This page will attempt to summarize some of the more commonly asked questions. The answers are on the corresponding pages (see link). If you have a question which isn't answered here, you can leave your question on the Questions page or search for documentation using the search facility. More documentation can be found on the documentation index page.
What is PmWiki?
PmWiki is a wiki-based system for collaborative creation and maintenance of websites. See PmWiki.
What can I do with it?
PmWiki pages look and act like normal web pages, except they have an "Edit" link that makes it easy to modify existing pages and add new pages into the website, using basic editing rules. You do not need to know or use any HTML or CSS. Page editing can be left open to the public or restricted to small groups of authors. Feel free to experiment with the Text Formatting Rules in the "Wiki sandbox". The website you're currently viewing is built and maintained with PmWiki.
What are the requirements?
See the PmWiki requirements page.
Where can I find documentation?
See the documentation index page.
How can I download PmWiki?
See the download page.
How do I install PmWiki?
Instructions for installation are on the installation page.
How do I get help with PmWiki?
See Mailing lists and How to get assistance.
How do you pronounce "Michaud"?
"Michaud" is french pronounced "mee show", the trailing D is silent.
I'm new to PmWiki, where can I find some basic help for getting started?
The Basic Editing page is a good start. From there, you can just follow the navigational links at the top or the bottom of the page (they are called Wiki Trails) to the next pages, or to the Documentation Index page, which provides an outline style index of essential documentation pages, organized from basic to advanced.
How do I include special characters such as Copyright (©) and Trademark (® or ™) on my wiki pages?
See special characters on how to insert special characters that don't appear on your keyboard.
How can I preserve line-breaks from the source text?
PmWiki normally treats consecutive lines of text as being a paragraph, and merges and wraps lines together on output. This is consistent with most other wiki packages. An author can use the (:linebreaks:) directive to cause the following lines of markup text in the page to be kept as separate lines in the output. Or a wiki administrator can set in config.php $HTMLPNewline = '<br/>';
Can I just enter HTML directly?
By default (and by design), PmWiki does not support the use of HTML elements in the editable markup for wiki pages. There are a number of reasons for this described in the PmWiki Philosophy and Audiences. Enabling HTML markup within wiki pages in a collaborative environment may exclude some potential authors from being able to edit pages, and pose a number of display and security issues. However, a site administrator can use the Cookbook:Enable HTML recipe to enable the use of HTML markup directly in pages.
Where can I find more documentation?
See the documentation index and the markup master index pages.
How do I create a new page?
Typing [[my new page]] will create a link to the new page. There's a lot you can do with double bracket links.
Why do some new pages have a title with spaces like "Creating New Pages" and others end up with a WikiWord-like title like "CreatingNewPages"?
The default page title is simply the name of page, which is normally stored as "CreatingNewPages." However, you can override a page's title by using the (:title Creating New Pages:) directive. This is especially useful when there are special characters or capitalization that you want in the title that cannot be used in the page name.
How do I create a link that will open as a new window?
Use the %newwin% wikistyle, as in:
%newwin% http://example.com/ %% |
How do I create a link that will open a new window, and configure that new window?
This requires javascript. See Cookbook:PopupWindow.
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]] * [[mailto:myaddress@example.com?subject=Some subject | email me]] |
The markup [[mailto:me@example.com?cc=someoneelse@example.com&bcc=else@example.com&subject=Pre-set Subject&body=Pre-set body | display text]] =] lets you specify more parameters like the message body and more recipients (may not work in all browsers and e-mail clients).
See also Cookbook:DeObMail for information on protecting email addresses from spammers.
How can I enable links to other protocols, such as nntp:, ssh:, xmpp:, etc?
How do I make a WikiWord link to an external page instead of a WikiPage?
Use link markup. There are two formats:
[[http://example.com/ | WikiWord]] [[WikiWord -> http://example.com/]]
How do I find all of the pages that link to another page (i.e., backlinks)?
In the wiki search form, use link=Group.Page to find all pages linking to Group.Page.
