====== Wiki Farms with DokuWiki ======

This page gives an overview over different ways to set up a **wiki farm**. In a farm, one single copy of wiki engine (the parent wiki or farm controller or **farmer**) is used to run several individual wikis (child instances or **animals**).

The biggest advantage is that only one instance of the wiki engine has to be maintained and upgraded. The wiki animals have completely separated contents (data), and they can also have separated configuration and individual layout.

===== Farm Directory Structure =====

The farm directory can theoretically be anywhere in the file system but we recommend the following structure:

  * ''/var/www/dokuwiki'' -- the DokuWiki engine
  * ''/var/www/farm'' -- contains all the animals
  * ''/var/www/farm/animal1'' --- one wiki
  * ''/var/www/farm/animal2'' --- another wiki

===== Available Methods =====

There are different ways to set up a wiki farm. They are described on the following pages:

Recent:

  * Official [[Farms:]] documentation -- the most straight forward setup
  * [[farms:advanced|Advanced setups]] of farm
  * [[farms:Discussion]] about farm setup

Older:

  * [[Redirect farm]], using reconfiguration of VirtualHosts or .htaccess files and a few PHP scripts;
  * [[plugin:farm|Farm plugin]], automatized version of the redirect farm;
  * [[Symlink Farm]], conceptually simpler, consists of individual wikis just sharing some directories via symbolic links;