How do I put a link that will open as a new window?

Use the %newwin% wikistyle, as in:

%newwin%http://www.example.com/

How do I place a mailing address in a page?

Use the mailto: markup, as in one of the following:

    mailto:myaddress@example.com
    [[mailto:myaddress@example.com]]
    [[mailto:myaddress@example.com | email me]]

See also Cookbook:EProtect for information on protecting email addresses from spammers.

How do I make a WikiWord link to an external page instead of a WikiPage?

Use link markup. There are two formats:

    [[http://www.example.com/ | WikiWord]]
    [[WikiWord -> http://www.example.com/]]

How do I find all of the pages that link to another page (i.e., backlinks)?

Use the link= option of the (:pagelist:) directive, as in

    (:pagelist link=SomePage:)   -- show all links to SomePage
    (:pagelist link={$FullName}:)  -- show all links to the current page

How do I link to an uploaded file or image from another group?

Use Attach:Groupname./filename.ext . Note the extra dot after the group name.

When I upload a file, how do I make the link look like "file.doc" instead of "Attach:file.doc"?

Use parentheses, as in [[(Attach:)file.doc]]. There is also a configuration change that can eliminate the Attach: -- see Cookbook:AttachLinks.

Why can't I upload files of size more than 50kB to my newly installed PmWiki?

Out of the box PmWiki limits the size of files to be uploaded to 50kB. Add

        $UploadMaxSize = 1000000; # limit upload file size to 1 megabyte

to your config.php to increase the limit to 1MB (for example). See UploadsAdmin for how to further customize limits. Note that both PHP and webservers also place their own limits on the size of uploaded files.

Who does my upload exit unexpectedly with "Incomplete file received"?

You may be running out of space in a 'scratch' area, used either by PmWiki or by PHP. On *nix, check that you have sufficient free space in /tmp and /var/tmp.

How do I create nice tables similar to Product X?

See tables and table directives.

Some of my colors aren't working! For example, %color=#AAAAAA% works, but %color=#AA3333% doesn't work. What's wrong?

Be sure to use lowercase letters for rgb hex colors, otherwise PmWiki may mistake the color value for a WikiWord.

How can I password protect all the pages and groups on my site? Do I really have to set passwords page by page, or group by group?

Administrators can set passwords for the entire site by editing the config.php file; they don't have to set passwords for each page or group. For example, to set the entire site to be editable only by those who know an "edit" password, an administrator can add a line like the following to local/config.php:

    $DefaultPasswords['edit'] = crypt('edit_password');

For more information about the password options that are available only to administrators, see PasswordsAdmin.

How can I create private groups for users, so that each user can edit pages in their group, but no one else (other than the admin) can?

Administrators can use the AuthUser recipe and add the following few lines to their local/config.php file to set this up:

    $group = FmtPageName('$Group', $pagename); 
    $DefaultPasswords['edit'] = 'id:'.$group; 
    include_once("$FarmD/scripts/authuser.php");

This automatically gives edit rights to a group to every user who has the same user name as the group name.

How do I make pmwiki.php the default page for a website? Should I rename pmwiki.php to index.php?

Renaming pmwiki.php is not recommended. Instead, create an index.php file that contains the single line:

You may also want to check Cookbook:CleanUrls.

Why does pmwiki.org appear to have a directory structure rather than "?n=pagename" in urls?

Pmwiki.org uses a variant of Cookbook:CleanUrls.

Is it possible to move wiki.d to /tmp/persistent/wiki.d (a new sourceforge rule)?

Sourceforge suggests moving everything to /tmp/persistent/new-folder-of-your-choice and creating a symbolic link to the new folder on /tmp . It works -- see Cookbook:SourceForgeServers.

How can I run PmWiki on a standalone (offline, portable) machine ?

See Cookbook:Standalone.

How do I change the Wiki's default name in the upper left corner of the Main Page?

Put the following config.php

The docs/sample-config.php file has an example of changing the title.

How can I embed PmWiki pages inside a web page?

Source them through a PHP page, or place them in a frame.

How do I change the font or background color of the hints block on the Edit Page?

Add a CSS style to pub/css/local.css: .quickref {background:...; color:... }. The hints are provided by the Site.EditQuickReference page, which is in the PmWiki or Site wikigroup. Edit that page, and change the "bgcolor" or specify the font "color" to get the contrast you need.