Use the link= option of the (:pagelist:) directive, as in
(:pagelist link=SomePage list=all:) -- show all links to SomePage
(:pagelist link={$FullName} list=all:) -- show all links to the current page
What link schemes does PmWiki support?
How do I open external links in a new window or mark them with an icon?
How can I use an image as a link?
Use [[Page| Attach:image.jpg ]] or [[ http://site | http://site/image.jpg ]] See Images#links
Why my browser does not follow local file:// links?
For security reasons, most browsers will only enable file:// links if the page containing the link is itself on the local drive. In other words, most browsers do not allow links to file:// from pages that were fetched using http:// such as in a PmWiki site. See also Cookbook:DirList for a workaround.
How do I create a basic table?
Tables are created via use of the double pipe character: ||. Lines beginning with this markup denote rows in a table; within such lines the double-pipe is used to delimit cells. In the examples below a border is added for illustration (the default is no border).
|| border=1 rules=rows frame=hsides || cell 1 || cell 2 || cell 3 || || cell 1 || cell 2 || cell 3 || |
|
How do I create cell headers?
Header cells can be created by placing ! as the first character of a cell. Note that these are table headers, not headings, so it doesn't extend to !!, !!!, etc.
|| border=1 rules=cols frame=vsides ||! cell 1 ||! cell 2 ||! cell 3 || || cell 1 || cell 2 || cell 3 || |
|
How do I obtain a table with thin lines and more distance to the content?
"Thin lines" is tricky and browser dependent, but the following works for Firefox and IE (Nov. 2009):
||border="1" style="border-collapse:collapse" cellpadding="5" width=66% ||!Header ||! Header || '''Header'''|| ||cells || with || padding|| || || || || |
|
How do I create an advanced table?
See table directives
My tables are by default centered. When I try to use '||align=left' they don't align left as expected.
Use ||style="margin-left:0px;" instead.
How can I specify the width of columns?
You can define the widths via custom styles, see Cookbook:FormattingTables and $TableCellAttrFmt. Add in config.php :
$TableCellAttrFmt = 'class=col$TableCellCount';
table.column td.col1 { width: 120px; }
table.column td.col3 { width: 40px; }
How can I display a double pipe "||" in cell text using basic table markup?
Escape it with [=||=] to display || unchanged.
How to I apply styles to the elements of the table, like an ID to the table row, or a class/style to the TD?
See $WikiStyleApply.
Can I define table headers using the table directive markup?
Yes, with PmWiki version 2.2.11 or newer. See also Cookbook:AdvancedTableDirectives.
Is it possible to do nested tables?
Yes, if you nest simple tables inside advanced tables. See also Cookbook:AdvancedTableDirectives.
Is it possible to add background images to tables and table cells?
Yes, see Cookbook:BackgroundImages.
Is it possible to apply styles to the elements of the table, like an ID to the table row, or a class/style to the TD?
Yes, see $WikiStyleApply.
How can I change the keyboard shortcuts for editing and saving a page?
Are InterMap names case sensitive?
Yes, thus eAdmin: is a different InterMap link than EAdmin:.
How can I achieve a localmap.txt mapping with the effect of Pics: Path:/somepathto/pics/?
Use the following:
Pics: /somepathto/pics/
How can I define an InterMap in PHP?
Use the following:
$LinkFunctions['PmWikiHome:'] = 'LinkIMap';
$IMap['PmWikiHome:'] = 'http://pmwiki.org/wiki/$1';
Is there a variable like $LastModified, but which shows me the creation time?
No, but you can create one in config.php. For instance:
# add page variable {$PageCreationDate} in format yyyy-mm-dd
$FmtPV['$PageCreationDate'] = 'strftime("%Y-%m-%d", $page["ctime"])';
If you like the same format that you define in config.php with $TimeFmt use
$FmtPV['$Created'] = "strftime(\$GLOBALS['TimeFmt'], \$page['ctime'])";
How can I test if a variable is set and/or not empty?
Use (:if ! equal "{$Variable}" "":) $Variable is not empty. (:ifend:). Note that undefined/inexistent variables appear as empty ones.
