We need a sane install. There is no reason to have so many help files and so much trouble just to run moin. Sane install should make it easy for any user to create a wiki instance and run it.

See SimpleFarming

Common scenarios

We should make the common case easy, and the special case possible.

Evaluation

You like to try moin quickly. You visit this wiki or other moin wikis, and you want to try the system. You like the simplest install possible, and don't want to make any choices, just run it and play with the system.

After you evaluate the system, you may want to use it for any other scenarios - for example, Public wiki as root, or personal wiki. So you want a the "full" version that can be reconfigured in any way you like.

Solution

A ready to use package, including moin and a wiki instance using standalone and English underlay. When you run moin for the first time, your wiki instance should be created automatically on common location, or creation will be done with a one step script.

• It may be simpler to have the wiki instance in the package, but its too dangerous - one can delete its moin directory and trash all his precious wiki pages!

Install:

1. Install Python if you don't have it
2. Extract the package anywhere you like, or use a package manager
3. Enter the package and run moin.py, or double click on Mac OS X.
4. Test your wiki at localhost:8000

What you may want to do next (in order of probability):

1. Edit the wiki configuration e.g acl, wiki name, logo
2. Edit the server configuration, e.g. interface, port

3. Add or remove LanguagePackages

4. Try out some plugins

5. Install MoinMoin globally

6. Try another server type, for example CGI.
7. Add another wiki to your farm
8. Change the basic configuration, like move you wiki instance to another location

Personal wiki

You want to have a local wiki serving your machine only (you probably do not know how to configure this). You are not a admin or power user. Even if you are an advanced user, you have better things to do then explore moin internals.

The evaluation solution is good for this case, but you may not need lot of reconfiguration options, for example, its unlikely that you will create a farm.

DesktopEdition may be just what most simple users need.

Public wiki using CGI installed via FTP

You need to setup the wiki and moin on your machine using --prefix install, and test the wiki with local web server or maybe standalone. When everything is configured correctly, you have to upload the directory to the web server, and modify the configuration for the web server environment.

The evaluation solution is good if you can copy it as it to your web server.

Additions:

• You need moin.cgi installed by default.

Public wiki using CGI with shell access

Same as ftp version, but easier since you don't need to upload stuff and configure things twice.

Public wiki, root access

You lot of power and can choose any server type you like. You also have to make more choices. You probably have some experience with unix.

You can use the evaluation solution and reconfigure it as you like, for example, add moin.fcg to run with FastCGI.

Installing MoinMoin using setup.py

This is not really needed for quick evaluation of the system, If you use a package manager, it will be installed for you.

Advantages of a global install:

• Scripts go to your bin directory
• Shared stuff go to a place your web server can access
• Other applications can use moin code (unlikely)

Improvements ideas

Don't require Alias

Install the web server shared files under the web server document root, so there is not need for Alias. For a user install, the user public_html should be used instead of the document root and cgi-bin.

How the install will know the document root location of apache on different platforms?

Single moin command

Install single moin tool in prefix/bin/moin. this tool can run all the scripts, like moin dump moin clean-cache etc. See SingleMoinCommand.

Install moin.cgi in cgi-bin

Install moin.cgi (assume that this is the common case) in the web server cgi-bin dir

Creating a wiki

Current help on creating a wiki instance is crazy. There is no need to build the instance from scratch, resembling a Gentoo install from stage 1. It was fun to install Gentoo, I learned a lot about Linux, but about 99.99% of users can't do this.

When a user want to try moin, he does not care where his wiki instance is and what it contains. He just want to run the wiki and explore it. Later, when the user starts to like the system he will want to edit the configuration, add languages, try other server types etc.

On the other hand, when an administrator want to evaluate moin, she will like to control where the test wiki is located. Auto creating a hidden test wiki is not a good idea in this case.

The solution should work for both types of users, "I don't care where is the wiki, just let me try it" and "I want to create a test wiki exactly here". Maybe the difference should be in the moin package. A double clickable one file distribution for personal use will auto create a wiki, a command line server distribution will use a create script.

Alternatives

Here are few alternatives we should consider.

Auto create a default wiki

A default wiki is created on the first run of standalone, and recreated if missing. This process is already used by some wiki engines.

1. run moin.py
2. check for default wiki

3. if its missing and auto_create_wiki is True, create a default wiki

   1. copy and extract MoinMoin/templates/farm.tgz into known location

A known location can be:

• Unix: ~/.moin

• Mac OS X: ~/Library/MoinMoin

• Windows?

Create script

Auto create will not help when you want to have your farm in /www/wiki.domain/.

In this case you want to copy or extract a default farm to the server location, then reconfigure it as you like.

Typical scenario using CGI, FastCGI or Mod Python:

1. Install moin with a package manager or extract a package
2. Create a wiki:

   • moin-create /www/wiki

3. Try out the system using the built in web server, serving port 8000:

   • /www/wiki/bin/moin.py

4. Or configure your web server: edit /www/wiki/farm.conf and then include it in your httpd.conf

5. Restart the web server.
6. Change configuration, add more languages etc.

Comments

The thoughts above assume that you are a user with a shell account. Most potential users are not. We should have an installer that runs on the server and creates the instance there. It could be started automatically after uploading the extracted tarball (e.g. install.cgi). This will lead to an easy installation and increase the popularity of MoinMoin significantly.