How to setup Django Wiki locally

I’m a fan of Python, as I’m learning the language I look for software that could serve me in a language that I can understand. I’ve always liked wikis and Django wiki by Benjamin Balder Bach seems to fit in.

This is a simple how to for basic local linux installation as Docs seems to be targeted at advanced Django users.

The Setup

First we create a directory to have all our files in and cd into it:

mkdir wiki
cd wiki/

then we initiate a python virtual environment so the wiki can have it’s own packages separated from the system, then we activate the virtual environment. (you can deactivate it by just typing deactivate)

python3 -m venv vevn
source vevn/bin/activate

We then install the wiki Package using pip:

pip install wiki

Then we start a new Django project we may name it mywiki

django-admin startproject mywiki

Then we cd into mywiki/mywiki To modify both settings.py and urls.py

Modifying config files

We add the following to lines under INSTALLED_APPS section in settings.py

    'django.contrib.sites.apps.SitesConfig',
    'django.contrib.humanize.apps.HumanizeConfig',
    'django_nyt.apps.DjangoNytConfig',
    'mptt',
    'sekizai',
    'sorl.thumbnail',
    'wiki.apps.WikiConfig',
    'wiki.plugins.attachments.apps.AttachmentsConfig',
    'wiki.plugins.notifications.apps.NotificationsConfig',
    'wiki.plugins.images.apps.ImagesConfig',
    'wiki.plugins.macros.apps.MacrosConfig',

We add the following under TEMPLATES section in settings.py

    'sekizai.context_processors.sekizai',

and we add this line at the bottom of the settings.py file:

SITE_ID = 1

Then we modify urls.py to add related imports and url patterns:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include
from django.conf.urls.static import static
from django.conf import settings
urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path('notifications/', include('django_nyt.urls')),
    path('', include('wiki.urls'))
]
urlpatterns += static(settings.MEDIA_URL, document_root=settings.MEDIA_ROOT)

Setting up database and running the server

Now we should have our basic settings setup and ready. We go to the parent mysite dir which contains the manage.py file using cd.. and we run the following commands.

We setup the database using:

./manage.py migrate

We create an admin (called superuser) to allow us to manage the wiki:

./manage.py createsuperuser

We now run the server:

./manage.py runserver

You can now visit the wiki on the following address in your browser

127.0.0.1:8000

You can shutdown the server using Ctrl-C keypair