Self-Host Outline Wiki: A Modern Team Knowledge Base

Outline is a beautifully fast, Markdown-friendly knowledge base for teams. Think Notion or Confluence, but self-hostable: nested documents, real-time collaborative editing, powerful search, templates, and integrations with Slack and other tools. It’s popular for engineering handbooks, runbooks and company wikis.

Other wiki options: Wiki.js, BookStack, MediaWiki and DokuWiki.

Important: authentication

Outline has no built-in username and password login. Users sign in through an identity provider:

• OIDC (Keycloak, Authentik, Authelia, Zitadel, Google Workspace, Microsoft Entra ID);
• Slack or Google OAuth;
• email magic links (passwordless sign-in via SMTP).

Plan this first. A self-hosted OIDC provider is a good fit if you don’t use Google or Microsoft. See OAuth 2.0 and OIDC explained.

Requirements

• 2 vCPU and 2–4 GB RAM.
• Docker and Docker Compose. See install Docker.
• A domain (wiki.example.com) with HTTPS.
• PostgreSQL and Redis (in the compose file), plus file storage: local disk or S3-compatible. See MinIO.

Docker Compose

# /opt/outline/compose.yaml
services:
  outline:
    image: docker.getoutline.com/outlinewiki/outline:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    env_file: ./docker.env
    ports:
      - "127.0.0.1:3000:3000"
    volumes:
      - ./storage:/var/lib/outline/data
    depends_on: [postgres, redis]

  redis:
    image: redis:7
    restart: unless-stopped

  postgres:
    image: postgres:16
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: outline
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: change-me-db
      POSTGRES_DB: outline
    volumes:
      - ./postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data

docker.env (key settings; start from the project’s .env.sample):

NODE_ENV=production
URL=https://wiki.example.com
SECRET_KEY=<openssl rand -hex 32>
UTILS_SECRET=<openssl rand -hex 32>
DATABASE_URL=postgres://outline:change-me-db@postgres:5432/outline
PGSSLMODE=disable
REDIS_URL=redis://redis:6379
FILE_STORAGE=local
FILE_STORAGE_LOCAL_ROOT_DIR=/var/lib/outline/data
FORCE_HTTPS=false            # TLS is terminated by Nginx

# OIDC example
OIDC_CLIENT_ID=outline
OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET=…
OIDC_AUTH_URI=https://auth.example.com/application/o/authorize/
OIDC_TOKEN_URI=https://auth.example.com/application/o/token/
OIDC_USERINFO_URI=https://auth.example.com/application/o/userinfo/
OIDC_DISPLAY_NAME=Company SSO

# email (magic links, notifications)
SMTP_HOST=smtp.example.com
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_USERNAME=…
SMTP_PASSWORD=…
SMTP_FROM_EMAIL[email protected]

sudo mkdir -p /opt/outline/storage && sudo chown 1001:1001 /opt/outline/storage
cd /opt/outline && docker compose up -d
docker compose logs -f outline

Database migrations run on start. Variable names change occasionally between versions, so check the current sample file.

HTTPS via Nginx

server {
    server_name wiki.example.com;
    client_max_body_size 100M;
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
    }
    # listen 443 ssl; certbot --nginx -d wiki.example.com
}

WebSockets are required for real-time collaboration. See Nginx WebSocket proxy.

Using Outline

• Collections group documents (Engineering, HR, Runbooks). Each has its own permissions.
• Documents nest infinitely, with backlinks, mentions, embeds and templates for recurring docs.
• Import from Markdown, Notion or Confluence exports.
• API and integrations: a Slack app for search and link previews, and a REST API for automation.

Backups

Back up the PostgreSQL database, plus the file storage (local ./storage, or your S3 bucket):

docker compose exec -T postgres pg_dump -U outline outline > /backups/outline-$(date +%F).sql
tar -czf /backups/outline-files-$(date +%F).tar.gz -C /opt/outline storage

Outline also offers workspace exports (Markdown/JSON) in Settings, which is useful as a portable extra copy. See backup strategy.

Updates and security

• Update: docker compose pull && docker compose up -d. Read the release notes. See updating self-hosted apps.
• Restrict sign-in to your domain or IdP group (ALLOWED_DOMAINS, or IdP policies).
• Keep PostgreSQL and Redis on the internal network only.

Quick reference

Item	Value
App port	3000
Public URL	URL=https://wiki.example.com
Login	OIDC, Slack, Google or email magic link
Storage	FILE_STORAGE=local or s3
Backup	pg_dump + storage directory

Related: Docker Compose and zero trust networking.

• Self-Hosting
• Wiki
• Docker