How do I set the same header or footer for all pages/groups?
The header and footer for each page are controlled by the variables $GroupHeaderFmt and $GroupFooterFmt. If your site-wide header and footer pages are Site.SiteHeader? and Site.SiteFooter?, you can add this in config.php:
### If you use Site.SiteHeader and Group.GroupHeader
$GroupHeaderFmt = '(:include {$SiteGroup}.SiteHeader'
. ' basepage={*$FullName}:)(:nl:)' . $GroupHeaderFmt;
### If you use Site.SiteHeader instead of Group.GroupHeader
$GroupHeaderFmt = '(:include {$SiteGroup}.SiteHeader'
. ' basepage={*$FullName}:)(:nl:)';
### If you use Site.SiteFooter and Group.GroupFooter
$GroupFooterFmt .= '(:nl:)(:include {$SiteGroup}.SiteFooter'
. ' basepage={*$FullName}:)';
### If you use Site.SiteFooter instead of Group.GroupFooter
$GroupFooterFmt = '(:nl:)(:include {$SiteGroup}.SiteFooter'
. ' basepage={*$FullName}:)';
Note that single quotes must be used in the lines above.
See also the Cookbook:AllGroupHeader recipe.
Instead of using an additional page, you could set any wiki text in $GroupHeaderFmt, for example:
$GroupHeaderFmt .= "Global message here.";
Is there a way to remove page history from page files?
1. Administrators can clean page histories using the Cookbook:ExpireDiff recipe.
2. Administrators with FTP file access can download individual pages from the wiki.d directory, open them in a text editor, manually remove history, and re-upload the files to wiki.d/ directory. Care must be exercised, when manually editing a page file, to preserve the minimum required elements of the page and avoid corrupting its contents. See PageFileFormat#creating.
3. Edit the page. Select all the contents of the edit text area and cut them to the clipboard. Enter delete into the text area and click on the save and edit button. Select all the contents of the edit text area and paste the contents of the clipboard over them. Click on the save button. This will remove all of the page's history up to the final save in which the pasted material is re-added.
How can I restrict viewing the page history (?action=diff) to people with edit permission?
In the local/config.php file, set
$HandleAuth['diff'] = 'edit';
In case of this restriction is set up on a farm, and you want to allow it on a particular wiki, set in your local/config.php :
$HandleAuth['diff'] = 'read';
Should I rename pmwiki.php to index.php?
Renaming pmwiki.php is not recommended. Instead, create an index.php file that contains this single line
<?php include_once('pmwiki.php');
How do I make pmwiki.php the default page for a website?
Create an index.php file that runs PmWiki from a subdirectory (pmwiki/ for example) and place it in the site's web document root (the main directory for the website).
<?php chdir('pmwiki'); include_once('pmwiki.php');
Note: You will also need to explicitly set the $PubDirUrl variable (e.g. to "http://example.com/pmwiki/pub") in local/config.php .
How do I enable "Clean URLs?" that are shorter and look like paths to my wiki pages? Why does pmwiki.org appear to have a directory structure rather than "?n=pagename" in URLs??
See Cookbook:CleanUrls.
How can I run PmWiki on a standalone (offline, portable) machine ?
How can I determine what version of PmWiki I'm running now?
See version - Determining and displaying the current version of PmWiki (pmwiki-2.2.36).
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).
How do I disable uploading of a certain type of file?
Here's an example of what to add to your local/config.php file to disable uploading of .zip files, or of files with no extension:
$UploadExtSize['zip'] = 0; # Disallow uploading .zip files $UploadExtSize[''] = 0; # Disallow files with no extension
How do I attach uploads to individual pages or the entire site, instead of organizing them by wiki group?
Use the $UploadPrefixFmt variable (see also the Cookbook:UploadGroups recipe).
$UploadPrefixFmt = '/$FullName'; # per-page, in Group.Name directories
$UploadPrefixFmt = '/$Group/$Name'; # per-page, in Group directories with Name subdirectories
$UploadPrefixFmt = ''; # site-wide
For $UploadDirQuota - can you provide some units and numbers? Is the specification in bytes or bits? What is the number for 100K? 1 Meg? 1 Gig? 1 Terabyte?
