in the data folder. Or you are using MS IE which has broken CSS :before support - try another browser.

• If you see an error message like:
  

  Check your URL regular expressions in the "wikis" list in "farmconfig.py". Content-type: text/html;charset=utf-8
  MoinMoin Configuration Error
  Could not find a match for url: "servername/wikiname/moin.cgi?
  Check your URL regular expressions in the "wikis" list in "farmconfig.py".

  • and you don't intend on using a serverfarm, remove the farmconfig.py and farmconfig.pyc files and try again. The error message shouldn't appear when you refresh the page.

IIS URLScan problem

If you see an error like "The system cannot find the file specified." when trying to run Moin on IIS the problem may be URLScan. By default URLScan blocks any URLs that use PATH_INFO. To solve the problem, edit the URLScan.ini file in the %SystemRoot%\system32\inetsrv\urlscan\urlscan.ini directory. I changed the line allowdotinpath from 0 to 1. As follows

allowdotinpath=1               ; if 1, allow dots that are not file extensions

Also, you might have to add the following setting:

[options]
AllowHighBitCharacters=1

Next save the URLScan.ini and then restart the IIS service. Your wiki should now work.

For more information, please reference the Microsoft article How to configure the URLScan tool

Next Steps

• Backing up !MoinMoin is simple. Look at HelpOnInstalling/Win32MoinEasyBackup for guidance (despite the somewhat misleading title, the procedure would be the same for IIS).