How can I test a new version of PmWiki on my wiki without changing the prior version used by visitors?

The easy way to do this is to install the new version in a separate directory, and for the new version set (in local/config.php):

    $WikiLibDirs = array(&$WikiDir,
      new PageStore('/path/to/existing/wiki.d/{$FullName}'),
      new PageStore('wikilib.d/{$FullName}'));

This lets you test the new version using existing page content without impacting the existing site or risking modification of the pages. (Of course, any recipes or local customizations have to be installed in the new version as well.)

Then, once you're comfortable that the new version seems to work as well as the old, it's safe to upgrade the old version (and one knows of any configuration or page changes that need to be made).

I get http error 500 "Internal Server Error" when I try to log in. What's wrong?

This can happen if the encrypted passwords are not created on the web server that hosts the PmWiki. The crypt function changed during the PHP development, e.g. a password encrypted with PHP 5.2 can not be decrypted in PHP 5.1, but PHP 5.2 can decrypt passwords created by PHP 5.1. This situation normally happens if you prepare everything on your local machine with the latest PHP version and you upload the passwords to a webserver which is running an older version. The same error occurs when you add encrypted passwords to local/config.php.

Solution: Create the passwords on the system with the oldest PHP version and use them on all other systems.

Can I specify authorization group memberships from with local/config.php?

Yes -- put the group definition into the $AuthUser array:

        $AuthUser['@editors'] = array('alice', 'carol', 'bob');

I'm running multiple wikis under the same domain name, and logins from one wiki are appearing on other wikis. Shouldn't they be independent?

This is caused by the way that PHP treats sessions. See PmWiki.AuthUser#sessions for more details.

How can I access the authorization groups that the current user belongs to in order to test using that as a condition of an if statement?

Is there any way to have groups inherit other groups (e.g. @fruits: @apples, @oranges, jack)?

Is it possible to list more than one .htpasswd and .htgroup file to be used? e.g. if I am running a wikifarm and some users are common across various fields, it would be nice if they only needed to update their password once. Sure I could merge all the passwd & group files, but then I wouldn't be able to support identical user or group names on each independent wikifield..

Is there any way to record the time of the last login for each user when using AuthUser? I need a way to look for stale accounts.

I wrote a recipe to do something like this. It records the last action for each user (not necessarily just login actions). See Cookbook:UserLastAction for more info. --Lordmundi March 23, 2007

I want to allow anyone to edit my wiki, but don't want anyone else to use my name as the author. Is there a way to "reserve" and password protect certain usernames? Or basically just require a password when attempting to edit a page with a registered user's name in the author field?

If my wiki is internationalized by config.php, how do I revert a specific group to English?

Use $XLLangs = array('en'); in the group.php configuration file.

Why am I seeing strange errors after upgrading?

Make sure all of the files were updated, in particular pmwiki.php.

This question sometimes arises when an administrator hasn't followed the advice, which used to be less prominent, on the installation and initial setup tasks pages and has renamed pmwiki.php instead of creating an index.php wrapper script. If you have renamed pmwiki.php to index.php, then the upgrade procedure won't have updated your index.php file. Delete the old version and create a wrapper script so it won't happen again.

Sometimes an FTP or other copy program will fail to transfer all of the files properly. One way to check for this is by comparing file sizes.

Be sure all of the files in the wikilib.d/ directory were also upgraded. Sometimes it's a good idea to simply delete the wikilib.d/ directory before upgrading. (Local copies of pages are stored in wiki.d/ and not wikilib.d/.)

I'm suddenly getting messages like "Warning: fopen(wiki.d/.flock): failed to open stream: Permission denied..." and Cannot acquire lockfile"... what's wrong?

Something (or someone) has changed the permissions on the wiki.d/.flock file or the wiki.d/ directory such that the webserver is no longer able to write the lockfile. The normal solution is to simply delete the .flock file from the wiki.d/ directory -- PmWiki will then create a new one. Also be sure to check the permissions on the wiki.d/ directory itself. (One can easily check and modify permissions of the wiki.d/ directory in Filezilla (open-source FTP app) by right-clicking on the file > File attributes)

My links in the sidebar seem to be pointing to non-existent pages, even though I know I created the pages. Where are the pages?