Units are in bytes.
$UploadDirQuota= 100*1024; # limit uploads to 100KiB$UploadDirQuota= 1000*1024; # limit uploads to 1000KiB$UploadDirQuota= 1024*1024; # limit uploads to 1MiB$UploadDirQuota= 25*1024*1024; # limit uploads to 25MiB$UploadDirQuota= 2*1024*1024*1024; # limit uploads to 2GiB
Is there a way to allow file names with Unicode or addtiional characters?
Yes, see $UploadNameChars
Where is the list of attachments stored?
It is generated on the fly by the markup.
How can I find orphaned or missing attachments
For older versions of PmWiki, see Cookbook:Attachlist enhanced "",
for version 2.2 or higher see Cookbook:Attachtable ""
How can I prevent hotlinking of my uploaded images
See Cookbook:Prevent Hotlinking
I have limited the max upload size to 8 MB in config.php, however only files smaller than 2MB can be uploaded.
Check your php.ini for upload_max_filesize
upload_max_filesize = 8M
If you cannot access your php.ini directly try to soften server limits in the root .htaccess file:
php_value post_max_size 63M php_value upload_max_filesize 62M php_value memory_limit 64M php_value max_execution_time 600 php_value default_socket_timeout 600
How can I upload multiple files at once?
See the following recipes: DragDropMultiUpload, MultiUpload, UploadForm.
How do I report a possible security vulnerability of PmWiki?
Pm wrote about this in a post to pmwiki-users from September 2006. In a nutshell he differentiates two cases:
See his post mentioned above for details and rationals.
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.
config.php
How do I stop pages being deleted, eg password protect a page from deletion?
Use Cookbook:DeleteAction and password protect the page deletion action by adding $DefaultPasswords['delete'] = '*'; to config.php or password protect the action with $HandleAuth['delete'] = 'edit';
$HandleAuth['delete'] = 'admin';How do I stop pages being replaced with an empty (all spaces) page?
Add block: /^\s*$/ to your blocklist.
how do I stop pages being completely replaced by an inane comment such as excellent site, great information, where the content cannot be blocked?
Try using the newer automatic blocklists that pull information and IP addresses about known wiki defacers.
(OR) Try using Cookbook:Captchas or Cookbook:Captcha (note these are different).
(OR) Set an edit password, but make it publicly available on the Site.AuthForm template.
How do I password protect the creation of new groups?
See Cookbook:Limit Wiki Groups
How do I password protect the creation of new pages?
See Cookbook:Limit new pages in Wiki Groups
How do I take a whitelist approach where users from known or trusted IP addresses can edit, and others require a password?
Put these lines to local/config.php:
## Allow passwordless editing from own turf, pass for others.
if ($action=='edit'
&& !preg_match("/^90\\.68\\./", $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']) )
{ $DefaultPasswords['edit'] = crypt('foobar'); }
Replace 90.68. with the preferred network prefix and foobar with the default password for others.
How do I password protect page actions?
See Passwords for setting in config.php
$HandleAuth['pageactionname'] = 'pageactionname'; # along with :$DefaultPasswords['pageactionname'] = crypt('secret phrase');or
$HandleAuth['pageactionname'] = 'anotherpageactionname';How do I moderate all postings?
Enable PmWiki.Drafts
$EnableDrafts, this relabels the "Save" button to "Publish" and a "Save draft" button appears.
$EnablePublishAttr, this adds a new "publish" authorization level to distinguish editing from publishing.
How do I make a read only wiki?
In config.php set an "edit" password.
How do I restrict access to uploaded attachments?
See
How can I embed JavaScript? into a page's output?
There are several ways to do this. The Cookbook:JavaScript recipe describes a simple means for embedding static JavaScript? into web pages using custom markup. For editing JavaScript? directly in wiki pages (which can pose various security risks), see the JavaScript-Editable recipe. For JavaScript? that is to appear in headers or footers of pages, the skin template can be modified directly, or <script> statements can be inserted using the $HTMLHeaderFmt array.
