Wiki On Personal Web Server

The WikiBase code can be made to run under a number of Web servers on a number of platforms. The same is true for many WikiWikiClones. For example, AspWiki runs on Microsoft's PersonalWebServer.

As of 2012, XAMPP is the best choice for a personal wiki on Windows XP/Vista/7/8 or Mac OS X. It's an Apache-MySQL-Perl-PHP distribution that comes in a single installer package. ItJustWorks, and for security it's configured to refuse any connection that comes from outside of localhost.

If you run Linux and have a Debian-based distro, check your package manager -- Debian itself has .deb packages for popular wiki software like MediaWiki with dependencies configured to automatically install and configure all the required software.

If you are going to run a wiki on your own server, it is a very good idea to keep current on the exploits that your server is vulnerable to. A case in point:

Microsoft Windows 98 includes a copy of PersonalWebServer (PWS),which is a scaled-down version of InternetInformationServer. PWS is included on the install CD as a separate setup. PWS can be made to run PerlLanguage CGIs, and setting up a wiki is straightforward. A personal wiki is quite handy, particularly on a portable. Unfortunately, Out-of-the-box PWS is not secure.

Due to some quirks of programming that one can only characterize as incredibly inept, anyone who can connect to your Windows 98 PWS can pull arbitrary files off of your machine. If your ISP gives you a fixed or temporary IP address when you're dialed in, and some packet kiddie happens to be port scanning and finds that your box is running PWS, you can be raided. (Details are available in the Buqtraq archives).

If you use Windows98 PWS outside of a firewall, install the patch mentioned in the bulletin below, or turn PWS off before connecting to the Internet. NT Workstation PWS appears to be based on a different codebase, and isn't subject to the same exploit.

That said, PWS + Perl makes a nifty portable Web development environment.

-- DaveSmith

(See http://www.microsoft.com/TechNet/security/bulletin/ms99-010.asp for the Microsoft Security Bulletin on the abovementioned PWS hole.)

Thanks to whoever found this link. -- dws

It's also possible to run a wiki-shaped thing on a personal Web server (small p, small s) without going to all the trouble and security holes of PWS. DavidChess put together a Wiki-like thing that talks HTTP to a port all on its own, and does a quite respectable wiki. It's about 1200 lines of Perl. He wrote it for a group-collaboration project running on an informal little personal server in his office, but he also runs it locally on his laptop (with instructions to talk only to 127.0.0.1) - he's pretty pleased with his PersonalWiki WikiWikiClone.

David has various email addresses, the best to contact him on about his PersonalWiki server is probably mailto:chess@us.ibm.com. His own Wiki-like code isn't particularly available, and he wasn't sure how useful it would be to anyone but him. If you think it would be wildly useful to you, let him know and he'll see if IBM will give him permission to give it away.

In his own words: Wikis everywhere!

The next version of MoinMoin will have the capability to run without a Web server as well.

Ruby-httpd is a ~250-line Web server with CGI capabilities, written in the RubyLanguage. I wrote it specifically to be able to run my personal wiki, but it makes a nice (personal) webserver anyway. You can find it at http://www.xs4all.nl/~hipster. Share and enjoy. -- hipster

Recently I wanted to install a wiki on a Windows LAN without knowing anything about windows servers or networks. I tried InStiki - a wiki written in RubyLanguage which contains it's own webserver and I was very impressed how easy it was to setup and run. -- PhilJones

I've been rude about it in the past, but having tried it recently, SnipSnap (http://www.snipsnap.org) looks like a good bet for a Windows WikiWeblog?. -- PhilJones

I use it for that purpose (version 0.3.3a). I had a bit of a hassle setting it up to listen only on localhost, and the export-import don't seem to work properly, which makes my backup process a bit clunkier, but other than that it works OK. (Oh, it's a bit slow, too, but not unusably.) The advantages are that it is self-contained and I can run it without having Administrator rights on my PC. -- AndrewMcGuinness

CategoryPersonalWiki