23 Wiki Software

Mr. Hardik Joshi

epgp books

 

Overview of wiki

 

A wiki is content management system that powers like a website. It is used to collaboratively create content, modify content over web using web browser. There can be many users who contribute to wiki. A typical wiki has its own markup language and most of the wikis are powered by rich-text editor to create or modify content.

 

Wikis are bit different from blogging software or normal content management systems in a way that it mainly focuses on collaboration from many users to develop articles. A wiki is a software that is powered by wiki engine. The wiki engine are specialized content management system. Wiki engines can be open source or proprietary. Wikis can be installed on servers and the users can collaborate over the network. Wikis can be deployed for specific cases like sharing articles, notes, albums, etc. There are several wiki software available in the open source domain to meet specific needs.

 

Wikipedia is an example of wiki software which is a huge encyclopaedia consisting of collection of articles. Infact, wikipedia is a collection of many wikis together, each for specific language. In most of the cases, wikis prove to be knowledge bases that have collection of articles/media from wide number of users. Wiki concept is based on the following ideas:

  • In a wiki, users edit any page or create new pages using the wiki software
  • Wiki harnesses the use of hyperlinking and is used to promote meaningful topic associations between various pages
  • Typical idea of wiki is to involve users and help them collaborate rather than creating content derived from experts

A “wiki page” is a single page in a wiki website. The “wiki” is entire collection of pages, these pages are usually inter-linked through hyperlinks. A wiki is essentially a repository for creating, browsing, and searching information. A wiki can also be treated as knowledge base to store knowledge in inter-linked form.

 

Some popular wikis

 

Now since we have understood the significance and meaning of wiki, let us survey few most popular wikis that are available online to get a clear understanding of the usage of wikis. The following is a list of wikis that are widely used over the globe.

  • AboutUS.com – Internet directory
  • Encyclopedia of Mathematics – Mathematics related content
  • Travellerspoint – social networking site dedicated to share travel recommendations and experiences
  • Wikibooks – General textbooks made online
  • Wikidata – Storage of structured data
  • WikiEducator – Open Educational Resources
  • Wikihow – Articles on How-to
  • WikiMapia – wiki about maps and places
  • Wikimedia commons – repository of electronic media
  • Wikinews – general news service in collaborative mode
  • Wikiquote – repository of quotes
  • Wikiversity – self learning content, learning communities
  • Wikivoyage – travel guides, information about places
  • Interned Movie Firearms database – firearm usage in films

Differentiating wikis

 

Wikis can be public or private. Private wikis can be used for personal use or for a closed organization. Wikis can also be classified as those that require web server or those that can run in network but without web servers. Few wikis may have capability of multilingual support while other may support only single language. Moreover, wikis can be open source or it may be proprietary. Features like uploading of media/documents, spam control, user-level access control, customizable interfaces can be found in certain wiki software.

 

MediaWiki

 

MediaWiki is a free and open source wiki software that powers Wikipedia. MediaWiki was originally developed by Magnus Manske and was revised by Lee Daniel Crocker. The initial release of mediawiki took place in 2002. Mediawiki runs on LAMP stack and supports most of the modern operating system. Mediawiki is released under the GNU GPLv2 license. Mediawiki is supports nearly 428 languages, however, the size of mediawiki is nearly 40 MB. Mediawiki is basically written in PHP. Mediawiki can be downloaded from its website mediawiki.org.

 

DokuWiki

 

DokuWiki is a free and open source wiki software that is quite simple and easy to install. This software does not require databases so there is less hassle in configuring the wiki engine. The software is licensed under GNU GPL and can be downloaded from dokuwiki.org. The features of Dokuwiki are:

  • Easy to install and use
  • Low system requirements
  • Built-in Access Control Lists
  • Large variety of extensions
  • Over 50 languages supported
  • Device independent
  • Open Source
  • Installation of Dokuwiki
  • Now let us see how to install dokuwiki software. The installation requires 6 steps as recommended on the official page. We will try to understand each step one after another.
  • Dokuwiki is a web-application. It requires LAMP stack to be pre-installed in the system. We must ensure that our LAMP stack is installed properly and is accessible through web browser.
  • Since dokuwiki software is free of cost, it can be downloaded from the website: http://download.dokuwiki.org/.
  • The download comes in tar ball format. We must uncompress the download and copy the files into appropriate folder of LAMP stack. We will create a “dokuwiki” folder for our comfort.
  • If it is planned to run the wiki software in a secured environment, the website has provided manual to take precautionary steps while installation of the wiki software.
  • Once the tarball is uncompressed, we will open the “install.php” page that is provided along with the code. If the LAMP stack is installed on the local system, usually the website to open is http://localhost/dokuwiki/install.php. In our case, we will type the wiki name “epg”.
  • Once the page is opened, it will request for few basic configurations, after entering those details, we are ready to write our own wiki article.

