Wiki.js

Sign in to the AWS Management Console, open the EC2 service and select Launch instance. Under Application and OS Images, choose AWS Marketplace AMIs and search for Wiki.js. Select the SecureAnyCloud listing, choose Select, then choose Continue on the subscription summary.

Pick an instance type of m5.large or larger. Choose your EC2 key pair under Key pair (login). Under Network settings, select your VPC and subnet, then create or select a security group that allows inbound port 22 from your management network and inbound ports 80 and 443 from the networks your users use. Leave the root volume at the default size or larger.

Select Launch instance. First-boot initialisation takes approximately one to two minutes after the instance state becomes Running. During this time Wiki.js runs its database migrations and completes setup.

Run the following command to launch an instance from the SecureAnyCloud Wiki.js Marketplace AMI into an existing subnet and security group.

Replace <ami-id> with the AMI ID shown on the Marketplace listing, <key-name> with your EC2 key pair name and <subnet-id> with your subnet ID. Replace <security-group-id> with a security group that opens ports 22, 80 and 443 as described above.

aws ec2 run-instances \
  --image-id <ami-id> \
  --instance-type m5.large \
  --key-name <key-name> \
  --subnet-id <subnet-id> \
  --security-group-ids <security-group-id> \
  --block-device-mappings '[{"DeviceName":"/dev/sda1","Ebs":{"VolumeSize":30,"VolumeType":"gp3"}}]' \
  --tag-specifications 'ResourceType=instance,Tags=[{Key=Name,Value=wikijs-01}]'

On success, the command prints a JSON document. Note the instance ID, then retrieve the public address once the instance is running with aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids <instance-id> --query "Reservations[].Instances[].PublicIpAddress" --output text.

Connect over SSH with the key pair you selected and the public IP address from step 2. The SSH login user depends on the operating system of the AMI variant you launched:

• Wiki.js 2.5 on Ubuntu 24.04: SSH login user is ubuntu

The first-boot service runs before the SSH daemon becomes ready, so the credentials file is always in place when you log in for the first time.

ssh <login-user>@<public-ip>
sudo cat /root/wiki-js-credentials.txt

The plain-text file contains the Wiki.js URL, the administrator email (admin@example.com) and the password. From the same SSH session, confirm the deployment is healthy by calling the open health endpoint:

curl -fsS -o /dev/null -w 'healthz HTTP %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/healthz

A healthz HTTP 200 response confirms that the full stack (nginx, the Wiki.js server and PostgreSQL) is serving.

Open a web browser and go to http://<public-ip>/. First boot has already completed the Wiki.js setup, so go to http://<public-ip>/login and enter the email and password from /root/wiki-js-credentials.txt.

The Wiki.js sign-in page appears on first boot with a per-instance administrator login.

A fresh instance has no pages yet. A welcome screen lets you create your first page or open the administration area.

The Wiki.js welcome screen.

Select Create Home Page (or the + New Page button). Choose an editor, such as Markdown, the Visual Editor or another option. Set the page path and title, write your content and select Save.

Wiki.js renders the page and adds it to navigation and search. Page history and versioning are kept automatically.

Open the administration area from the user menu, or go to http://<public-ip>/a. From here you manage the site, pages, users and groups, theme, navigation, search, authentication strategies and storage targets.

The Wiki.js administration dashboard.

In the administration area, open Users to invite people. Set their email, name and password, or connect an external authentication provider under Authentication.

Use Groups to define what each set of users can read and write across page paths. Wiki.js supports local accounts plus many providers, including LDAP, SAML, OAuth/OIDC, Google and GitHub.

For any production deployment, serve Wiki.js over HTTPS so that logins and content cannot be intercepted. The image ships with nginx, which certbot can configure automatically.

The following commands assume you have a DNS record that points your fully qualified domain name at the instance's public IP address.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d wiki.your-domain.example \
  --non-interactive --agree-tos -m you@your-domain.example \
  --redirect

After certbot finishes, set the Site URL in the administration area under General to your HTTPS address, so that generated links are correct.

Wiki.js keeps its content, users and settings in PostgreSQL, plus any locally stored assets under /opt/wikijs. Back up both:

sudo -u postgres pg_dump wikijs > <backup-dir>/wikijs-db-$(date +%F).sql
sudo tar -czf <backup-dir>/wikijs-data-$(date +%F).tgz -C /opt/wikijs data

Copy both backup files to an Amazon S3 bucket or another object store. Because the database is on its own EBS volume, you can also take coordinated EBS snapshots.

Wiki.js can also store pages in Git, S3 and other targets configured under Storage in the administration area. For kernel and package updates, Ubuntu's unattended-upgrades is enabled by default. See https://docs.requarks.io/.

For larger deployments, decouple Wiki.js from the single-instance pattern:

• Move PostgreSQL to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL and update the db section of /opt/wikijs/config.yml.
• Configure a Storage target (Amazon S3 or Git) in the administration area, so that assets are not tied to one instance.
• Put the web tier behind an Application Load Balancer and serve assets through Amazon CloudFront.

The official Wiki.js documentation at https://docs.requarks.io/ covers each of these.