Links in the sidebar normally need to be qualified by a WikiGroup in order to work properly. Otherwise they will point to whatever group you happen to be viewing the sidebar in.
Also: Make sure you type SideBar with a capital B.

Why am I seeing "Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent ..." messages at the top of my page.

If this is the first or only error message you're seeing, it's usually an indication that there are blank lines or spaces before the <?php or after the ?> in a local customization file. Double-check the file and make sure there aren't any blank lines or spaces before the initial <?php. It's often easiest and safest to eliminate any closing ?> altogether.

If the warning is appearing after some other warning or error message, then resolve the other error and this warning may go away.

Why is PmWiki prompting me multiple times for a password I've already entered?

Usually this is an indication that the browser isn't accepting cookies, or that PHP's session handling functions on the server aren't properly configured. If the browser is accepting cookies, then try setting $EnableDiag=1; in local/config.php, run PmWiki using ?action=phpinfo, and verify that sessions are enabled and that the session.save_path has a reasonable value. Note that several versions of PHP under Windows require that a session_save_path be explicitly set (this can be done in the local/config.php file).

I edited config.php, but when I look at my wiki pages, all I see is "Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_VARIABLE in somefile on line number."

You've made a mistake in writing the PHP that goes into the config.php file. The most common mistake that causes the T_VARIABLE error is forgetting the semi-colon (;) at the end of a line that you added. The line number and file named are where you should look for the mistake.

Searches and pagelists stopped working after I upgraded -- no errors are reported, but links to other pages do not appear (or do not appear as they should) -- what gives?

Be sure all of the files in the wikilib.d/ directory were also upgraded. In particular, it sounds as if the Site.PageListTemplates page is either missing (if no links are displayed) or is an old version (if the links do not appear as they should).

Some of my posts are coming back with "403 Forbidden" errors or "Not Acceptable"? This happens with posts containing "wget", "curl", "file(" or ...

Your webserver probably has mod_security enabled. The mod_security "feature" scans all incoming posts for forbidden words or phrases that might indicate someone is trying to hack the system, and if any of them are present then Apache returns the 403 Forbidden error. Common phrases that tend to trigger mod_security include "curl ", "wget", and "file(", although there are many others.

Since mod_security intercepts the requests and sends the "forbidden" message before PmWiki ever gets a chance to run, it's not a bug in PmWiki, and there's little that PmWiki can do about it. Instead, one has to alter the webserver configuration to disable mod_security or reconfigure it to allow whatever word it is forbidding. Some sites may be able to disable mod_security by placing SecFilterEngine off in a .htaccess file.

I get the following message when attempting to upload an image, what do I do?

Warning: move_uploaded_file(): SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. The script whose uid is 1929 is not allowed to access /home/onscolre/public_html/pmwikiuploads/Photos owned by uid 33 in /home/onscolre/public_html/pmwiki/scripts/upload.php on line 198

PmWiki can't process your request

?cannot move uploaded file to /home/onscolre/public_html/pmwikiuploads/Photos/FoundationPupilsIn1958.jpeg

We are sorry for any inconvenience.

How can I change the keyboard shortcuts for editing and saving a page?

See PmWiki.AccessKeys.

What about the botnet security advisory at http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=1672?

Sites that are running with PHP's register_globals setting set to "On" and versions of PmWiki prior to 2.1.21 may be vulnerable to a botnet exploit that is taking advantage of a bug in PHP. The vulnerability can be closed by turning register_globals off, upgrading to PmWiki 2.1.21 or later, or upgrading to PHP versions 4.4.3 or 5.1.4. In addition, there is a test at PmWiki:SiteAnalyzer that can be used to determine if your site is vulnerable.

How do I customize the CSS styling of my PmWiki layout?

See Skins for how to change the default PmWiki skin. See also Cookbook:Skins, where you will find pre-made templates you can use to customize the appearance of your site. You can also create a file called local.css in the pub/css/ directory and add CSS selectors there (this file gets automatically loaded if it exists). Or, styles can be added directly into a local customization file by using something like:

Where can the mentioned "translation table" be found for adding translated phrases?

See Internationalizations.