Figure 1: Installation screen of DokuWiki

 

DokuWiki creates superuser account at the time of installation. Apart from entering the details of superuser and name of the wiki, it also recommends to enter the license name under which we are planning to contribute articles (wikis). Most common license is Creative Commons license and GNU Free Documentation license. If we are planning to put the wikis in public, in that case it becomes necessary to select the appropriate license to publicize the content.

 

Another important choice that is to be selected while installing wiki is to configure access control list (ACL). A wiki can be installed using any one configuration out of the followings:

  • Openwiki – Allows read, write, upload for everyone
  • Publicwiki – Allows read for everyone and write, upload for registered users
  • Closedwiki – Allows read, write, upload for registered users only

After the installation gets over, we can access the wiki using the address: http://localhost/epg

Figure 2 illustrates the login screen of our wiki. Supervisor can also create other users from his dashboard.

Figure 2: Login screen of installed wiki named – epg

 

After logging in, we get the “Welcome Screen”. The welcome screen has two major options like

  • Creating the first wiki – on clicking this link, we are redirected to a rich text editor to type the content please refer figure 4).
  • Customize the wiki – on clicking this link, we are redirected to the configuration options of the wiki from where we can change the templates, themes and can manage the wiki by creating users, etc. (please refer figures 5 and 6).

Figure 3 : Landing page of the wiki

 

The screen shown in figure 4 is the rich text editor using which we can type our own programs. We can observe that by typing the content, if we try to format the content, it shows extra characters in the editor. For instance, the content **Bold Text** is inserted automatically. This is because wikis use markup languages to format the font, insert bullets, insert tables, etc.

Figure 4: Editor to type wiki

Figure 5 Dokuwiki configuration screen                         Figure 6 Dokuwiki user manager screen

Dokuwiki supports the use of plugins and templates. Various plugins are available, for instance there are plugins for spam control, security, statistics etc. The snapshot of figure 7 display the screen of plugins that can be applied to Dokuwiki pages; figure 8 displays the screen of templates that are supported by wiki. There is a facility to search for plugins and templates.

Figure 7: Plugins supported by DokuWiki

Markup Language for Wikis

 

Wikis have their own markup language. The markup language is similar to the usage in HTML. The articles are written in plain text and supported by markups to perform desired formatting of the fonts. The markup language is used to insert media, footnotes, sections, lists, tables, texts, external and internal links to the text and so on. Finally, the output of the wiki will contain all the desired formatting .

Figure 9: Output of Wiki markup; refer figure 4

 

In this module, we have discusses the basics of wikis and explored a simple wiki known as DokuWiki. Wikis can be helpful to any organization because it collectively generates knowledge. Unlike content management systems, In wikis, more weightage is given to the collaborative efforts which helps to ensure that knowledge is generated from diverse people rather than a single subject expert.

 

Let us summarize the key concepts covered in this module

  • What is a Wiki
  • Various wikis available online
  • Installation and Configuration of Dokuwiki software
you can view video on Wiki Software

References

[1] J. Barrett, MediaWiki. O’Reilly Media, 1777.

[2] T. Orloff, MediaWiki 1.1: Beginner’s Guide. Birmingham: Packt Publishing, 2010.

[3] Rahman, MediaWiki Administrators’ Tutorial Guide: Install, manage, and customize your MediaWiki installation. Birmingham: Packt Publishing, 2007.

[4] Carter, MediaWiki Skins Design: Designing attractive skins and templates for your MediaWiki site. Birmingham: Packt Publishing, 2008./

[5] MediaWiki: Wikipedia and Beyond, 1 O’Reilly Media, 2008.

[6] S. Choate, Professional Wikis, 1 edition. Indianapolis, IN: Wrox, 2007.

[7] Wikis For Dummies®, 1 edition. For Dummies, 2007.

[8] Koren and D. Robbins, Working with MediaWiki, 2nd edition, 2 edition. New York: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017.

[9] DokuWiki Home Page: www.dokuwiki.org