Deploy and Host Wiki.js on Railway

Wiki.js is a modern, lightweight, and highly powerful wiki and knowledge base platform with robust markdown support. One-click deploy on Railway with a PostgreSQL companion database.

About Hosting

Wiki.js (requarks/wiki) provides a full-featured wiki experience with:

• Beautiful, responsive UI with real-time editing
• Markdown, WYSIWYG, and drag-and-drop editors
• Role-based access control
• Multi-language support
• REST API for integrations
• Support for PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, and SQLite
• Docker-based deployment on any platform

Deploying on Railway means you get automatic HTTPS, zero-config storage, and continuous updates.

Why Deploy Wiki.js

Wiki.js is one of the most popular open-source wiki solutions because it offers:

• Zero cost — completely free and open source (AGPL-3.0)
• Modern editor — Markdown, WYSIWYG, or code editor modes
• Powerful search — full-text search across all pages
• Version control — track changes, roll back, diff history
• Themes and templates — customize the look and feel
• OAuth2/LDAP/SSO — integrate with your identity provider

Common Use Cases

1. Team Documentation — centralize wikis for engineering, product, marketing teams
2. Project Knowledge Base — track decisions, architecture, API docs, runbooks
3. Personal Notes and Planning — structured knowledge management for individuals
4. Open Source Project Docs — public-facing documentation portals with versioning

Dependencies for Running This Template

This template provisions two services automatically:

• Wiki.js — the web app container (requarks/wiki:2.5.314)
• PostgreSQL 16 — a sibling postgres service on postgres.railway.internal:5432, with a persistent volume for its data.

Both are created on deploy — no manual database setup is needed. The wiki connects to Postgres out of the box using the credentials defined in postgres/template-vars.json (defaults: user postgres, password postgres, database wikijs). For SQLite instead, set DB_TYPE=sqlite and mount the /wiki/data volume; the Postgres service can then be removed.

All data persists in the mounted volumes automatically. Once deployed, access Wiki.js at your Railway-provided URL and create your first admin account on the setup wizard.

Configuration

Deployment Dependencies

• PostgreSQL 16 service running alongside Wiki.js
• DB_HOST set to postgres.railway.internal
• DB_TYPE set to postgres

Copy .env.example to configure database credentials. The defaults match the sibling postgres service, so a fresh deploy works without changes:

• DB_TYPE: Database engine (postgres, mysql, sqlite) — default postgres
• DB_HOST: PostgreSQL host — postgres.railway.internal (sibling service)
• DB_PORT: Database port — default 5432
• DB_NAME: Database name — default wikijs
• DB_USER: Database user — default postgres
• DB_PASS: Database password — default postgres (rotate before production)
• PORT: Service port (Railway sets automatically) — default 3000
• APP_NAME: Display name of your wiki — default Wiki.js
• TIMEZONE: Server timezone — default UTC
• URL_BASE: Public URL (required after deploy for asset serving)