Flow Arts Wiki

Self-hosted MediaWiki instance for documenting flow arts knowledge. Runs on Docker with the Citizen skin, reverse-proxied by Caddy, backed up to Cloudflare R2.

Architecture

[Cloudflare DNS/CDN] → [Hetzner VPS]
                           ├── Caddy (HTTPS, reverse proxy)
                           ├── MediaWiki 1.43 (PHP)
                           ├── MariaDB 11 (database)
                           └── Cron (daily backups → R2)

Prerequisites

You need accounts on:

1. Cloudflare — register flowarts.wiki, manage DNS
2. Hetzner Cloud — provision a CX22 VPS (Ubuntu 24.04, ~$5/mo)
3. Cloudflare R2 (optional) — backup storage (free tier = 10GB)

Deployment

1. Provision VPS

Create a Hetzner CX22 server with Ubuntu 24.04. Add your SSH key.

2. Point DNS

In Cloudflare, add an A record:

• Name: flowarts.wiki
• Value: your Hetzner server IP
• Proxy: ON (orange cloud)

3. Deploy

SSH into your VPS and run:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/austencloud/flowartswiki/main/scripts/setup.sh | bash

Or manually:

git clone https://github.com/austencloud/flowartswiki.git /opt/flowartswiki
cd /opt/flowartswiki
bash scripts/setup.sh

The setup script will:

• Install Docker
• Configure the firewall (SSH + HTTP + HTTPS only)
• Harden SSH (key-only auth)
• Generate database passwords and secret keys
• Pull and start all containers
• Initialize the MediaWiki database
• Set up daily backup cron

4. Verify

Visit https://flowarts.wiki. You should see the wiki with the Citizen skin.

Daily Operations

Backups

Backups run automatically at 3:00 AM UTC via cron. Each backup produces:

• SQL dump (MariaDB database)
• XML export (portable MediaWiki content)

Both are compressed and uploaded to Cloudflare R2 (if configured). Local backups are retained for 30 days.

Manual backup:

cd /opt/flowartswiki
bash scripts/backup.sh

Restore

# Restore latest local backup
bash scripts/restore.sh

# Restore specific date
bash scripts/restore.sh 2026-02-05_0300

# Download from R2 and restore
bash scripts/restore.sh --from-r2

Updating MediaWiki

cd /opt/flowartswiki

# Pull new image
docker compose pull mediawiki

# Restart with new image
docker compose up -d

# Run database migrations
docker compose exec mediawiki php maintenance/run.php update --quick

Logs

docker compose logs -f              # All containers
docker compose logs -f mediawiki    # MediaWiki only
docker compose logs -f caddy        # Caddy only

Configuration

Environment variables

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in values. Key variables:

Variable	Purpose
DB_PASSWORD	MariaDB wiki user password
DB_ROOT_PASSWORD	MariaDB root password
MEDIAWIKI_ADMIN_PASSWORD	Wiki admin login
MEDIAWIKI_SECRET_KEY	Session signing key
R2_*	Cloudflare R2 backup credentials

MediaWiki settings

Edit LocalSettings.php for wiki behavior (permissions, extensions, branding).

Skin theming

Edit skins/citizen-overrides.css for colors, typography, and layout adjustments.

Extensions

Extension	Purpose
Citizen (skin)	Modern responsive layout
VisualEditor	WYSIWYG editing
Cite	<ref> footnotes
CiteThisPage	Citation sidebar link
CategoryTree	Hierarchical category browsing
ParserFunctions	Template logic
Scribunto	Lua-based templates (infoboxes)
ConfirmEdit	CAPTCHA on signup
AbuseFilter	Anti-vandalism rules

License

Wiki content is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Infrastructure code in this repository is MIT licensed.