I've fallen in love with the wiki tools for Drupal. I've long wanted to abandon the PMWiki and Jot Wiki I've used over the years in favor of something that's utterly simple, integrates well with the set of tools I currently use, and works like a wiki should. The set of modules currently offered for Drupal finally lets me do this with the forward linking and MediaWiki syntax that I come to expect from a wiki.
To see how this all works in Drupal, you have to check out the demonstrations and simple documentation for using wiki_tools and the pearwiki_filter modules. Getting up and running will require a few steps to install the right modules and get everything configured—this isn't a single module plug and play task. That How To page gives you the recipe for configuring everything, including installing some nice experimental plugins like the section_edit module. I installed my wiki on a separate Drupal site rather than under my blog in order to keep things simple, but you shouldn't need to if you want all your content accessible in one place.
Try it out. While it lacks some of the more advanced features of Jot, e.g. date-related functionality like creating to dos, it's more than adequate for most note-taking wiki needs. For light project management activities, I might prefer something like Jot's PM module instead (or BaseCamp, but I'd prefer free over fee), but for now I'm trashing my wiki notes on Jot and using my own Drupal wiki instead.
Comments
03/13/07 @ 11:20
Just wanted to echo your praises for the wiki tools module. I set it up over the weekend and found the recipe to be very clear. I ran into one small bug, but reported it and it was fixed within the next 24hrs. I'm glad that I can keep the wiki within Drupal so that I can extend the site further as needed in the future.
03/14/07 @ 18:07
@Chris: I'm liking the Drupal Wiki I'm playing with so far, but one thing I'm wanting is backlinks. Not sure yet how to get that going or even to make useful breadcrumbs. Tagging is helping to keep things together a little.
I haven't actually shared taxonomy between Drupal sites before, and not sure what that would entail. Are you talking about actually having a taxonomy on one site be a master taxonomy on which other sites rely? I've talked about shared taxonomies in the past with people, esp. with regard to how a taxonomy can be distributed in an enterprise, e.g. what format do you use to distribute, how does the dependent site keep synchronized. I've not come across any discussions talking about a model for this kind of service, but certainly see the usefulness.
For one time transfers, though, I think it would be easy enough to simply write a script to generate an xml file with each term, id, and its relationships. It would be up to the dependent sites to know how to import. But that's not speaking from experience.
03/14/07 @ 18:12
@Chris: Oh, and with regards to doing something with a wiki and taxonomies, if you're planning on focussing on richer description and retrieval I'd suggest also looking at Traction Software, because their model for tagging, creating relationships (in the semantic web sense) is more granular and powerful than any wiki. And I'm not just saying that because I've done consulting for them. I was a customer as well. Look for a free 5 person license version in the near future.
03/16/07 @ 01:07
Michael,
I'll expand a bit on what I am talking about on the taxonomy subject....and i will try to contextualize it with a situation:
let's say we are talking about a technology company who wants to have their customer service reps use a wiki as a tool to create pages describing their clients problems. these pages can be shared by their technology support team where they can collaborate on figuring out and documenting the solution. as they go through the process of documenting the solution and then distilling their notes into a comprehensive document that contains instructions that can be used now by end users. perhaps some of these pages even originate on certain public pages on this wiki or blog. sharing solutions with the public as a point of authority/solution provider would be a great service to provide. the opportunity is to allow the blog and the wiki to share a common taxonomy so that content can be cross-referenced on an as needed basis. The blog creates the dialog between the community and the company....enabling the company to "listen" to the community. The company can take action by using the power of a wiki to research, document and manage the collaborative processes involved in gathering this information. Then, a specific wiki page can be served up to the public, referenced from within the blog, and maybe even share comments from the blog to show the community the dialog associated with the solution.
Let me know if this situation makes any more sense.
Chris
03/16/07 @ 01:09
Michael,
Thanks for the tip. I will check out Traction Software.
Chris
03/16/07 @ 06:49
This is the type of thing that Traction does well. Here is a scenario based on what I've seen Traction do with their own customer support using their software.
In a support forum, a customer posts a question. A tech support person might begin with a response to that question saying that the company is investigating solutions. Then other tech support people begin adding responses to the entry that are only visible to the company. After the company's staff comments culminates in a solution, they post a final comment that is visible to the public. All of the process that led to the solution is retained in the entry comments, visible only to the staff, in case they need to see the history of the issue again in the future, but the public only sees the question and the solution.
Simple access control in Traction will let you do the above. Note that this doesn't even mention the use of taxonomy yet. But with Traction, you can do things like transclude content (include content from other entries using a special syntax) and begin to do things that are even more powerful than just use a category to group similar issues. In the above scenario, you can do things like add more meaningful relationships, e.g. this issue agrees with issue discussed in entry x, this issue does not agree with issue discussed in entry y. I think that's the kind of functionality you want to get at.
Digging deeper into the use cases, you might find that this is the ideal type of scenario your users might want. I don't know. The question is whether or not the wiki vendors you are looking at offer this type of granular access control. When you talk about the relevant information for this process living in separate blogs and wikis (tied together by a shared taxonomy?) my concern would be about how complicated things will become.
05/23/07 @ 07:13
Thanks for the information, i entered the references you posted and i found them very useful, i understand now you have fallen in love whit them...
05/24/07 @ 12:29
Thanks for the info. Nonetheless I think that sometimes is good to take a look at several options, don't get me wrong I love Drupal, but for Wikis I would probably consider also Joomla and then PMWiki.
Any how it is just mois,
Thanks bud,
A. Matthews
LA Online Magazine
05/24/07 @ 14:25
I agree, absolutely. I'm starting another new wiki and evaluating the requirements and options, with the choices being Drupal or PMWiki. I've done wikis with Usemod, PMWiki and TWiki, and each time selected the one that was suitable to the particular need.
It's just good to have Drupal as an option as well now because Drupal offers a few content management functionalities that are difficult to come by with wikis. I think that's why we see the sort of hybrid wiki solutions offered in the enterprise world. Sometimes you need more than a wiki. Other times, you just need a simple wiki.
07/08/08 @ 21:43
I just start using drupal. this is really great. I deeply fall in love with this. this is supurb.
This tips is good i will try this.
I wanted to use this before but generally with a free hosting doesn't give u a mysql database. so i failed to use this in my previous free hosting. but now i got free hosting which gives free mysql database. So i didn't delay i register there a starting drupal on my site. i find that site here
This is really satisfying. Thanks them.
Post new comment