Setup a Portable DokuWiki Instance in Windows

DokuWiki is a great wiki engine with minimal requirements that usually gets used to build small public web sites and teams' documentation collections. It's also a good place to keep your personal notes.

This howto will show you the quickest way to get DokuWiki up and running in Windows, with a portable launcher script that should work even if the project's path changes (as it would on a thumbdrive).

Create the Project Folder and Launcher

In your personal storage space or on your thumbdrive, create a folder called "Notebook" or whatever you want to call it.

Create this Windows batch file in the new folder:

run-dokuwiki.cmd

@echo off

set app_root=%~dp0
set PATH=%app_root%\php;%PATH%

set ext_path=%app_root%\php\ext
set ini_path=%app_root%\php\php.ini

cd /d "%app_root%\dokuwiki"

php -c "%ini_path%" -d extension_dir="%ext_path%" -S 127.0.0.1:9003

Install PHP

Download the non-thread-safe version of PHP for Windows from windows.php.net/download/. Extract the Zip file to a new "php" folder under your "Notebook" folder.

Download this php.ini file, extract it from its Zip file, and put it in your Notebook\php folder.

Install DokuWiki

Download the stable version of DokuWiki from the DokuWiki downloads page. Extract the dokuwiki folder from that archive to your "Notebook" folder. If the "dokuwiki" folder has a version number in it, rename it to just "dokuwiki".

Configure DokuWiki

Now you should have a "Notebook" folder like this:

Notebook
├── run-dokuwiki.cmd
├── php
│   └── [PHP system]
└── dokuwiki
    └── [DokuWiki installation]

Run run-dokuwiki.cmd. It will start PHP's built-in web server running on port 9003. In your browser, go to http://127.0.0.1:9003/install.php.

Complete the setup wizard with your desired settings. I prefer to set it up as a "closed" wiki requiring me to login, just to be safe.

Your wiki home page is http://127.0.0.1:9003/doku.php.

Here are some more optional things you can do to configure a nice notebook setup:

Go to your Extension Manager page on the Admin screen and install the indexmenu extension.

Go to the the Configuration Settings page on the Admin screen and set the following options:

breadcrumbs = 0
youarehere = true
useheading = Always
userewrite = DokuWiki internal
useslash = true
plugin → indexmenu → skip_index = /(^wiki$|^playground$)/
plugin → indexmenu → skip_file = /(^sidebar$)/

Create a page called "sidebar" in the root namespace with this code in it:

sidebar

{{indexmenu>..#1|js navbar nocookie id#random}}

If you're not sure how to create a page, one way would be to type "sidebar" in the search box, click "Search" and then click the "Create this page" button on the right.

If you're new to DokuWiki, please take the time to read the manual or watch the intro videos.

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