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Configuration of MoinMoin
MoinMoin is configured by changing the moin_config.py file, which normally sits besides your moin.cgi driver script. moin_config.py is imported by the MoinMoin main code early in a request cycle and is found because the current directory (i.e. that of moin.cgi) is part of the Python system path. Consequently, moin_config.py can sit anywhere in your PYTHONPATH.
Overview of configuration options
The following table contains default values and a short description for all configuration variables. Most of these can be left at their defaults, those you need to change with every installation are listed in the sample moin_config.py that comes with the distribution.
Variable name |
Default |
Description |
LogStore |
'text:editlog' |
Experimental, keep the default |
SecurityPolicy |
None |
class object hook for implementing security restrictions |
allow_extended_names |
1 |
true to enable ["non-standard wikiname"] markup |
allow_subpages |
1 |
true to enable hierarchical wiki features (see HelpOnEditing/SubPages) |
allow_numeric_entities |
1 |
if true, numeric entities like € for € are not escaped, but & and stuff still is |
allow_xslt |
0 |
true to enable XSLT processing via 4Suite (note that this enables anyone with enough know-how to insert arbitrary HTML into your wiki, which is why it defaults to 0) |
allowed_actions |
[] |
allow unsafe actions (list of strings) |
attachments |
None |
If None, send attachments via CGI; else this has to be a dictionary with the path to attachment storage (key dir) and the equivalent URL prefix to that same dir (key url) |
backtick_meta |
1 |
true to enable `inline literal` markup |
bang_meta |
0 |
true to enable !NoWikiName markup |
changed_time_fmt |
' [%H:%M]' |
Time format used on RecentChanges for page edits within the last 24 hours |
charset |
'iso-8859-1' |
The encoding / character set your system uses |
check_i18n |
0 |
Set to 1 only in development systems, or on a translator's system |
css_url |
'/wiki-moinmoin/default.css' |
URL for the default CSS definitions, make this a server-relative URL (start with a slash) |
data_dir |
'./data/' |
Path to the data directory, the default is OK if you place the data directory right besides your moin.cgi |
date_fmt |
'%Y-%m-%d' |
System date format, used mostly in RecentChanges |
datetime_fmt |
'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S' |
Default format for dates and times (when the user has no preferences or chose the "default" date format) |
edit_rows |
30 |
Default height of the edit box |
external_diff |
'diff' |
Allows you to set an exact path to the command, or change the name to for example "gdiff" if GNU diff is not a native command in your UNIX flavour |
html_head |
META-Tag with Content-Type |
Additional <HEAD> tags for all pages (see HelpOnSkins) |
html_head_queries |
META-Tag with "NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW" for robots |
Additional <HEAD> tags for edit and action pages (html_head is sent, too; see HelpOnSkins) |
httpd_docs |
'./wiki-moinmoin' |
directory with public files, when using the stand-alone server |
httpd_host |
'localhost' |
hostname of the stand-alone server |
httpd_port |
8080 |
port of the stand-alone server |
httpd_user |
'nobody' |
user to run the the stand-alone server under (UNIX only) |
interwikiname |
None |
InterWiki name (prefix, moniker) of the site, or None |
logo_string |
MoinMoin logo |
URL path to the logo display in the upper-left corner of a page and used in RSS documents |
lowerletters |
Latin 1 alphabetic characters and digits |
Lowercase letters, used to define what is a WikiName |
mail_from |
None |
From: header used in sent mails |
mail_smarthost |
None |
IP or domain name of an SMTP-enabled server; note that email features (notification, mailing of login data) works only if this variable is set |
max_macro_size |
50 |
Maximum size of some macro pages in KB, especially used to limits the size of RecentChanges; use 0 to disable that feature |
navi_bar |
large HTML fragment |
Most important links in text form (/!\ this is a deprecated feature that will enventually disappear and be replaced by the bookmarks of UserPreferences) |
nonexist_qm |
0 |
Default for displaying WantedPages with a question mark, like in the original wiki (changeable by the user) |
page_footer1 |
Python Powered logo |
Custom HTML markup sent before the system footer (see HelpOnSkins) |
page_footer2 |
"" |
Custom HTML markup sent after the system footer (see HelpOnSkins) |
page_form_ending |
'Form' |
Ending name part of pages containing form definitions |
page_front_page |
