Ikiwiki and WordPress

[njoseph]

I think the discussion started with this thread…

Cannot upload files via SSH

Hi all, I’m a new user with only a small amount of Linux and Self Hosting experience. I am currently trying to copy and paste a directory containing some css files from a PC on my LAN to the ikiwiki themes folder on my FBX but I’m just getting “Permission Denied.” As requested: FBX connected to Home Router. Purchased October 2020. Running Version 20.15 What I’ve Tried Accessing the Network Location from my Linux PC on LAN and pasting directly to the folder using Linux Mint’s file browser:…

which lead to this comment in the RFC for agenda items.

@njoseph

Creating a website on FreedomBox is still beyond the capability of most non-technical users, mostly because of Linux filesystem permissions. Creating an easy process to upload website files or adding an app like WordPress can solve this problem.

There are multiple ways of setting up websites in FreedomBox:

1. Use a wiki like Ikiwiki or MediaWiki as a website (with some customization)
2. Place the website files under /var/www/html and use Apache to serve them
3. Create a user website using Apache mod_userdir

We also discussed adding static website generators like Hugo and Lektor.

The above options need the user to be able to use the command line, change file permissions, write Apache configuration etc. which not all FreedomBox users might be able to do.

WordPress was suggested as a way of creating websites in a WYSIWYG manner without much technical skills. We discussed adding WordPress about 2 years ago since the Debian package was already available, but we couldn’t go ahead because of security concerns. Now, we believe it is safe to add WordPress with our current systemd sandboxing which acts as a bulkhead limiting damage in case of a security compromise. The WordPress package itself comes from Debian, but plugins are third-party scripts which contain unknown security issues. So, we’ll try to keep plugins disabled by default if possible with an option to enable it if the admin knows what they’re doing.

WordPress is still not a full/only solution to this problem. We can still try to improve and make the other ways of hosting websites to be more user-friendly, e.g. by providing an easy way to upload files to /var/www/html and setting the correct file permissions automatically, providing a way to upload a local.css file to Ikiwiki etc.