How would I create a markup ((:nodiscussion:)) that will set a page variable ({$HideDiscussion}) which can be used by (:if enabled HideDiscussion:) in .PageActions?
Add the following section of code to your config.php
SDV($HideDiscussion, 0); #define var name
Markup('hideDiscussion', '<{$var}',
'/\\(:nodiscussion:\\)/e', 'setHideDiscussion(true)');
function setHideDiscussion($val) {
global $HideDiscussion;
$HideDiscussion = $val;
}
This will enable the (:if enabled HideDiscussion:) markup to be used. If you want to print the current value of {$HideDiscussion} (for testing purposes) on the page, you'll also need to add the line: $FmtPV['$HideDiscussion'] = '$GLOBALS["HideDiscussion"]';
PmWiki only supports tool tips for external links, can I use custom markup to add tool tips to internal links?
Yes, add the following custom markup to your config.php:
Markup('%title%', 'inline', '/%title%(.*?)"(.*?)"(.*?)%%/', '<span title="$2">$1$3</span>'); # Add tool tips to internal links, Example: %title%[[link"tool tip"]]%%
Use the markup with internal links such as:
%title%[[CookBook "cool" | Example]]%%
You can apply it in other situations too, for instance:
%title%"flexible"(:if true:)write something(:else:)write something else(:ifend:)%%
See also Cookbook:LinkTitles.
It appears that (.*?) does not match newlines in these functions, making the above example inoperable if the text to be wrappen in <em> contains new lines.
If you include the "s" modifier on the regular expression then the dot (.) will match newlines. Thus your regular expression will be "/STUFF(.*?)/s". That s at the very end is what you are looking for. If you start getting into multi-line regexes you may be forced to look at the m option as well - let's anchors (^ and $) match not begin/end of strings but also begin/end of lines (i.e., right before/after a newline).
How can the text returned by my markup function be re-processed by the markup engine?
If the result of your markup contains more markup that should be processed, you have two options. First is to select a "when" argument that is processed earlier than the markup in your result. For example, if your markup may return [[links]], your "when" argument could be "<links" and your markup will be processed before the links markup. The second option is to call the PRR() function in your markup definition or inside your markup function. In this case, after your markup is processed, PmWiki will restart all markups from the beginning.
How do I get started writing recipes and creating my own custom markup?
(alternate) Introduction to custom markup for Beginners
How do I make a rule that runs once at the end of all other rule processing?
Use this statement instead of the usual Markup() call:
$MarkupFrameBase['posteval']['myfooter'] = "\$out = onetimerule(\$out);";
How can I apply CSS styles to a particular group or page?
Simply create a pub/css/Group.css or pub/css/Group.Page.css file containing the custom CSS styles for that group or page.
Why shouldn't passwords be set in group (or page) customization files? Why shouldn't group or page passwords be set in config.php?
The reason for this advice is that per-group customization files are only loaded for the current page. So, if $DefaultPasswords['read'] is set in local/GroupA?.php, then someone could use a page in another group to view the contents of pages in GroupA?. For example, Main.WikiSandbox could contain:
and because the GroupA?.php file wasn't loaded (we're looking at Main.WikiSandbox --> local/Main.php), there's no read password set.
The same is true for page customization files.
Isn't that processing order strange? Why not load per page configuration last (that is after global configuration an per group configuration)?
Many times what we want to do is to enable a certain capability for a group of pages, but disable it on a specific page, as if it was never enabled. If the per-group config file is processed first, then it becomes very difficult/tedious for the per-page one to "undo" the effects of the per-group page. So, we load the per-page file before the per-group.
If a per-page customization wants the per-group customizations to be performed first, it can use the techniques given in PmWiki.GroupCustomizations (using include_once() or setting $EnablePGCust = 0).
How do I change the Wiki's default name in the upper left corner of the Main Page?
Put the following config.php
$WikiTitle = 'My Wiki Site';
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.