Name of the front page |
|
page_icons |
large HTML fragment |
The top-right icons on each page |
page_icons_up |
icon for link to parent |
This icon is shown on subpages and links to the parent page |
page_local_spelling_words |
Name of the page containing user-provided spellchecker words |
|
page_template_ending |
'Template' |
Ending name part of pages containing templates for new pages |
shared_intermap |
None |
path to a file containing global InterWiki definitions |
shared_metadb |
None |
path to a file containing a global InterWiki pagelist |
show_hosts |
1 |
true to show hostname in RecentChanges |
show_section_numbers |
1 |
true to show section numbers in headings by default |
show_timings |
0 |
used for development |
show_version |
0 |
show MoinMoin's version at the bottom of each page |
sitename |
'An Unnamed MoinMoin Wiki' |
Short description of your wiki site, displayed below the logo on each page, and used in RSS documents as the channel title |
title1 |
None |
HTML fragment before title area (see HelpOnSkins) |
title2 |
'<hr>' |
HTML fragment after title area (see HelpOnSkins) |
trail_size |
5 |
Number of pages in the trail of visited pages |
ua_spiders |
htdig |
A regex of HTTP_USER_AGENTs that should be excluded from logging |
umask |
0777 |
umask used on all open(), mkdir() and similar calls |
upperletters |
Latin 1 alphabetic characters |
Uppercase letters, used to define what is a WikiName |
url_mappings |
{} |
lookup table to remap URL prefixes (dict of 'prefix': 'replacement'); especially useful in intranets, when whole trees of externally hosted documents move around |
url_prefix |
'/wiki' |
Used as the base URL for all public documents served by the wiki, especially the image files for the icons |
url_schemas |
[] |
additional URL schemas you want to have recognized (list of strings) |
Changing character sets
If you want to use MoinMoin with a character set other than Latin-1, you might or even have to change the default character sets for WikiNames in "moin_config.py". A safe default is US-ASCII, i.e.
upperletters = "A-Z" lowerletters = "0-9a-z"
With that setting, you need to set "allow_extended_names=1" and use the special markup for extended WikiNames ["extended name"] to get any names with characters outside the core latin alphabet.
File attachments
The AttachFile action lets a page have multiple attached files. Since file uploads could be abused for DoS (Denial of Service) attacks, AttachFile is an action that has to be enabled by the wiki administrator. To do this, add "allowed_actions = ['AttachFile']" to your configuration file.
There are also two storage/retrieval models for file attachments:
attachments are stored "privately" and can only be retrieved via a CGI GET (via URLs like http://wiki.net/moin/SomePage?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=filename.ext).
attachments are stored into a directory directly accessible by the web server, and can thus be served directly by the webserver, without any invocation of MoinMoin (leading to URLs like http://wiki.net/wiki/mywiki/SomePage/attachments/filename.ext).
Generally, the second option is preferable1, but it also requires additional configuration steps, and possibly more rights on the host machine. Because of that, the first option is the default; attachments are stored in the "data" directory, with paths like "<data>/pages/<pagename>/attachments/<filename>".
For the second option, you need to add an attachments option to your configuration, which is a dictionary of two values:
attachments = {
'dir': 'C:/Moin/share/moin/htdocs/mywiki',
'url': '/wiki/mywiki',
}
dir is the file system path to the attachment storage, and url is the matching URI to get access to that directory. That directory has to exist and be writable for the webserver, so it can create the necessary directories and files for new attachments. Note that you have to manually create this directory, MoinMoin will not create it for you.
The above example shows a typical configuration for Windows that works for an installation according to the default setup procedure (see HelpOnInstalling/ApacheOnWin32). For UNIX, if you followed HelpOnInstalling/ApacheOnUnix, the necessary configuration will look like this:
attachments = {
'dir': '/usr/local/share/moin/htdocs/mywiki',
'url': '/wiki/mywiki',
}
After you have completed the configuration changes, try to create an attachment for WikiSandBox to check for any errors. If you have any permission problems, you will likely see a Python traceback or some error message.
1 Such a configuration will lead to lower server loads, since you avoid the overhead of a CGI process for every attachment download.