1===== About Farms =====
2
3Farms allow you to have a single DokuWiki installation (The "Farmer") that powers an arbitrary number of
4other wikis (The "Animals"). You install plugins and templates in the Farmer only and then make them available
5through to the animals. You only need to keep one wiki uptodate and all other wikis just use the same code base.
6
7After completing this setup step your current DokuWiki (the one you're looking at) will be known as the "Farmer".
8
9===== What does this Setup do? =====
10
11This setup wizard will do three things:
12
13  - create a ''inc/preload.php'' file
14  - create a ''conf/farm.ini'' file
15  - optionally append to the ''.htaccess'' file
16
17The ''preload.php'' is a file that is loaded at the very beginning of loading DokuWiki. Here the farm mechanism is
18inititialized. The Farmer plugin will detect if the current request should access an Animal or the Farmer and
19reconfigure everything accordingly.
20
21The ''conf/farm.ini'' contains the basic configuration of the farm setup. Most importantly it will contain the
22location where all the animal's data will be stored.
23
24The ''.htaccess'' modification makes animals accessible through the //bang!// mechanism. (See below)
25
26===== What to fill in? =====
27
28The **Animal Directory** is where a new directory is created for each Animal you create. This directory has to be
29outside your current DokuWiki. You can specify a relative directory like ''../animals''.
30
31Enabling the **.htaccess** support is recommended. This feature requires Apache with mod_rewrite and .htaccess support.
32
33When enabled, your animals will be accessible under the farmer's URL using the //bang!// mechanism.  Eg. if your farmer is
34running at ''%%http://www.example.com/dokuwiki/%%'', an animal will be accessible at
35''%%http://www.example.com/dokuwiki/!animal%%''.
36
37If you do not enable this, you will have to configure your Webserver and DNS to access the animals.
38