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/.)
If you use a custom pattern for $GroupPattern make sure that it includes Site ($SiteGroup) and since PMWiki? 2.2 also SiteAdmin ($SiteAdminGroup).
Otherwise migration may fail (e.g. missing SiteAdmin for PMWiki? 2.2 and later) and/or login does not work.
Additionally Main ($DefaultGroup) should be included too.
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 (use [[Group.Page]] instead of [[Page]]).
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. On Windows, it may be necessary to use a hex editor to convert LFCR line endings to LF line endings in the local\config.php file.
If the warning is appearing after some other warning or error message, then resolve the other error and this warning may go away.
How do I make a PHP Warning about function.session-write-close go away?
If you are seeing an error similar to this
Warning: session_write_close() [function.session-write-close]: open(/some/filesystem/path/to/a/directory/sess_[...]) failed: No such file or directory (2) in /your/filesystem/path/to/pmwiki.php on line NNN
PmWiki sometimes does session-tracking using PHP's session-handling functions. For session-tracking to work, some information needs to be written in a directory on the server. That directory needs to exist and be writable by the webserver software. For this example, the webserver software is configured to write sessions in this directory
/some/filesystem/path/to/a/directory/
but the directory doesn't exist. The solution is to do at least one of these:
session_save_path('/home/someuser/tmp/sessions'); # unix-type OS
session_save_path('C:/server/tmp/sessions'); # Windows
Why is PmWiki prompting me multiple times for a password I've already entered?
This could happen like out of nowhere if your hosting provider upgrades to PHP version 5.3, and you run an older PmWiki release. Recent PmWiki releases fix this problem.
Alternatively, this may be 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). You might also try setting session.auto_start to 1 in your php.ini.
See also the question I have to log in twice below.
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). Allso make sure that read-permissions (attr) are set for the pages Site.PageListTemplates and Site.Search.
Some of my posts are coming back with "403 Forbidden" errors, "Not Acceptable", or "Internal Server Error". This happens with some posts but not others.
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", "file(", and "system(", 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/FoundationPupilsIn1958?.jpeg
We are sorry for any inconvenience.
Your server is configured with PHP Safe Mode enabled. Configure your wiki to use a site-wide uploads prefix, then create the uploads/ directory manually and set 777 permissions on it (rather than letting PmWiki create the directory).
I'm starting to see "Division by zero error in pmwiki.php..." on my site. What's wrong?
It's a bug in PmWiki that occurs only with the tables markup and only for versions of PHP >= 4.4.6 or >= 5.2.0. Often it seems to occur "out of nowhere" because the server administrator has upgraded PHP. Try upgrading to a later version of PmWiki to remove the error, or try setting the following in local/config.php:
$TableRowIndexMax = 1;
I have to log in twice (two times) (2 times). -or- My password is not being required even though it should. -or- I changed the password but the old password is still active. -or- My config.php password is not over-riding my farmconfig.php password.
It could happen if (farm)config.php, or an included recipe, directly calls the functions CondAuth?(), or RetrieveAuthPage?(), PageTextVar?(), PageVar?() and possibly others, before defining all passwords and before including AuthUser (if required).
The order of config.php is very significant.
Why doesn't PmWiki use hierarchical / nested groups?
It essentially comes down to figuring out how to handle page links between nested groups; if someone can figure out an obvious, intuitive way for authors to do that, then nested groups become plausible. See Design Notes and PmWiki:Hierarchical Groups.
Why don't PmWiki's scripts have a closing ?> tag?
All of PmWiki's scripts now omit the closing ?> tag. The tag is not required, and it avoids problems with unnoticed spaces or blank lines at the end of the file. Also, some file transfer protocols may change the newline character(s) in the file, which can also cause problems. See also the Instruction separation page in the PHP manual.
Does PmWiki support WYSIWYG editing (or something like the FCKEditor?)?
Short answer: PmWiki provides GUI buttons in a toolbar for common markups, but otherwise does not have WYSIWYG editing. For the reasons why, see PmWiki:WYSIWYG.