How To Fliki

Fliki is really easy to use. It's super-lightweight design means it's a great start for anyone building a website. Whilst learning 'how to wiki' might take a little while, it's a great way to produce lots of content that looks good and is easy to look after.

Fliki aims to be a 'standard' Wiki. That is, the Wiki Syntax it uses should adhere to the standard. That means tht if you decide to use a different Wiki, you can use all the same syntax you used with Fliki.

The trouble is, there is no Wiki standard. In the meantime, Fliki works according to a work-in-progress, although we have suggested a few changes to it (and it's a bit out of date).

Configuring Fliki

As you're reading this, you've probably already configured Fliki. Everything you need is in the config.php file. Edit it with any text editor. It's got lots of information in it, so hopefully is pretty self-explanatory.

If you haven't done it already, it's a good idea to move the flikifiles directory, and of course to change the administration username and password.

If you prefer not to move your flikifiles directory, you should protect it so that it cannot be accessed by a web browser. If your server is Apache you can probably use the HtAccess file provided in that directory. Either way, test it by visiting http://yourserver/flikifiles/HomePage.fliki - if you get anything other than an error, then you have a security issue with your installation.

Using Fliki

Fliki comes with a page editor, a template editor and a file manager. The page editor lets you modify pages and create new ones. The template editor means you can make changes to the page template that defines how every page looks. Finally, the file manager lets you upload files, like images, into your Fliki installation. It also lets you delete files you no longer want.

Images (and in fact any files) you upload with the filemanager are available via the Fliki system. For example, if you upload a picture called logo.gif, the location you'd need for an {image} tag (see WikiSyntax) would be index.php?page=logo.gif

Making Pages

Fliki pages can be created easily by making a link to the new page on an existing page. The question mark link can then be followed to create the new page. For particularly complex pages, it is possible to include HTML code directly (although the Wiki will take no responsibility for the code you include, so it's up to you to get it right).

Editing the Page Template

Unlike Wiki pages, the template is real HTML. It can be edited using the template editor, or any text editor or even an HTML editor.

The Wiki system looks for some special comment tags in the template. It replaces these with the Wiki content. There are three tags, all optional, that can be used in the template.

This tag is replaced with the title of the page.

This tag is replaced with the main body of Wiki page content.

This tag is replaced with a hyperlink to the page editor, if the current browser is authenticated.

Friendly URLs

Take a look at the 'Location' bar of your browser. By default, the location will be something like http://yourserver/index.php?page=HowToWiki. Not only is that ugly and hard to remember, but some search engines will ignore it (because it has a ? in it).

Fliki has facilities to make the URLs used by the application 'search engine friendly'. They're also much easier for people too (!). You can make the URLs work almost any way you like, although it will take a little work with your webserver software to do it.

There are two aspects to making URLs 'friendly': incoming and outgoing. Incoming URL handling needs some help from the web server. If you're using Apache, it's quite easy to make this work. You can use mod_rewrite to do it (see the manual for more details), or an ErrorDocument setting. Many servers allows the use of '.htaccess' files to configure the web server (if you're using a shared server, check with your provider to see if you can use .htaccess files). Assuming you can, create a file called .htaccess in the same directory as you put the index.php file, and put the following into it:

ErrorDocument 404 /index.php

(If you installed fliki in a subdirectory of your web server, then you'll have to put that in the path, for example '/fliki/index.php'. If you have access to the web server's configuration file, you can put this configuration in there instead, if you like).

Once the ErrorDocument is in place, you should be able to point your browser at http://yourserver/HomePage and see the Fliki home page. Of course, change HomePage for the name of any page in your Wiki, and that should be displayed instead. Neat huh?

This is only half the job of making URLs friendly. When Fliki makes links to Wiki pages, it uses the $fliki_wiki_url_prefix (configured in config.php) to build the URL. You'll need to change this to whatever you need. In this example, setting it simply to "/" (or even leave it blank) would be sufficient. Whatever you set it to will be put in front of the Wiki page name in Wiki links.