[Pmwiki-users] one installation, multiple wikis

[Patrick R. Michaud]

I'm also coming to the point where I'd like to be able to easily
maintain separate wikis (each with its own set of WikiGroups) via
a single PmWiki installation, so let's see if we can refine some of
the ideas and suggestions that have come across the listserv recently 
into a workable standard or specification.

Let me suggest some starting terms and assumptions:

1.  Borrowing from John Rankin's terminology, a single installation 
    becomes a "wiki farm", with each individual wiki being called a "field".
2.  Each field is largely independent of the others--i.e.,
    a. each field has its own set of WikiGroups
    b. links between fields occur via URLs or InterMap links
    c. searches are limited to the pages in a field (no cross-field searches)
    d. each field has its own RecentChanges pages
    e. each field has its own set of uploads
3.  Some configurations take place at the "farm level" (affecting
    all fields), while others take place at the "field level",
    still others are per-group or per-page within a field.
4.  We'd like a configuration where (for security reasons) the base
    pmwiki/ directory can be located outside of a public_html
    tree, and such that a bunch of symlinks don't have to be created.
5.  It ought to be possible for some public items (e.g., skins and CSS
    files) to be shared across fields.
6.  The pmwiki.php file, scripts/ directory, and wikilib.d/ directory 
    should be shared by all of the fields to simplify upgrades.
7.  There should be clean support for the different URL rewriting
    schemes available.

The only true restriction that PmWiki imposes at present is that
the global configuration file has to be in 'local/config.php'
relative to the current directory when pmwiki.php is executed.  
Everything else can pretty well be customized without modifying
pmwiki.php (although perhaps not trivially).  And of course I'm
on very good terms with the pmwiki.php author, so I can probably
get some changes made to pmwiki.php if needed.  :-)

Crisses, do you have an idea of what would be an ideal install sequence
for someone wanting to set up a field in a wiki farm?  I see the key 
difficulties in configuration coming from setting up the URL redirections 
for the pmwiki.php script, the pub/ directory, and the uploads/ directory.

> Are these files & folders defined by pmwiki variables or are they flat 
> calls to certain files?  can a local folder contain, for example, 
> "ofobscurityconfig.php" and "kinhostconfig.php" and the wrapper for the 
> respective wikis contain overrides [...?] 

At present configuration variables cannot be easily set in a wrapper,
but I can easily modify PmWiki to allow this.  I think your question/comment
of making it possible for individual user accounts to set up wiki fields
in a global wiki farm is a great approach for being able to resolve
these issues.  In this scenario, the system administrator becomes the
farm's wikiadmin, while each user can become a field wikiadmin.

So, my question above becomes:  Given that there's a wiki farm already
installed and operating on the system, what steps would we want someone 
to take to set up a wiki field in their account and become the wikiadmin
for that field?

Pm