Deployment/howto

This Deployment HOWTO is an online documentation to help everyone wanting to provide content (especialy Wikipedia) to many potential users using the Kiwix technologies. We tried here to have an end-to-end approach, that means not only to speak about Kiwix itself but also about everything which could play a role in such a project.

Feel free to make remarks or ask question in the talk page.

Technical solutions

Kiwix provides two different technical solutions:

• "kiwix", a desktop application,
• "kiwix-serve". a HTTP daemon application.

Kiwix Desktop

"Kiwix" is a desktop application you may install on any computer with a screen. It runs on Windows, OSX and Linux. This software provides a lot of features (bookmarks, content manager, ...) and is the most common used software.

Kiwix Server

Kiwix server (the binary is called kiwix-serve) is an HTTP daemon. That means you run on computer (which could be without screen, like a server) an each other computer (called client) may access to the content served by kiwix-serve through the network. Client should only start a Web browser, type the name or ip of the server to access to the content. Kiwix server does not provide all the feature of the Kiwix desktop application but simple reading and fulltext search feature are possible. Currently kiwix-serve only runs on Linux, but we will port it soon to Windows and Mac.

Knowing your target

Before starting to find a technical solution to deploy, you need to ask you a few essential questions:

• What is the audience? This is essential to know a little bit about the audience to increase the positive impact of your project. You have especially to choose a content which is adapted. You need also to check if the future users will need help to learn how to deal with what you will provide, content and software. Estimate the time you will need to invest to help your future users. You need also to know how much persons should be able to use Kiwix at the same time.

• What is the technical environment? You need to know what is the best way to install Kiwix. So this is essential to know if the computer are not too old? What are the Operation systems? Do you have a LAN or not? How is it possible to install the software (perl LAN, DVD, USB)? etc.

Choosing your content

Kiwix is a pure ZIM reader, that means that the content should be in the ZIM format. You may find ZIM files here:

• Download ZIM files from Kiwix Web site at http://download.kiwix.org/zim/0.9/. You may find here big ZIM files with all articles, thumbnails and categories in a Wikipedia (one file per language).
• Make your own ZIM files from Wikipedia itself using https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Special:Book. This is a good solution for creating small collection of ZIM files.

If you search a content reviewed for Children, you may be interesting in the Wikipedia for School selection.