Help:About the user guide
This is the user guide for Canasta, a fully featured MediaWiki distribution that bundles MediaWiki with 170+ extensions and skins, a database server, a web server, and a caching layer into a single containerized package supporting both Docker Compose and Kubernetes.
Three tiers
The user guide is organized in three tiers. Pick the one that matches what you're trying to do.
| Tier | For | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Quick start and concepts | Anyone evaluating Canasta or running their first wiki | Help:Quick start, Help:General concepts, Help:Best practices |
| Reference | Operators looking up how a feature or workflow works, regardless of hosting platform | Help:Backup and restore, Help:External database, Help:GitOps, Help:Multi-host management |
| User journeys | Operators following a step-by-step worked example for a specific platform combination | Help:User journeys/Canasta on AWS EKS with RDS, Help:User journeys/Canasta multi-node on AWS EC2 with k3s |
Where to start
I'm evaluating Canasta
Read Help:Quick start for what Canasta is and what it gives you. Skim Help:General concepts for the architecture and Help:Best practices for the guardrails. Then look at user journeys to see end-to-end examples on platforms you might use.
I want to run my first wiki
Follow Help:Installation to get Canasta CLI on your machine, then Help:Quick start for the create / start / extend / back up walkthrough. Help:Wiki lifecycle covers day-2 operations.
I'm an experienced administrator and want to do <X>
Reference pages are organized by topic. Common entry points:
- Help:Wiki farms — running multiple wikis under one Canasta instance
- Help:External database — using a managed database instead of the bundled one
- Help:GitOps — version-controlled, multi-environment configuration management
- Help:Multi-host management — managing instances on multiple machines from one controller
- Help:Multi-node Kubernetes — multi-node K8s topologies
- Help:Backup and restore — Restic-based backups, scheduling, restore flows
- Help:Upgrading — version upgrades, both MediaWiki and Canasta CLI
- Help:Extensions and skins — adding, configuring, and managing extensions and skins
- Help:Observability — logging, metrics, alerting
For platform-specific worked examples (e.g. AWS, Azure, GCP), see user journeys.
I'm hitting a problem
- Help:Troubleshooting — common errors and fixes
- The Canasta CLI issue tracker for bugs and feature requests
Reference vs user journey
Reference pages describe what a feature is and how it conceptually works, in language that's neutral to any specific hosting platform. They use generic terms like "managed Kubernetes provider" or "external object store" rather than naming specific services.
User journeys are platform-specific narratives — concrete, step-by-step walkthroughs that target a particular cloud or self-hosted setup. They include actual commands, real-world cost notes, and a teardown section so operators can dismantle when they're done. Each journey is a worked example, not the only way. The reference pages remain canonical.
Contributing
User journeys especially benefit from operator contributions — your real-world setup is a journey somebody else is going to want. See Help:Contributing for how to propose a new journey or improve an existing page.
Per-command reference
Detailed per-command pages (parameters, examples, exit codes) live in the CLI: namespace, generated from the canonical command definitions. Treat those as the API reference; this user guide is the conceptual guide that ties commands together into workflows.
