About Tiki 
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Wiki
At the heart of TikiWiki is the Wiki feature, which enables users to create and edit a virtually unlimited number of content pages, even if they don't know any HTML. On the surface, the Wiki feature can be thought of as an exceptionally easy-to-use tool for adding content to a TikiWiki-powered Web site — but this view understates this feature's significance. Wikis are, put simply, perhaps the most useful tool yet created for online teamwork and collaboration. There are several standalone Wiki server packages available (see "Useful Links," below); TikiWiki's Wiki feature is among the most feature-rich and stable available, and what is more, gives you a wide range of additional ways of organizing and looking at collaboratively developed data (including forums, articles, and blogs).
To grasp the nature and utility of TikiWiki's Wiki feature, you'll need to understand the simple (but important) design philosophy that underlies all Wiki software (see "Understanding Wikis," below). Then take a look at "Feature Overview," also below, for a birds-eye scan of the many capabilities of TikiWiki's implementation of the underlying Wiki concept.
Understanding Wikis
In brief, a Wiki is a computer-based collaboration system based on three major principles:- Ease of Use Users shouldn't have to learn HTML or deal with complicated file upload/download protocols, and the inevitable file format incompatibilities, in order to create and maintain documents collaboratively. Typically, wikis solve these problems by using their own, easy formatting syntax (called wiki syntax) and by enabling users to create and maintain documents with a Web browser.
- Wide-Open Read/Write Access If the purpose of a wiki is wide-open collaboration, then every document in the wiki should be instantly available for editing and revision — and what's more, anyone should be able to edit an existing wiki document (or create a new one) without having to get permission from authors or supervisors.
- Emergent Structure In physics and biology, the term emergent structure is used to describe the striking (and often beautiful) patterns that emerge from fundamentally chaotic processes, such as the spiral arms of our galaxy. In a Wiki, this term refers to the navigation structures that Wiki users invent as they try to impose pattern and meaning on a collection of Wiki pages.
Few would debate that online collaborative tools should be easier to use, but the second of these two principles — "Wide-Open Read/Write Access" — sounds risky to most people. But don't get scared off just yet. In TikiWiki (as in most other leading wiki packages), you don't have to throw open your Wiki pages to the whole, wild Internet. You can:
- Use Permissions Restrict Wiki page-editing rights to registered users, or to more narrowly defined user groups, or to forbid page editing entirely, if you wish.
- Lock Pages Any individual Wiki page can be locked by the site admin or page author so that the content can't be altered.
- Monitor Important Pages You can monitor a page, which means that you're notified (via e-mail) whenever a change is made.
- Restore from Page Histories If someone messes up a page, not to worry. TikiWiki (again, like most Wiki packages) keeps a detailed history of all the changes made to a given page. Previous versions can be quickly restored — typically, in less than one minute — without having to fuss with backup tapes.
Don't let the wide-open read/write access philosophy scare you off. Throughout the world, leading corporations and universities are quietly using Wiki software to facilitate team-based, collaborative writing — and they're reporting success after success. To be sure, authors need to know what they're getting into; after all, someone might come along and make changes to the "brilliant page" they just posted. (Of course, the original author can go back in an remove the changes, but it would be much better to revise the page to show that there are differing points of view!) To avoid ego-related squabbles, TikiWiki administrators need to explain the Wiki philosophy to team members (and provide plenty of tools that enable users to work through conflicts regarding page content).
Historical Note The term Wiki is short for wiki-wiki, which means quick in Hawaiian. The first Wiki was created (and dubbed "Wiki-Wiki") by Ward Cunningham, a Portland, OR computer programmer, in 1995. The largest Wiki is the remarkable Wikipedia, which now contains more than 300,000 publicly-contributed entries.
Feature Overview
TikiWiki's Wiki feature enables users as well as admins to create virtually limitless numbers of readable, Web-accessible pages without the need to learn HTML or master complicated file uploading protocols. No matter who originally created a given Wiki page, it is almost instantly accessible for editing, providing the user has the appropriate permissions and the page has not been locked.When a Wiki page is opened for editing, authors can make use of Wiki Syntax, a set of formatting codes that is designed for maximum ease of use. If they have the appropriate permissions, they can also use HTML. Even if they use no formatting at all, the saved page will still look pretty much as the author intended — TikiWiki reproduces carriage returns and blank lines they way they look in the textarea input box. Optionally, Wiki pages can include graphics, and users (with the appropriate permissions) can attach files of any type. Users can include three types of links in Wiki pages: links to other Wiki pages within the same TikiWiki site, links to external Wikis, and Web links (see Wiki Linking? ). Users can also draw from a large and growing list of Wiki Plugins, which provide a variety of enhancements (including split-page formats, a Jabber client, automatically included article text, and many more). They can also categorize pages using Category, if these have been enabled and previously created by the site's administrator.
When a saved page is displayed, users (assuming they have the appropriate permissions) can save the page to their local systems, export the page to a PDF file, view the page in a format suitable for printing, or save the page to their MyTiki notepad. They can also monitor the page, which means that they'll receive e-mail if a change is made to the page. They can view the page's history, including previous versions of the page and differences among the various versions. They can see an automatically generated list of similar pages, as well as a list of pages (called backlinks) that contain links to the current page.
To learn how to create wiki pages and use wiki syntax, go to Using Wiki Pages
To Administer the wiki system, go to Wiki Config
To see the developer details, go to Wiki Details
- Wikipedia
http://wikipedia.org
- Wiki entry at Wikipedia
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
- Wiki Design Principles
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiDesignPrinciples
- Wiki RFC
http://tikiwiki.org/RFCWiki
- Why Wiki Syntax is Important
- http://dev.tikiwiki.org/Why+Wiki+Syntax+is+Important
Contributors to this page: marclaporte
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dthacker
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Damian
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mose
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Page last modified on Wednesday 12 March, 2008 06:39:36 UTC by marclaporte .
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