1 An overview of some of ikiwiki's features:
6 Rather than implement its own system for storing page histories etc,
7 ikiwiki uses a real [[Revision_Control_System|rcs]]. This isn't (just)
8 because we're lazy, it's because a real RCS is a good thing to have, and
9 there are advantages to using one that are not possible with a standard
12 Instead of editing pages in a stupid web form, you can use vim and commit
13 changes via [[Subversion|rcs/svn]], [[rcs/git]], or any of a number of other
14 [[Revision_Control_Systems|rcs]].
16 ikiwiki can be run from a [[post-commit]] hook to update your wiki
17 immediately whenever you commit a change using the RCS.
19 Note that ikiwiki does not require a RCS to function. If you want to
20 run a simple wiki without page history, it can do that too.
24 ikiwiki is a wiki compiler; it builds a static website for your wiki, and
25 updates it as pages are edited. It is fast and smart about updating a wiki,
26 it only builds pages that have changed (and tracks things like creation of
27 new pages and links that can indirectly cause a page to need a rebuild)
29 ## Supports many markup languages
31 By default, pages in the wiki are written using the [[ikiwiki/MarkDown]] format.
32 Any page with a filename ending in ".mdwn" is converted from markdown to html
33 by ikiwiki. Markdown understands text formatted as it would be in an email,
34 and is quite smart about converting it to html. The only additional markup
35 provided by ikiwiki on top of regular markdown is the [[ikiwiki/WikiLink]] and
36 the [[ikiwiki/directive]].
38 If you prefer to use some other markup language, ikiwiki allows others to
39 easily be added by [[plugins]]. For example it also supports traditional
40 [[plugins/WikiText]] formatted pages, pages written as pure
41 [[plugins/HTML]], or pages written in [[reStructuredText|plugins/rst]]
42 or [[Textile|plugins/textile]].
44 ikiwiki also supports files of any other type, including plain text,
45 images, etc. These are not converted to wiki pages, they are just copied
46 unchanged by ikiwiki as it builds your wiki. So you can check in an image,
47 program, or other special file and link to it from your wiki pages.
51 You can turn any page in the wiki into a [[blog]]. Pages matching a
52 specified [[ikiwiki/PageSpec]] will be displayed as a weblog within the blog
53 page. And RSS or Atom feeds can be generated to follow the blog.
55 Ikiwiki's own [[TODO]], [[news]], and [[plugins]] pages are good examples
56 of some of the flexible ways that this can be used. There is also an
57 [[example_blog|examples/blog]] set up that you can copy into your own wiki.
59 Ikiwiki can also [[plugins/aggregate]] external blogs, feeding them into
60 the wiki. This can be used to create a Planet type site that aggregates
63 You can also mix blogging with podcasting by dropping audio files where
64 they will be picked up like blog posts. This will work for any files that
65 you would care to syndicate.
67 ## Valid html and [[css]]
69 ikiwiki aims to produce
70 [valid XHTML 1.0](http://validator.w3.org/check?url=referer). ikiwiki
71 generates html using [[templates|wikitemplates]], and uses [[css]], so you
72 can change the look and layout of all pages in any way you would like.
76 Plugins can be used to add additional features to ikiwiki. The interface is
77 quite flexible, allowing plugins to implement additional markup languages,
78 register [[directives|ikiwiki/directive]], provide a [[RCS]] backend, hook
79 into [[CGI]] mode, and much more. Most of ikiwiki's features are actually
82 The standard language for ikiwiki plugins is perl, but ikiwiki also supports
83 [[plugins/write/external]] plugins: Standalone programs that can be written in
84 any language and communicate with ikiwiki using XML RPC.
88 After rather a lot of fiddling, we think that ikiwiki correctly and fully
89 supports utf8 everywhere.
93 The above are the core design goals and features of ikiwiki, but on that
94 foundation a lot of other important features are added. Here is an
95 incomplete list of some of them.
99 You can tag pages and use these tags in various ways. Tags will show
100 up in the ways you'd expect, like at the bottom of pages, in blogs, and
101 in RSS and Atom feeds.
103 ### [[SubPages|ikiwiki/SubPage]]
105 Arbitrarily deep hierarchies of pages with fairly simple and useful
106 [[ikiwiki/SubPage/LinkingRules]]
110 Automatically included on pages. Rather faster than eg MoinMoin and
111 always there to help with navigation.
113 ### Smart merging and conflict resolution in your web browser
115 Since it uses a real RCS, ikiwiki takes advantage of its smart merging to
116 avoid any conflicts when two people edit different parts of the same page
117 at the same time. No annoying warnings about other editors, or locking,
118 etc, instead the other person's changes will be automatically merged with
119 yours when you commit.
121 In the rare cases where automatic merging fails due to the same part of a
122 page being concurrently edited, regular commit conflict markers are
123 shown in the file to resolve the conflict, so if you're already familiar
124 with that there's no new commit marker syntax to learn.
126 ### [[RecentChanges]], editing pages in a web browser
128 Nearly the definition of a wiki, although perhaps ikiwiki challenges how
129 much of that web gunk a wiki really needs. These features are optional
130 and can be enabled by enabling [[CGI]] and a [[Revision_Control_System|rcs]].
132 ### User registration
134 Can optionally be configured to allow only registered users to edit
137 User registration can be done using a web form, or ikiwiki can be
138 configured to accept users authenticated with OpenID, or HTTP basic
139 authentication, or other methods implemented via plugins.
143 Thanks to subpages, every page can easily and automatically have a
144 /Discussion subpage. By default, these links are included in the
145 [[templates]] for each page.
149 Wiki admins can lock pages so that only other admins can edit them. Or a
150 wiki can be set up to allow anyone to edit Discussion pages, but only
151 registered users to edit other pages. These are just two possibilities,
152 since page edit controls can be changed via plugins.
156 Well, sorta. Rather than implementing YA history browser, it can link to
157 [[ViewVC]] or the like to browse the history of a wiki page.
161 ikiwiki can use the xapian search engine to add powerful
162 full text [[plugins/search]] capabilities to your wiki.
166 Can be set up so that w3m can be used to browse a wiki and edit pages
167 without using a web server.
projects / ikiwiki / blob